Film Review - Hugo - by Martin Scorcese

Hugo is set in Paris after WWI

Martin Scorcese's latest film Hugo is an exquisite, imaginative homage to one of the early pioneers of film through a rich visual narrative and not a too little amount of sentimentality. The story revolves around a young orphan named Hugo Cabret who lives in the Paris railway station, Gare Montparnasse, winding the station clocks and obtaining parts to activate an automaton his late father had been repairing. Through his efforts to find replacement parts he comes into contact with an enigmatic toymaker who turns out to be the French filmmaker Georges Mélièse, living in obscurity. The relationship between the two is the focus of the story and each finds their own place in life through this interaction.  The film may have won mainly technical key creative Academy Awards but as a story of a journey and redemption it certainly does hit the mark. The 3D FX and CGI platform works superbly with this film and provides the additional dimension to bring characters to life in a period setting.

Ben Kingsley and Asa Buttefield in a still from 'Hugo'

The cult of celebrity - when sense equals nonsense

Photographers and media at a launch

The advent and then expansion of the all pervasive electronic media in the late 20th and early 21st century has propelled many people in the entertainment industry and other society circles into a much broader public exposure than would otherwise be possible in earlier decades. Matched with the cult of celebrity which has evolved concurrently, many of their opinions are published, quoted, republished, discussed and given a greater level of credence than would otherwise be the case. Some of the opinions given by celebrities are, in reality, grounded in little fact or evidence. Examples of these statements listed by the charity, Sense About Science, include Heather Mills claiming that meat stays in the gut for 40 years, putrifies and then leads to disease which can be fatal. Actor Roger Moore claimed that foie gras causes Alzheimers disease and actress Suzanne Somers criticised the contraceptive pill on the basis of whether it was safe to take a chemical every day which prevents ovulation. Rocker, Suzi Quatro addressed the issue of sore throats by using a daily colon cleansing powder in her fruit juice on the basis that helping the colon would stop sore throats.  There is little actual data sitting behind these views but the celebrity status of the people making them often allows uncritical broadcasting.

Board & executive remuneration - the 2 strikes rule

Investment commentators, stockholders and corporate governance professionals are probably more familiar with Australia's two strikes rule relating to remuneration reports for Board members and executives than the general public. As a result of the Corporations Amendment (Improving Accountability on Director and Executive Remuneration) Act 2011, a stock exchange listed company will be required to hold a spill vote of its Board if the remuneration report receives a 25% 'No' vote two years in a row. The remuneration report details the payments for Board members and top executives and is tabled at corporate Annual General Meetings each year and subject to a vote by shareholders.

If a remuneration report does receive a 'No' vote at two successive AGMs, the second AGM will have to vote on a spill motion for the Board itself. If the spill motion receives a simple majority, the company will, within 90 days, have to hold a general meeting to vote on whether to keep the existing directors. A managing director will not be subject to the spill motion however shareholders will be able to put forward their own nominees for consideration at that spill meeting.

Much gnashing of teeth and dire predictions of corporate instability followed from leading business identities however research from the Australian Institute of Company Directors has found it was much ado about nothing. Only 15 of 176 companies listed on the ASX 200 Index registered a vote of 25% or more. The vast majority of companies had their remuneration reports adopted by the majority of shareholders. A few notable exceptions are shown below -

Company	2011 voting % against
Austar United Communications	29.2%
Bluescope Steel	38.8%
Cabcharge Australia	40.6%
Coca Cola Amatil	29.9%
Crown Limited	55.5%
Pacific Brands	52.8%
Rio Tinto	25.6%
UGL	29.0%

A new contagion - drug resistant bacteria in the wild

Under the microscope - MRSA

Health authorities, medical research institutions and pharmaceutical companies across the world have, for several years, been concerned with the increase of drug resistant bacteria materialising in hospitals, primary health care facilities and in geographic regions where there is a measurable level of social/economic deprivation. In fact, the increase of medically acquired infections in hospitals has led to changes in clinical pathways with an emphasis on discharging patients to their homes for recuperation as quickly as possible to avoid continued hospital stays and the heightened risk of infection. There has always been a question as to the degree of spread which may occur given diseases such drug resistant malaria and drug resistant tuberculosis already exist in regional and urban environments. The so-termed and best known superbug, MRSA or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus continues to be a menace in hospitals and nursing homes.

