Reviews by martinp (26)

Sennheiser PX100 headphones

4/5 (minimum 1) on 30 Apr 2008
I got fed up of the earphones that came with my iPod: I couldn't hear the bass and the cymbals were right in my face. These headphones offer an advantage in terms of portability: They fold up and fit into a supplied plastic box that fits in a jacket pocket. Given that these are not much more than twenty quid from Amazon, I was surprised that the sound quality was so impressive, and worthy of much more expensive headphones. The bass is great, and the overall sound is natural and clear. Long train journeys with the iPod are now much more enjoyable. I only wish that the portability idea had been taken further and the folded-up unit made more slimline.

Charlie Wilson's War

4/5 (minimum 1) on 15 Jan 2008
He liked busty women. He hated Russians. The representative for Texas' 2nd congressional district organised the biggest covert military operation in history, and played a key role in bringing down the Soviet Union. This film tells the true story of Charlie Wilson's support for the mudjahideen in Afghanistan, with Tom Hanks in the title role. Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing)'s script is packed with funny lines and Philip Seymour Hoffman's CIA agent is an excellent character.

What's most pleasing about the film is that it trusts the audience's ability to think. You see a mudjahideen praying, then firing a rocket. You see a congressman enthusing the Afghan rebels by shouting "Alluhah Ackbar". There are obvious connections with recent events, but they are not spelled out exhaustively.

Planet Terror

5/5 (minimum 1) on 14 Jan 2008
Writer and director Robert Rodriquez has hit his very best with this horror comedy. It weaves together a zombie storyline with a Texan chef's search for the perfect barbecue sauce recipe. Relentless in its pace, it packs in a great many visual and dialogue gags and outrageous action while burning some very scary images into your retinas. Despite being a loving tribute to the exploitation movies of the grindhouse era (complete with film imperfections), it has a pretty coherent plot and - surprisingly - genuine character development. It packs in scenes of gore and disease that rival the sickest underbelly of the web: you have to applaud the director's visual imagination, then ask for his to be sectioned. Other zombie movies look po-faced by comparison. If you like this sort of thing, this is a great evening's entertainment.

Death Proof

1/5 (minimum 1) on 14 Jan 2008
I've never been so bored during a Tarantino movie. This tale of a homicidal stuntman (played by Kurt Russell) could have been a decent ten-minute-long film, but in its long form, full of directionless dialogue, it's unbelievably dull. Plenty of opportunities to introduce suspense or other interest are missed. It would be redeemed if the dialogue were classic Tarantino, but it's not. It would be redeemed if the acting were especially naturalistic, but it's not.

"You are Worthless" by Scott Dikkers

5/5 (minimum 1) on 05 Jan 2008
"There are certain tried-and-true techniques you can use to take control of your life, get the job you want, get the pay you deserve, and have a very satisfying, successful career. You will never learn these techniques." These and other insights are presented in the ultimate antidote to the torrent of syrupy self-help books full of calming, positive "affirmations".

Scott Dikkers (one of the editors of The Onion) has put together a stream of the bleakest reflections and darkest thoughts from a depressive, self-loathing state of mind. Yet I have watched several people I know howl with laughter at this book. What's going on?

Partly it's because some of the aphorisms are dead-on-the-money observations of things that we try to ignore. Partly it's because the whining tone of the book satirises how we feel when we're at our most depressed and self-pitying, daring us not to be worthless losers.

I wouldn't recommend this book to someone who was contemplating suicide, but for the rest of the population it's an ideal replacement for a shelf-full of verbal treacle.

"When Prophecy Fails" by Leon Festinger et al.

5/5 (minimum 1) on 05 Jan 2008
This book is why I gave up reading fiction. No novel is as exciting or as revealing of the human condition as a true story like this.

Studying historical examples, a university research group comes up with a theory about the dynamics of apocalyptic cults. When they hear of a local group who believe they are in contact with aliens who will soon bring about the end of the world, they find the ideal opportunity to test the theory. This book is the record of the scientists' infiltration of the group to observe how its members cope with the failure of prophecy.

