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People of Australia rejoice. There’s a new crime drama on TV and it isn’t Underbelly 52: NSW Rum Rebellion. The Straits is a new ten part series set in far north tropical Queensland and the Torres Strait. I just watched the media preview disk of the first 2 episodes and will definitely see the rest of the series via ABC iView.

Most of you won’t have ever traveled to the really northern parts of Queensland or looked at a map of Islands in the Torres Strait, so you won’t have realised that it’s relatively easy to hop between them to Papua New Guinea (PNG).

PNG’s Highlands are infamous for tribal fights. Traditional fighting weapons are spears, and bows and arrows but nowadays sophisticated weaponry such as army-issue machine guns are commonly used. Most illegal weapons in PNG are stolen from police or military armouries, while weapons smuggled into PNG often come from Australia by sea.

The show’s storyline revolves around ructions in the Montebello family led by patriarch Harry, over which of the 3 brothers will take over their smuggling business.

Fans of HBO’s Deadwood TV series and the films Bourne Supremecy, X-Men 2 will be familiar with Brian Cox who plays Harry Montebello. If you thought being fed to the pigs alive in the US wild west frontier town of Deadwood was a really painful way to die you haven’t seen payback in Far North Queensland and PNG style.

There are similarities between The Straits, the aforementioned Deadwood and the FX cable TV show Justified which centres around Kentucky crime families. All 3 shows are quality crime dramas about life on the edge of civilised territory where the black market flourishes.

ABC TV commissioned Matchbox Pictures to create a 10 episodes series of The Straits and their team has done an HBO-esque job with presumably far less budget. If successful I’m sure ABC/Matchbox hope to sell broadcast rights for the show to overseas networks.

Pay attention to the screen while watching because bikey gangs, smugglers, raskols and a family plotting against each other make for an interesting and unpredictable plot. I wonder what Tourism Queensland thinks of the show’s tagline “Beautiful One Day, Deadly The Next” ?

The Straits premieres as a double episode on Thursday 2nd February at 830pm on ABC1 and is repeated on ABC2 at 1030pm Friday 3rd February. Let’s see how it competes against CSI on 9, Law and Order on 10 and Desperate Housewives on 7. Perhaps it deserved the Sunday night flagship timeslot on ABC 1 instead?

Other Reviews

Tim Winton wrote of people who live in frontier towns – like those in our north on the shores of the narrow, shallow waters between us and PNG – that they measure up to the myth, “do things, remember things, and recall things in their carriage that the rest of us just dreamt of as children”. And this series gets what Winton called “the scale of things, the grandeur and craziness of it” just right.
- The Australian

In the premiere there’s a hefty dose of crimes: drug importation by boat across the Torres Straits from PNG, drug manufacturing, assault, assault with a deadly weapon, use of firearms, kidnapping, embezzlement and even murder (and what a novel death scene it is!).

These characters should be entirely unlikeable. They are, after all, violent crooks with no sign of redemption (yet).

Yet there is an empathy cleverly created by the boys’ inability to rise to the ambitions of their father. However flawed they are, there is also devotion to the family unit.
- TV Tonight

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In “Freakonomics: The Movie” Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubnor explain why incentives matter because if you can figure out what people’s incentives are you can guess with reasonable accuracy how they will behave. Economics is just boring graphs and statistics – wrong. Freakononics challenges conventional wisdom by analysing how people behave in interesting situations, stripping away the maths and complexity which makes Economics hard to understand.

“All of economics is meant to be about people’s behavior. So, what is behavioral economics, and how does it differ from the rest of economics? Economics traditionally conceptualizes a world populated by calculating, unemotional maximizers that have been dubbed Homo economicus.”
-Econ Lib

In reality human behaviour and decision making is far from logical and often bad for their own interests in the medium to long term.

photo credit: Depletedcranium.com and Livefromroswell.com

Economics is the study of scarcity, the trade offs made when there are things people want but not enough of the things to go around. Examples like “does your real estate agent have your best interests in mind?” are used to illustrate how incentives effect people’s bahaviour in a disjointed set of mini documentaries connected by banter between Dubner & Levitt.

The Extras 36 minute mini-documentary explains what Freakonomics a lot more cohesively then the movie does. I suggest watching it before watching the movie so you understand the context and ideas behind the story.

