bookofjoe

Does Britain have PreCogs?

You may recall the premise of "Minority Report," to wit: a small group of strange humans have the ability to see the future and predict who will commit crimes: such individuals may be arrested — or worse — without ever having done anything.

Okay, that's just a movie, you say, another fevered dream from Philip K. Dick.

Guess what?

It's not a dream.

In the new (December 23, 2006 — print edition) Economist, the following appears in an editorial: "The British government... is seeking to change the law in order to lock up people with personality disorders that are thought to make them likely to commit crimes, before any crime is committed."

How does this differ from "Minority Report?"

The U.K. is already the world leader — by a long shot — in density of surveillance cameras.

There are currently 4.2 million such cameras operating, about one for every 14 people in the country.

Now the British are preparing to take the first step onto what could prove a very slippery slope.

Who decides what's a personality disorder?

There are many among the deciders who themselves might be considered to have one.

bookofjoe will follow this development closely and report back in future episodes as warranted.

Magnetic Silicone Trivet

Genius.

From the website:

Magnetic Silicone Trivet

No extra hands needed with this trivet

This flexible magnetic trivet makes so much sense you'll wonder how you ever got by without it.

Sticks to the bottom of most metallic pans for hands-free carrying!

Sticks on the refrigerator or stove for convenient storage.

Also works as a pot holder or lid opener.

Heat-resistant to 350°F.

8-1/4"L x 7"W x 1/8"H.

Dishwasher-safe.

$11.99.

Ski Aspen — in your pajamas

More and more people are choosing to chill out figuratively rather than literally via the exploding population of ski cams at resorts worldwide.

Bill Pennington's story in yesterday's New York Times noted that the live Web cams at Aspen get as many as 400,000 visitors every month.

With the rise of controllable, interactive cameras that let you pan, zoom and tilt all over the slopes, the ski's the limit.

Here's the article.

Stay Home and See the Slopes

I am watching people make graceful turns at Aspen Mountain. It is a lovely day with fresh snow from the night before. I shift my attention to one young woman as she skis to the gondola entrance and looks up, smiling right at me.

Maybe she can see that I’m still in my pajamas. But that would be impossible, since I’m nearly 2,000 miles away.

Live interactive mountain Web cams can take you anywhere these days. Sit in your office or bedroom and check out the superpipe at Mammoth Mountain. Or take in the stunt show at the Palisades in Squaw Valley. Want to know how crowded it is at your favorite resort? There might be a Web cam with that answer.

Controllable cameras that pan, zoom and tilt are making new waves in an industry that has historically struggled to get people in the snowless valleys to understand how different conditions can be in the snowy mountains. Static Web cams pointed at a key vista of a resort have been around for a while and are a great service, but there is something entrancing about the newer cameras you can direct yourself.

You can follow individual skiers and notice if they seem to be fighting the conditions or enjoying them. Is it cold? Take note of how people are dressed. You can pan into village streets for local flavor. For goodness’ sake, you can look for a parking spot.

Is your husband on a ski trip in Aspen without you? You might see if he is lounging on the lodge patio with a pitcher of margaritas and with whom he’s sharing it.

On a less suspicious note, you could arrange with loved ones to check in periodically. Come to the bottom of the gondola at 3 p.m. and wave to Mom on her laptop back East.

Whatever it is, people seem to love the Web cams. At Squaw Valley, the High Camp Web cam received 353,000 visits during one week in March last season. Squaw was in the middle of 224 inches of snowfall for March. But Squaw Valley officials also say the availability of their Web cams can bring out the best in those at the resort too, because the top skiers and riders will perform for the online audience.

At Aspen, the live Web cams, with as many as 400,000 visits a month, are the second-most-trafficked destination on the resort Web site after the home page. On a powder day, that pace can triple, bringing 40,000 visits in a day, Aspen officials said. Not bad for an investment of about $3,000 for a camera and $500 to $800 a month in wireless fees.

An Aspen instructor, Joe Nevin, got so tired of out-of-town friends and clients calling him on the telephone to ask about snow conditions that he put a Web cam on his kitchen balcony, which faces Aspen Mountain. He has since optimized his Web cam for Blackberrys and other smart phone use and established a Web site, www.aspenq.com, so that someone can sit in a business meeting in Boston and dreamily gaze at the Colorado slopes.