In a story woven together from the perspectives of the different investigators, we get to see the hilariously desperate attempts of the group members to validate their sci-fi belief system, and the bizarre home life of the lady whose "channelled" messages from space are the focus of the group.

The behaviour of the investigators as they try to cover their real activities draws suspicion, and the medium interprets this as a sign that they are themselves alien visitors. As the disappointing non-end-of-the-world arrives, the investigators find themselves irreversibly involved in the group they are supposed to be objectively studying. This book was gripping enough to make me get up early to spend all day in a bleak departmental library.

"Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern" by Douglas Hofstadter

5/5 (minimum 1) on 05 Jan 2008

5.0 out of 5 stars A dazzling excursion through science, art and the mind, 5 Jan 2008
By Dr. M. L. Poulter "mlpoulter" (Bristol, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
When Hofstadter took over Scientific American's "Mathematical Games" column, he not only rearranged the letters of its title but used it to write about anything that attracted his polymathic attention.

Described on the cover as "An Interlocked Collection of Literary, Scientific and Artistic Studies", this book combines those columns with reflective essays that provide follow-up material and bring out the links between all the different subjects. So despite the fact that this book is a compilation covering the music of Chopin, the self-replication of DNA, typeface design and the LISP programming language (amongst many other topics), it feels very integrated.

Links are drawn in the most imaginative and unexpected ways- obvious to a genius like Hofstadter, and which gradually become obvious to the reader thanks to the author's talent for straightforward, enthusiastic explanation. Quantum theory is shown as having a deep connection to Rubik's Cube; game theory to nuclear weapons, sexism to translation.

If there is a single theme (or "thema") connecting the mass of science and art in this book, it is the question of the nature of creativity. Hofstadter's argument is that creativity and insight are in principle mechanisable, but that the attempts so far have underestimated the complexity of the problem by many orders of magnitude. It is from his search for examples of creativity in domains such as nonsense poetry, the design of games and of typefaces and in the workings of DNA that the author can speak with authority on what creativity is.

The Chap live at the Cube, Bristol, 2 November 2007

5/5 (minimum 1) on 04 Nov 2007
What do you want from a rock music gig? If you're like me, you want songs that start off with catchy and original tunes, that build up into a howl of distortion. You want a drummer who pounds like an animal, but knows more rhythms than just thud-thud. You want guitars, violin and cello to be played well, but occasionally the WRONG WAY. You want lyrics that are a bit eccentric: simple and direct to the point of being chant-like, but unexpected. You want to be able to dance to it all. If somehow it makes you laugh, that's a bonus.

For this opening of their UK/France tour, the odds were against The Chap. The Cube, being a seated venue, wasn't ideal for such a danceable band. Some very popular gigs were happening elsewhere the same evening, which meant a relatively small audience for this gig.

So for atmosphere, it was not the greatest gig, but in terms of the performance these North Londoners gave, it was everything from my wishlist, and that's even given the absence of arguably their two best songs "Arts Centre" and "Baby I'm Hurtin'". They showed off some new songs which will be released early in 2008, and which had all the best musical and lyrical appeal of their other songs.

I don't recommend the band's "Live at Barfly" album, which excludes all their best songs. There are YouTube videos which give a flavour of their show, but nothing beats seeing The Chap live.

Fooled by Randomness

5/5 (minimum 1) on 04 Sep 2007
Stock market analysts routinely underperform the market. In terms of expected gain, you're better off picking shares at random to invest in, rather than putting your money in a managed fund or taking the advice of a financial guru. So how does this whole financial edifice survive? As one chapter title puts it, "If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?"

This book is about the Illusion of Control on a massive scale: a refusal to acknowledge blind luck's contribution to our success. Taleb is a trader as well as a scholar, and mixes his logical points with many tales about the "Masters of the Universe": traders who, with a run of successful investment, become rich, highly regarded and profiled in Fortune magazine. Given the huge numbers of people who become traders, the number of these high-flyers is pretty much what you would expect by chance. The logical conclusion is that there is no evidence that any of these traders have any real skill, or that any of the investment advice given by gurus and journalists has any value. This contrasts with other walks of life where skill and practice are necessary: you couldn't become a concert pianist by blind luck, for example.