The Truth About Real Estate Agents

The Incentives Of Daycare

“Freakonomics: The Movie” can be purchased in DVD format from Madman Entertainment (Australia’s leading distributor of special interest TV/movie genres). A review DVD copy was sent to me by Madman because they knew I am interested in behavioural economics.

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Several months ago I published a feature article about Augmented Humanity and the consequences of Cyborg implants in human beings. Ben from Madman Entertainment read the article and sent me a DVD of Ghost in the Shell 2.0 to review because he said it was an excellent examination of what the future could be like if many humans become cyborgs.

Cyborg definitions – 1: A cybernetic organism; 2: A reconstructed person capable of exceptional physical feats via replaced or augmented human parts.

Western Animated movies are targeted at children or generally at all ages. On the other hand many Japanese animated films (Anime) are meant for adults. As much as I like Disney/Pixar films, you won’t find any of them addressing serious topics like cyborgs and the nature/essence of humanity.

Ghost in the Shell 2.0 is a beautifully Anime (Japanese animation) film that highlights potential future issues with cybernetics/cyborg humanmachine implants and served as an inspiration for the Wachowski brothers when they created the Matrix movie trilogy.

2.0 in the title signals that the original film which was released in 1995 has been remastered for DVD and Bluray as well as having significant improvements to shading and other aspects of it’s cell animation using new CGI techniques.

The story is centred around Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg who works for Section 9 of the Japanese National Public Safety Commission. Motoko and her colleague Batou are assigned to hunt down a rogue AI called The Puppet Master.

The movie asks more questions than it answers, leaving watchers to wonder whether someone with a human brain and cyborg body should be treated both legally and personally like any other human being? What about a disembodied human intelligence? What is a human? A soul? … Memories? … Feelings? … Consciousness?

“Humanity has underestimated the consequences of computerization” -The Puppet Master.

I prefer to watch foreign language films with their original native language voice actors and English subtitles because English dubbing choice of actors is often horrible.

The English dubbed voice actors for Ghost in the Shell are not as bad as those in anime film Ponyo (which is otherwise a great film) but I agree with the Guardian film reviewer Andrew Pulver that Ghost in the Shell 2.0 is “hamstrung by the awful English-language track.” I recommend listening to the Japanese sound track throughout the whole film and reading the captions in English.

I have excerpted two scenes in the movie that are crucial to understanding the existential/philosophical issues faced by a cyborg pondering the nature of humanity.

English Captions from the Ghost in the Shell 2.0 movie excerpt above:

“If a technological feature is possible, man will do it. Almost as if its wired into the core of our being. Metabolic control, enhanced sensory perception, improved reflexes and muscle capacity. Vastly increased data processing speed and capacity. All improvements thanks to our cyber-brains and cyborg bodies.

So what if we can’t live without high level maintenance? We have nothing to complain about. We do have the right to resign if we choose. Provided we give the government back our cyborg shells and the memories they hold.

Just as there are many parts needed to make a human human …there’s a remarkable number needed to make an individual what they are. A face to distinguish yourself from others. A voice you aren’t aware of yourself. The hand you see when you awaken. The memories of childhood, the feelings for the future.

That’s not all. There’s the expanse of the data net my cyber-brain can access. All of that goes into making me what I am. Giving rise to a consciousness I call “me” and simultaneously confining “me” within set limits.”

“Maybe all full replacement cyborgs like me start wondering this. That perhaps the real me died a long time ago…and I’m a replicant made with a cyborg body and computer brain. Or maybe there never was a real me to begin with. There’s no person whos ever seen their own brain. I believe I exist based only on what my environment tells me …”

Ghost in the Shell 2.0 can be purchased from Madman Entertainment (Australia’s leading distributor of Anime and other special interest genres) in DVD or Bluray format.

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The Sony Pictures documentary Inside Job says the 2008 meltdown of world financial markets was avoidable. The global financial crisis of 2008 was an “Inside Job” that led to a global economic recession, millions of people losing their jobs, savings and homes and huge increases in government debt in order to pay for corporate bailouts.

The main perpetrators in the property, banking, financial industries not only got off without being charged but many got bailed out of losses with taxpayers money.

Now towards the end of 2011 the world stands on the brink of GFC2 as European nations struggle to cope with their debt burdens and the USA has what is known as a “U6″ under/unemployment rate of 16.5%.