“We are just beginning to tap into the possibilities here,” said Kristin Rust of Aspen. “We might add sound to the video next. We’re just scratching the surface.”

There are many Web sites getting in on the exploding interest in visual images from the faraway mountains. Snoweye.com catalogs 3,422 Web cams from 45 countries while www.skireport.com, www.onthesnow.com and www.snocountry.com also have directories of snow conditions, Web cams, weather forecasts and other winter vacation services.

And in August, www.Ski.com, a winter vacation travel service, introduced interactive 3D maps of 19 prominent resorts. They are not to be missed. With a click of the mouse, you can rotate these 3D maps or flip them on their sides. You can look at the terrain from above, or from the top of a lift, as if you’re getting ready to ski the mountain.

Want to show somebody just how hairy parts of Jackson Hole can be? Put them on the top of the 3D mountain. Want to illustrate just how vast Vail’s back bowls are in a way that no flat trail map can do? This is the image that will do it.

Ski.com expects to keep adding to its inventory of 3D resort maps, and in what will probably become a typical merging of technologies, the Web site has plans to have links on the maps that would indicate where a resort’s Web cams are. So you can review the terrain in 3D, then view it live via Web cam.

“Anything we can do to keep people from doing actual work during the day, that’s the idea,” Dan Sherman of Ski.com said with a laugh. “Actually, anything we do that keeps people thinking about a ski trip, that’s our job.”

As for me, I just feel better watching people ski on the Web cams. You can critique their form. Everyone is drifting down the hill. You can almost feel like you’re sitting on the patio deck sunning yourself. It’s relaxing.

Especially in your pajamas.

Prince and Beyoncé — Electric at the Grammys

I missed their now legendary duet when it happened on February 8, 2004, but finally caught up with it via YouTube (above).

Even in a little window via my PowerBook speakers, it rocks.

Beyoncé like I've never seen her before.

She talks about what it was like jamming with Prince here.

By Justine Ashbee — It's amazing what you can do with a Sharpie

Well, you can't and I can't but

Ms. Ashbee, an emerging

San Francisco artist, can.

Above, a few of her drawings.

[via Stacey aka soobieoobie]

Zac Posen Limited Edition Barbie & Ken Dolls

Brand extension takes a turn to the smaller side but then, as Richard Feynman remarked back in 1959, "There's plenty of room at the bottom."

But I digress.

Posen is among the most sought-after designers in the world today, dressing many of the presenters and nominees on Oscar night.

Now he's turned his attention to Mattel's power couple, creating wardrobes to glam them up in time for the holiday party season.

The limited-edition (999 were made) two-doll set went on sale at FAO Schwarz last week for $300 and as of 8:36 p.m. ET last evening they were still available.

"Ken wears a silk blazer and Earnest Sewn jeans, while Alexandra Barbie — in the likeness of Mr. Posen's sister, Alexandra — wears a violet pleated gown and a snake-like armband," wrote Suzanne Gannon in yesterday's Wall Street Journal article.

Bonus: each set includes a miniature dog and tiny accesories from Posen's atelier.

'No Dancing in the End Zone' — by Charles Krauthammer

The Washington Post Op-Ed page columnist decided to take a day off from beating on assorted panjandrums and pretenders inside the beltway to address a more universal problem: that of the person whose enjoyment is directly proportional to how much misery she or he can inflict on others.

His column appeared in yesterday's paper, and it's a classic.

Read it and wince.

No Dancing in the End Zone

ROUNDS: The ritual whereby a senior doctor goes from bed to bed seeing patients, trailed by a gaggle of students.

ROUNDSMANSHIP: The art of distinguishing oneself from the gaggle with relentless displays of erudition.

The roundsman is the guy who, with the class huddled at the bed of a patient who has developed a rash after taking penicillin, raises his hand to ask the professor — obnoxious ingratiation is best expressed in the form of a question — whether this might not instead be a case of Schmendrick's Syndrome reported in the latest issue of the Journal of Ridiculously Obscure Tropical Diseases.

