book review: automotan

The Turk
by Tom Standage

In the 1700s an Austrian man by the name of Kempelmen built a seemingly marvelous automotan that could play chess. The machine's career was much longer than it's makers, and travelled all over Europe and America winning many more chess games than it lost.

The book explores the history of the automotan and the showmen engineers (in particular Maezel) who built, maintained and displayed it. It was the first cabinet magic ever done, and while nearly everyone guessed it was a trick the exact mechanism wasn't known publicly until the 1800s. Everywhere it went it elicited much excitment, and when on to inspire many a man -- Charles Babbage, PT Barnum and Edmund Cartwright (who went on to buld his own machines revolutionizing the textile industry). Edgar Alan Poe's fame might possibly rest on his written expose of the Turk, the essay also considered the prototype for the modern detective novel.

It's a good, interesting story, both in terms of the people and the machine. For me, I was a little dubious as to how much the Turk actually inspired, but it did remind me again of the whole way technological process is made: by the slow piling on of new information, new complexity so that more and more can be done. We stand not on the shoulders of giants so much, as the shoulders of a gazillion midgets.

movie review: Not your Bogart's Casablanca

Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets

"Life" yells the gang spokesman, and the rest of the young urchins shout, "Is a pile of shit!" And indeed so it seems to be for the four kids who are the focus of this movie. Ali, the title character is killed by a stone in the first couple scenes of the movie, by members of the gang they were escaping. The three remaining kids are left somewhat shiftless, not knowing if they should try to join back with the gang, or stay out on their own.

The gang is no happy home. It's lead by Dib, an older deaf and dumb kid who seems somewhat psychotic -- too many knife fights and too much glue sniffed -- and his little charges are terrorized in to submission.

Ali had just been telling one of his little gang Kwita that he was off for the sea, and Kwita decides that just because his life was shit doesn't mean that he has to be buried like shit. Omar and Boubker his two companions are dubious about the goal, and it is no easy road to hold to as the days progress. The gang leader wants them back, they are constantly being chased out of their makeshift home on the docks, and they fight amongst themselves alot.

It is not always an easy movie to watch, there are several violent scenes that are pretty minimal when compared to your average shoot em up movie, but much harder to stomach. I can't imagine having to grow up under those conditions. But it is a beautifully shot movie, some amazingly lit scenes, and then interspersed with the occassional imaginings of Kwita done in chalk animation.

The kids too, are amazing to watch, at turns sad, laughing happy, taciturn, and downright mean and ugly. I wonder how much of it was acting, whether that was how they lived.

money technology

Top 10 inventions in Money Technology -- an interesting list. Apparently the first ATM was invented in 1939!