Yet the finance industry refuses to acknowledge this. Noise (the natural volatility of the market) is mistaken for signal (understandable and predictable responses to events), and hence pure luck is mistaken for skill. When the hot-shot trader loses all his money, and is escorted from the building by security, it comes as a total surprise to him.

Embarrassingly for his targets, Taleb is not advancing some daring new theory. He just uses probability theory, basic statistics and a knowledge of the psychological research on biases: the toolbox of an informed critical thinker. He shows how professionals in finance, the media and even academia repeatedly fail to use these basic tools: ignoring probabilities, drawing bold conclusions from minuscule evidence, or focusing on probabilities but ignoring values of outcomes

Just as research on bias overlaps research on human happiness, the book also discusses how we can be more happy by exposing ourselves to less information. Far from a whimsical speculation, this is backed up by a clever mathematical/psychological argument.

Taleb's writing style will grate with some people (his favourite topic is clearly himself) but others will find it a very personal and engaging voice. It's an intellectual rather than scholarly book (Taleb mentions a great deal of scientific, philosophical and literary influences, but is not very concerned to back up each claim with citations) but this won't be a problem for most readers.

How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's cult of the puzzle

5/5 (minimum 1) on 29 Jun 2007
Author William Poundstone likes to do multiple things with his books. He likes to introduce an academic subject in simple terms, give you an interesting story and teach you to think in new ways. He also likes to research; to doggedly bring things to the public that were formerly hidden. All those traits are visible in this book about the craze for "puzzle questions" in job interviews.

Puzzle questions are things like "How much does all the ice in an ice rink weigh?" "Does the sun always rise in the East?" "Why are beer cans tapered at the top and bottom?" or "How would you test a salt shaker?" A lot of these originate in intelligence tests, but whereas IQ tests are scientifically discredited and associated with racism, puzzle questions are claimed to be tests of a culture-neutral (and similarly scientifically unfounded) "general thinking-outside-the-box ability" which fits in with modern corporate culture.

So, we get a history of the craze and how it was popularised by Microsoft. We get tales of the most demanding and bizarre interview processes (how interviewing has become a power trip in some companies). We get general tips on how to approach these problems (especially under stressful interview conditions). We get advice for human resource people on how to interview most effectively for jobs whose natures are frequently changing.

A large proportion of the book is given over to example questions and answers. If you buy the book just as a "crib sheet" just before your job interview, though, it's a waste. It is a potentially joyful and engaging way to develop your logical and creative thinking skills if you have the patience with it and resist looking up the answers.

Not often is a book this fun to read and this well-founded on research and logical reasoning.

Wordpress.com blog hosting

5/5 (minimum 1) on 29 Jun 2007
For a (mostly) free service, this is remarkably powerful. You can quickly and easily set up one or many blogs for yourself, including multiple-author blogs or private blogs. You get a very nice stats engine and a wide array of sidebar widgets, making it easy to personalise the blog. Every few days the developers add another feature, whether an in-built audio player, photo or video sharing, LaTeX for equations(!), draft management...

You can get almost all the functionality for free. There are many designs to choose from, and they are highly customisable, but if you pay a small annual fee you can customise the style sheet directly. You have to pay for disk space if you want to upload files, but they have no problem with you using your own space to share files.

Something that's particularly neat is that you can export (or import) the entire blog in XML format, making it easy to transfer to or from a rival service. I can't imagine changing to a rival any time soon, though.

I've had a number of experiences of trying to set up community blogs using my own software, but having it hosted this way definitely makes things a lot easier.