Over 104 minutes Matt Damon narrates the sorry story, tracing the causes to:

Aggressive Financial Deregulation – It’s worth reading an essay by former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd which argues that the “crisis is the culmination of a 30-year domination of economic policy by a free-market ideology that has been variously called neo-liberalism, economic liberalism, economic fundamentalism, Thatcherism or the Washington Consensus. The central thrust of this ideology has been that government activity should be constrained, and ultimately replaced, by market forces”

Excessive salaries, cash bonuses and stock options given to financial services industry staff and CEO’s – Failed CEO’s are often given millions in bonuses and compensation rather than being sacked. The New York Times has a good infographic about executives of seven major American financial firms that have either collapsed, were sold at low prices or have received taxpayer-funded bailouts.

Banks advising customers 1 way and then betting against them – This New York Times article: Banks Bundled Bad Debt, Bet Against It and Won explains the issue well: “The simultaneous selling of securities to customers and shorting them because they believed they were going to default is the most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen,” said Sylvain R. Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R & R Consulting in New York. “When you buy protection against an event that you have a hand in causing, you are buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then committing arson.”

Greedy Credit Rating Agencies – AFP reported that “the powerful “big three” raters – Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch – have been accused of blithely awarding mortgage-backed securities their lucrative “AAA” investment ratings simply to net more business.”

Prominent Economists Had Huge Conflicts of Interest – they were key players in financial services deregulation but also earnt a substantial portion of their personal income from directorships, advisory posts and consultancy work for banks, insurers etc. Read the comments at this Financial Times article to see what I mean.

Loans Were Given To People Who Couldn’t Pay Them – NINJA loans are one example (No Income No Job or Asset). NPR produced a special show called Giant Pool of Money that explained what the American housing crisis has to do with the turmoil on Wall Street and why banks made half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income.

Finance Industry “Owns” Government – There is an old saying that “He who pays the piper calls the tune”. In the USA the financial industry is one of the key financiers of political campaigns and “owns” politicians on both sides, Democrats and Republicans.

In Australia it is commonplace for former politicians to work for the financial industry as staff or consultants such as the ex-NSW premier Bob Carr.

The following excerpt from a Sydney Morning Herald report “Macquarie: government by private enterprise” gives several more examples:

“‘Ten years ago Macquarie dealt with the pollies through David Clarke and his connections,’ says one executive director. “When they got serious about lobbying, they hired [former federal minister] Warwick Smith to try and understand how the government thought.”

Since then Macquarie has made an art of poaching politicians – former Victorian treasurer Alan Stockdale, to the colourful ex-member for Parramatta, Ross Cameron, to the controversial appointment of former premier Bob Carr earlier this year.

The string of political appointments has sparked a local debate on the appropriateness of politicians leaving office only to walk into the arms of the country’s most successful bank.”

The current level of belief that politicians and governments work in the public interest is abysmally low as more and people have realised that politicians are beholden to the corporations like banks and mining companies that help finance the cost of their election campaigns.

Along with other factors this has led to the We Are the 99% website and Occupy Wall Street movements. We will see in time whether the protests fizzle out or have an actual impact on elections, politicians and corporate decision making. Getting fair media coverage will be tough

Other Peoples Reviews

“an angry, well-argued documentary about how the American financial industry set out deliberately to defraud the ordinary American investor.”
- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times

“Ferguson’s really well made documentary makes at least some of the puzzle clearer. There are graphs and charts and graphics and numbers galore, but the bottom line is that the poor old punter has been taken for a ride by greedy corporate business tycoons who have been hand in glove with government departments. It’s a horror movie, in a way, one designed to make you angry and want to do something about it.”
- David Stratton, ABC At The Movies

“Inside Job is a powerful experience and functions as one of the better guides for understanding The Global Financial Crisis in the documentary format.”
- Andrew Moraitis, Filmink Magazine

“You don’t have to be a financial whiz kid to find this superbly made documentary fascinating. As gripping as any thriller, Inside Job tells us everything we wanted to know about the global financial crisis but didn’t know the right questions to ask. Informative, intriguing, funny in an ironic way with blatantly terrifying implications, filmmaker Charles Ferguson has constructed a five-part film which describes, explains and analyses what, why and how it happened. We can digest as little or as much as we want; to absorb it all, more than one viewing is required.”
- Louise Keller, Urban Cinefile

Visit the Rambling Thoughts Blog regularly to read articles about Technology, Personal Finance, TV Shows, Politics, Environment, Books and more