None of the rest of us gathered around the bed has ever heard of Schmendrick's. But that's the point. The point is for the prof to remember this hyper-motivated stiff who stays up nights reading journals in preparation for rounds. That's the upside. The downside, which the roundsman, let's call him Oswald, ignores at his peril, is that this apple polishing does not endear him to his colleagues, a slovenly lot, mostly hung over from a terrific night at the Blue Parrot.

The general feeling among the rest of us is that we should have Oswald killed. A physiology major suggests a simple potassium injection that would stop his heart and leave no trace. We agree this is a splendid idea and entirely just. But it would not solve the problem. Kill him, and another Oswald will arise in his place.

There's always an Oswald. There's always the husband who takes his wife to Paris for Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day? The rest of us schlubs can barely remember to come home with a single long-stem rose. What does he think he's doing? And love is no defense. We don't care how much you love her — you don't do Paris. It's bad for the team.

Baseball has its own way of taking care of those who commit the capital offense of showing up another player. Drop your bat to admire the trajectory of your home run and, chances are, the next time up the unappreciative pitcher tries to take your head off with high cheese that whistles behind your skull.

Now, you might take this the wrong way and think that I am making the case for mediocrity — what Australians call "the tall poppy syndrome" of unspoken bias against achievement, lest one presume to be elevated above one's mates. No. There is a distinction between show and substance. It is the ostentation that rankles, not the achievement. I'm talking about dancing in the end zone. Find a cure for cancer and you deserve whatever honors and riches come your way. But the check-writer who wears blinding bling to the cancer ball is quite another matter.

Americans abroad have long been accused of such blinging arrogance and display. I find the charge generally unfair. Arrogance is incorrectly ascribed to what is really the cultural clumsiness of an insular (if continental) people less exposed to foreign ways and languages than most other people on Earth.

True, America as a nation is not very good at humility. But it would be completely unnatural for the dominant military, cultural and technological power on the planet to adopt the demeanor of, say, Liechtenstein. The ensuing criticism is particularly grating when it comes from the likes of the French, British, Spanish, Dutch (there are many others) who just yesterday claimed dominion over every land and people their Captain Cooks ever stumbled upon.

My beef with American arrogance is not that we act like a traditional great power, occasionally knocking off foreign bad guys who richly deserve it. My problem is that we don't know where to stop — the trivial victories we insist on having in arenas that are quite superfluous. Like that women's hockey game in the 2002 Winter Olympics. Did the U.S. team really have to beat China 12-1? Can't we get the coaches — there's gotta be some provision in the Patriot Act authorizing the CIA to engineer this — to throw a game or two, or at least make it close? We're trying to contain China. Why, then, gratuitously crush them in something Americans don't even care about? Why not throw them a bone?

I say we keep the big ones for ourselves — laser-guided munitions, Google, Warren Buffett — and let the rest of the world have ice hockey, ballroom dancing and every Nobel Peace Prize. And throw in the Ryder Cup. I always root for the Europeans in that one. They lost entire empires, for God's sake; let them have golf supremacy for one weekend. No one likes an Oswald.

....................

Every medical school class has an Oswald; ours was named Wayne.

Wayne sat in the front row of every lecture class during the first two years of medical school, right in front of the professor.

Invariably, at 5 p.m. on Friday, at the end of a seemingly interminable two-hour lecture on the Krebs cycle or some such thing, when everyone was just exhausted and brain-dead from the past week's work, the professor would perfunctorily ask, "Are there any questions?"

And Wayne's hand would shoot up and the rest of us would groan and curse under our collective breath.

Why couldn't he wait until the class was dismissed and ask his question?

Was he so brain-dead in terms of what's now called emotional intelligence that he didn't realize no one else cared about his question or how smart it might prove he was?

I hated him, and believe me I wasn't alone.

Other than that he was a nice guy.

For what it's worth — he became an anesthesiologist.

Corum Special Edition Royal Flush Bubble — Official Timepiece of the World Series of Poker 2006

Every player who made it to the final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event received one of these watches, the back engraved with "World Series 2006 — The Final Table."

Stainless steel (top): $3,495.

Stainless steel with diamonds: $8,495.

Red gold versions: Price on request.