Notes on a Scandal

3/5 (minimum 1) on 29 Jun 2007
If you liked Patrick Marber's play/screenplay "Closer" about people being cruel to each other in their search of love and sex, then his adaptation of Zoe Heller's novel, although more subtle, will appeal to similar psychological tastes. Cate Blanchett plays a beautiful young teacher who finds in one of her young pupils an obsessive lust that is lacking in her marriage. Judi Dench plays the older teacher (and narrator of the film) who develops an even stronger obsession with this new arrival.

The psychological aspects of the story are very well handled. The only place it is let down is at the dramatic climax, where a couple of crucial scenes are unsatisfying.

The DVD extras include a director commentary and a few featurettes. They don't greatly illuminate the making of the film but talk more about the characters (and since the film itself paints the characters so well, this isn't necessary).

Not a film to get wild about, but worth getting hold of for an evening and watching with friends. You can view it as a film about loneliness and obsession, or alternatively as an 87-minute treatise on how captivating and heavenly Cate Blanchett is.

Von Sudenfed - Tromatic Reflexxions

5/5 (minimum 1) on 29 Jun 2007
If you're into garage rock and post-punk, you're probably into The Fall. If you're into electronic music, you're probably into Mouse On Mars. Both bands innovate and take their respective genres in new directions. Their teaming up to make this album is a significant event. Mark E. Smith is at his most melodic, and MoM are at their most danceable. However, the musical and lyrical eccentricity make it a challenging (and only occasionally self-indulgent) album. It never settles into what anyone would call "dance music".

It can be heard either as a MoM album with a additional sonic element or as a Fall album from a parallel universe where the Fall have always been an electronic band rather than a rock band.

Idiocracy

5/5 (minimum 1) on 26 Mar 2007
Imagine a future with no smart people, where everybody sits in huge armchairs with built-in toilets, gawping at idiotic reality TV and grunting. This film isn't the first to play with the idea, but I've never seen it done so well. This vision of the future is done with great attention to detail including some very funny visual gags.

While being very funny, "Idiocracy" also manages to convey a serious message; that if smart people waste their gifts, then society as a whole suffers. There is an anger against lowest-common-denominator advertising and TV, running through the film.

Despite the low profile and the uninspiring DVD packaging (Fox basically hid the release: see the WikiPedia entry) this isn't an insignificant film. It's the genuinely funniest thing to come out of Hollywood in a while.

Babel

4/5 (minimum 1) on 25 Jan 2007
This long film from the director of "21 Grams" (Alejandro González Iñárritu) switches between a number of different stories; goat-herds in Morocco accidentally shoot an American tourist, causing a diplomatic incident; a deaf-mute Japanese girl is desperate to lose her virginity; an immigrant Mexican worker in the USA wants to attend a family wedding.

It's not as non-linear as "21 grams": each story unfolds in linear time, but they are displaced with respect to each other. However, it's not as much of a well-paced story. The locations, acting and drama are top-class and the film makes you care for all the characters. The direction and use of music work well to make you feel you've visited the disparate countries.

It could have been made as three disparate films: there really isn't any substantive connection between the different stories, except between the story of the tourist and the goat-herds.

All in all, very rewarding viewing, but be prepared to be very patient; it's not an adrenaline-pumper.

The Prestige

5/5 (minimum 1) on 23 Jan 2007
This is a drama about intense rivalry between stage magicians in the late 19th Century. The evocation of the period, although first rate, is not the main attraction, however. The Prestige has an incredibly clever plot including the most ingenious murder I've ever come across. It also has a deeply moving and sad love story hidden in it, which gradually emerges over the course of the film.

The film requires a strong suspension of disbelief on some key points: there is a science-fiction premise which is introduced using the real historical character of Nikola Tesla (I'd rather they had used a fictional scientist). There are a couple more implausibilities required to hold it together (something odd that goes on that none of the characters pick up on and a dead-end that by a huge coincidence turns out not to be a dead-end: I can't be more specific without spoiling the plot).

However, rather than feeling cheated by these aspects of the film, I'm hugely impressed. The writers have taken an implausible (okay, impossible) premise but created an intricate, involving and visual story that would be impossible without that premise. Scenes join up with each other in many subtle ways, echoing the same writers' earlier film Memento. Even when you've seen the twist coming, the final scene which lays it all out are has a lot of impact and I suspect the final shot will haunt my dreams.

