Framing the Debate

    2 July 2009, early morning

I’ve been following Indrajit Samarajiva on Twitter recently, since I enjoy reading his blog. He lives in Sri Lanka, so he gets to do interesting things like visiting internment camps:

disease is down dramatically in all Menik Farm zones except three

got back from Menik Farm, inside. Not so bad, but peeps want out. Dusty. Kids need a good scrub. And Permite. Feel humbled

the government has honestly handled this very well. Especially the soldiers and doctors.

Yay?

Disease is down in an internment camp the government set up. How is that an accomplishment? These internment camps are an entirely man made humanitarian disaster. That the government is slowly managing to overcome this disaster is certainly a good thing, but is that something to be impressed about? I’m not so sure.

Indi seems to be operating under the assumption that these internment camps need to exist. The question then is how to make them more humane, more safe, more sanitary, etc. Obviously this is the just thing to do. No reasonable person is going to argue that the displaced people should be left to die, or to suffer more than they already have. The debate then centres around how much to spend, or whether the military should be in charge of the camps, or what sorts of tents to buy, of family reunification, etc. Arguing the camps shouldn’t exist in the first place is outside the boundaries of reasonably debate. The only people who oppose these camps are the LTTE loving Tamil diaspora, or former colonial powers who want to poke their noses into Sri Lanka’s business. This is how you construct an easy to win argument.

I singled out Indi because I just read his twitter messages today, but I see this sort of thing in other moderate news sources I read, like Ground Views for example. One would think it’d be hard to sell people on mass imprisonment. The Sri Lankan government should be commended in how it has managed to shape this story.

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iPhones and Cheapskates

   30 June 2009, late morning

In Canada an iPhone will cost you between $200-$300 on a 3 year contract. Those 3 year contracts will cost you upwards of $80 a month. Maybe you can scam something a little bit less, but at the end of the day, owning an iPhone is fucking expensive. You know what isn’t expensive on the iPhone? Applications. Want to get things done? The bestest application in the world costs $10. One of the best twitter clients costs you $3. The most awesome game on the planet costs you $1. I know what you’re thinking: god damn that’s amazing. Strangely, this doesn’t seem to be what most iPhone owners think.

Mental Note: A good way to filter out cheapskate customers you don’t want is to price your iPhone application at $4.

This message is sitting in my copy of Birdhouse. When Birdhouse came out people couldn’t shut up about how expensive it was. Release any application that costs more then $1 and you’ll get people moaning on twitter about its cost. When the AppStore let you write reviews for applications you didn’t own, you could always count on at least one review bitching about the price of the application. If that new Twitter client that costs $5 is going to break the bank, maybe you need to rethink owning an absolutely ridiculous cell phone.

There are lots of reasons not to spend $5 on a twitter client. It being too expensive really shouldn’t be one of them.

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Tokyo Sonata

   30 June 2009, terribly early in the morning

Shima and I watched Tokyo Sonata at the Royal last night. The film is a look at the life of a typical Japanese family after the patriarch loses his salary-man office job. He hides this fact from his family, going off to “work” each day. This sounds like it could be the set up to a comedy, but it’s actually an incredibly bleak look how this family slowly falls apart. The music, dialogue, and the way it was filmed reminded me of art-house films from the 60s or 70s. I liked this film a lot. (Shima, not so much.) The cinematography is lovely. The actors are great. The films last two scenes are amazing.

The official Tokyo Sonata website.

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