As I clean up my desktop, I felt compelled to share these two pictures with the blogosphere.

First, the statue of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. It is a 2nd century BC statue of Nike, the goddess of Victory. I saw it in 2004 in Paris at the Louvre Museum. It is an enormous statue and I was spooked by it when I first saw it. Maybe because it was missing the head.. Maybe because its arms were gone. Anyway, here it is...

Next is the painting by Francisco Goya titled "Saturn Devouring his Son". I think this painting symbolizes for me, aside from the obvious spookiness, the times in which we live. Although, this Saturn was devouring his son from fear of losing power, we devour our young by making commodities out of everything, including our own children. I don't think I can express it eloquently enough without spending more time on it, but suffice to say that our rabid selfishness, individualism, and lack of regard for "the other" leads us such a state much like the one in which dear Saturn found himself in this picture...

Until soon....

Almodóvar strikes again... Went to see "The Skin I Live In" («La Piel Que Habito») last night. Did some research and found this short from 2009... Enjoy!


La Concejala Antropofaga (The Cannibalistic Councillor)


The audio is atrocious in this version (mismatched), but the video quality is good. 

On Apple...

Before I delete this picture from my desktop, I thought it merited a few words. It's a picture taken a few weeks back of a first generation iPod dutifully playing the song "What's Going On?" by Marvin Gaye. I've spent plenty of time on Facebook reflecting on Steve Jobs and his impact on computing. Some can't stand him because he co-opted, copied, or stole ideas from others (a comparison between him and the inventor of Unix and C stands out in my mind). Others worship him endlessly. I'm somewhere in between: I grew up watching his company grow, then decline in the 90s, and then explode into astronomic success after his return in 1997. Products like the iMac, then the iPod really reestablished the company's footing and set it on a path to success. For me, the turning point was when Apple decided to use a flavour of Unix as its operating system: I had seen the stability of Unix both when I worked at JPL and when I got to my current job at the bank. If Unix was so stable as an enterprise system, certainly, it would be good for consumers. And he and his teams made that possible.


One other thing that I think bears mentioning, and a point that hasn't gotten much attention or press, is that Jobs and his team have turned several industries upside down, most notably, and most recently, the mobile phone industry. Prior to the iPhone, mobile phone carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc.) would dictate to the manufacturer what the phone could and could not do. Customers could wish and desire all they wanted, but given the oligopoly of carriers, nothing was really going to change. Enter the iPhone. Apple designed a product that out-shined anything on the market at that time. Certainly, it did not do everything some other phones did, but what it did do, it did so easily, flawlessly (generally, in comparison to its competitors), and with a very low learning curve. This not only opened the mobile-handset-door to millions of customers who never considered owning a phone, but as a consequence, gave Apple plenty of leverage to turn to the mobile carriers and say, "Who wants this phone? And a million customers to go with it?" AT&T for whatever reason got the phone, but also a deal with it that no other carrier could have it. For better or worse, it gave Apple time to perfect the phone, grow the hype, and get customers on other carriers vying for the device.


But how did they do it? It has been said, and often much more eloquently than I can put it, that it was Jobs's obsession with perfection that made his products what they are. Not only are they simple and elegant, the are easy to use, effectively making the device (to borrow Steve's own words) like a "bicycle for the mind." 


These comments were from someone who said it best in the comments section on a story on FT.com:

Steve Jobs was not a capitalist in the normal sense, not only was he uninterested in personal profit, he claimed he made his products out of the love of perfection, not even to sell. He refused to undertake market research, he despised democratic power structures, called modern capitalism hellish, and spent money making the inside of his computers beautiful, and said good only comes by those who give up on self interest and do what they do for love. He is no model capitalist in the normal sense of invisible hand and rational expectations economics. Since we are in the midst of a capitalism crisis, shouldn't we take a deeper look at this most remarkable of men?


I'll close with my post from Facebook:


Although I never met Steve Jobs in person, he was and will continue to be one of my heroes. Certainly for what he did at Apple, but moreso for those things he stood for.. for what he appreciated in life. I recall reading a story about the deliberation he went through to choose a washing machine. It was such a pleasure and relief to read that story, as I'm much the same way. He obsessed over things and never accepted anything as "just good enough". That's what America needs. To not just be "good enough" to get us to the "end of the quarter", but I digress. I hope and wish that more people like him rise to the top and design, obsess, demand, be visionary, and make life better for us the way he did.