I expected the film to be about nice costumes or impressive magical trickery, but it is actually about deep emotions felt by the main characters as they deal with the situations life has dealt them, and it rather than serving up those emotions on a plate, it requires you to think and piece together what you've seen. That's got to be a good thing, in fact the best of what film a be.

Revelation X: The "Bob" Apocryphon

5/5 (minimum 1) on 16 Jan 2007
"Assume this object is real," says the cover blurb, and it's hard to keep that in mind as you read through this even-more-bizarre follow-up to "The Book of the SubGenius".

This barrage of text, illustration, photomanipulation and collage comes from many different authors and artists, all of them members of the Church of the SubGenius.

The text, modelled after the typewritten rants distributed by crackpots, alternates outrageously crazed explanations of SubGenius religion ("You'll pay to know what you really think!") with very articulate rants against normality and group-think. Every subculture comes under attack: the bile is directed against conformity to anything, even the Church itself.

The images back this up with a twistedly hilarious attack on every "meaningful" image. Everything dear and sacred to anyone, from the crucifix to the swastika, is drained of its power by juxtaposition with the face of salesman messiah J. R. "Bob" Dobbs and other images from bad-sci-fi-movie-inspired SubGenius mythology.

As it inevitably deals with taboo and the breaking of taboo, this book is potentially hugely offensive to the overwhelming majority of the population ("F*** 'em if they can't take a joke"- page iii). But those taboos had to be broken, so thank goodness it is being done with as much intelligence, wit and creativity as is on display in this book. To quote "Bob" once more: "Do you urinate? Then you're sure to enjoy this!"

Influence: Science and Practice

5/5 (minimum 1) on 16 Jan 2007
This book by psychologist Robert B. Cialdini is the result of an intriguing double investigation into the psychology of persuasion. The author pretended to be a job seeker and enrolled in the training courses of a number of professions where gaining compliance is key; door-to-door sales, used car sales and so on. In his actual job as a social psychologist, he used controlled laboratory experiments to test hypotheses that arose from this experience.

The resulting science has been boiled down to seven basic principles of persuasion which this book explains in a very informal and unintimidating way. The principles are illustrated with many examples from marketing, politics and other aspects of life. Although this is basically a science textbook, with study questions, extensive references and all the rest, its topic (what makes people tick) is so interesting and the presentation so engaging that I would recommend it to anyone.

A Portrait of Yo Mama as a Young Man

1/5 (minimum 1) on 14 Jan 2007
After seeing a couple of online ads for this book, I bought it expecting to see some well-worked-out and hilarious "Yo Mama" jokes. Instead, I don't think I've ever owned a "humour" book that's so unfunny. I get the impression the authors ran out of good ideas soon after starting the book. "Your mama's so free jazz... Sorry, I lost my chain of thought." "Yo mama's so the bones in my shoulder, it's ridiculous." Hilarity certainly does not ensue.

QI: The Book of General Ignorance

3/5 (minimum 1) on 14 Jan 2007
This book is a spin-off from the BBC TV game show QI, and collects lots of obscure facts from the programme in a series of short essays. It's nowhere near as fun as the programme, because you don't hear the facts read out in Stephen Fry's voice or commented on by the studio guests, but there are some really interesting things here to be learned and a lot of urban legends that one can unlearn. For example, Edison invented the greeting "Hello", but Nero didn't fiddle while Rome burned because the fiddle wasn't invented for another thousand years.

The book's aim is not only to give you some quite interesting knowledge, but to "make you feel small and silly" by arguing that since so much of what "everybody knows" is wrong, nobody, not even experts, knows anything much. The book is a let-down in this respect. For one thing, a lot of its points are *technicalities*. For example, the cover of the book says "If you think the earth has only one moon... you need this book urgently" but read the relevant chapter and you see that the earth really does only have one moon. "Over a billion people have been killed by marmots": only in the sense that marmots have played a role in communicating disease to other animals, who then gave it to humans. "Astoundingly, light is invisible": yes, but only in a sort of semantic sense in which sound waves cannot be heard. There are lots more examples.

Despite the impression given by the book cover and Amazon listing, the book was not written by Stephen Fry but by John Lloyd (the inventor of QI) and John Mitchison. John Lloyd's introduction gives a list of phenomena including viruses and electricity, saying that "nobody has the faintest notion" of what they really are. This is just bluntly misleading given all the science has found out about those things.

One more comment is that in a book that's concerned with giving definitive factual answers to all sorts of questions, it's unforgivable to make almost no mention of sources. This style of stating things without saying how we know them works against the stated aim of encouraging people to be inquisitive.

Welcome to Jesusland

5/5 (minimum 1) on 14 Jan 2007
This is the official book of the web site landoverbaptist.com, which satirises the conservatism, hypocrisy and materialism of the "fundagelical" churches of the United States.

I expected it to be puerile but with some good laughs, but it turns out to be both more funny and more educational. The premise is that at Landover Baptist (God's favourite Church) they take their Biblical literalism seriously, so they obey the rules about unruly children being stoned to death, divorces not being recognised by God and people being sent to Hell for calling someone else a fool. Throughout the book, genuine quotes from the bible are used to illustrate the absurd and nasty consequences of fundamentalism.

Article titles like "America is now Torturing Foreigners: But is it Enough?" "Widowers are given permission to almost Masturbate" and "Food for Ethiopia fund airlifts emergency snacks to peckish missionaries" give a flavour of the book. It's chilling that, deliberately outrageous as this book is, in places it only slightly exaggerates opinions you can hear people expressing in real life.

Cube Cinema, Bristol

5/5 (minimum 1) on 06 Jan 2007
I wuv the Cube! It's the site of many of many favourite nights out of the last few years and a really unique place that's one of the great things about living in Bristol.

It's special not just as a cinema that you can take all sorts of drinks into, not just as a venue for all sorts of fantastic music acts, but for the regular nights: Bluescreen (showing locally-made films handed in on the night, often surprisingly high quality), Movieoke (get up and act out your favourite scene from a DVD, in sync with the projection), The Hell With Hollywood (exploitation, badfilms and the hilarious underbelly of cinema) and more.

Then there's the art exhibitions, the occasionally insane improvisational Cube Orchestra, the monthly programmes that are miniature works of art... It's kept going by volunteers and there's a sense that it's truly a community.

Web Developer Extension

5/5 (minimum 1) on 06 Jan 2007
After installing this I've been able to ditch a lot of other bookmarklets, plugins and software tools. Everything is laid out well and it genuinely saves time and encourages experimentation in web development.

Dan Brickley

5/5 (minimum 1) on 06 Jan 2007

Beamish Soap Company

5/5 (minimum 1) on 06 Jan 2007
I'm not a soap expert by any means, but these are the best soaps I've ever encountered and the names and fragrances are delightfully original. The washing away of filth and shame becomes a pleasure.

The Departed

4/5 (minimum 1) on 06 Jan 2007
The Departed is a remake of the classic, complex Hong Kong cops-and-crooks film "Infernal Affairs", transposed by director Martin Scorsese and an all-star cast to Irish gangsters in the USA (with the subtle Buddhist religious themes of the original becoming Roman Catholic). Both films have complex plots, demanding concentration, and are violent but in a believable and meaningful way. The start of this film is very different from the original, but as the film progresses it converges, with some sequences filmed almost shot-for-shot the same.

The Hollywood actors invest their characters with depth in a different way than the Hong Kong actors; Jack Nicholson especially introduces an unhinged quality to the lead gangster. If I could go back in time, I would watch this version and *then* Infernal Affairs, which for me is the slightly superior film. A crucial scene towards the end in which some characters die is directed perfunctorily in the Departed (people actually laughed in the cinema) whereas in Infernal Affairs the corresponding scene has chilling emotional impact.

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