Research from the Antarctic coast has shown that a quarter of the samples of seawater taken from locations close to Chile's research stations on the ice continent contained e-coli bacteria with genes which produce an enzyme which can destroy most antibiotics (such as penicillin, cephalosoporins etc).  The enzyme, ESBL is found mainly in people and the bacteria appear to be able to survive in the wild without their hosts. How long will it be before this situation leads to wildlife in the region becoming a reservoir for the drug resistant superbugs?

Solar Wind - across the void to planet Earth

The sun's solar winds can have a devastating effect on the Earth particularly during periods of peak activity which are, on average around every 11 years. The solar winds or geomagnectic storms can overload power grids, disrupt communications on Earth, knock out satellites (there are around 994 in orbit around the planet at present) potentially disrupt aircraft transport using the northern polar region route as well as present a hazard to astronauts in orbit at the International Space Station. The Earth is being constantly bombarded with a stream of accelerated particles not only from the Sun, but also from interstellar and other galactic sources.

To keep an eye on the sun the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) managed by NASA and launched in 1997 orbits the L1 libration point which is a point of Earth-Sun gravitational equilibrium about 1.5 million km from Earth and 148.5 million km from the Sun. 

From this location at L1, ACE has a prime view of the solar wind, interplanetary magnetic field and higher energy particles accelerated by the Sun, as well as particles accelerated in the heliosphere and the galactic regions beyond. ACE also provides near-real-time 24 hour continuous coverage of solar wind parameters and solar energetic particle intensities (space weather). When reporting space weather ACE provides an advance warning (about one hour) of geomagnetic storms. Although the spacecraft has enough propellant on board to maintain an orbit at L1 until around 2024 it is increasingly ageing being now 14 years old.  With science funding at record lows in the US and elsewhere this is surely one mission that should be protected.

Diagram courtesy NASA

Earth Hour 2012

The concentration of economic power: 1% = 20%

For almost 40 or more years political economists have been raising the issue of the inherent risks of the concentration of global economic power into a small minority of transnational corporations. What has been lacking however is good quality data which actually shows the  level of interconnectivity and interlocking equity/stock ownership. The recent study released in late 2011 by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich provides the much needed data to quantify the actual concentration. Using the Orbis database of 37 million companies and investors globally, analysis revealed a core of 1,318 transnational companies which controlled 20 percent of the world's operating revenues. Through share ownership of other companies the 1,318 had control over a further 60 per cent of global revenues. Perhaps the most revealing aspect is the revelation of the existence of 147 "super entities" which in effect controlled 40 per cent of the entire economic network.

Of the greatest interest is the fact within the super-entity group, companies associated with the Global Financial Crisis were listed in the top 20 such as Barclays Bank, JP Morgan Chase & Co and The GoldmanSachs Group. In many respects, the study provides the architecture of global economic power but more importantly it illustrates a potential vulnerability created by such a narrow base where an event such as the Global Financial Crisis occurs.

Social media - tripping up the unwary

 

The 2011 Jobvite survey in the United States is a reminder of how pervasive social media platforms and applications have become with a survey of 800 companies showing that 80.2% of the survey sample had used social media or similar networks to recruit staff. It was also found in the survey that 58% of the survey sample had successfully hired from social networks with 36.4% reporting they had no success. Perhaps the most revealing statistic from the survey data was highlighted recently (Feb 2012) by the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) citing the figure that 45% of managers checked social media accounts before offering a job to an applicant and 35% had found something that stopped them making an offer. This is a salient lesson for all those with a web presence particularly in Web 2.0 applications to be careful about what information about them is publicly visible to other people. 

Where fact is stronger than fiction: ice age phenomena

Science fiction enthusiasts , environmentalists and general movie buffs will be familiar with the 2004 film 'The Day After Tomorrow" where the Earth particularly the Northern Hemisphere is faced with another ice age in a very short time frame of only weeks whereas conventional theory and models tended to view changes as taking decades to occur. Recent research from ancient lake drillings at Lake Monreagh in Ireland have indicated that the Younger Dryas mini Ice Age which took place 12,800 years ago took only months, at most a year, to occur. 

This ice age wihich covered the Northern  Hemisphere was caused by a slowdown in the Gulf stream and lasted approximately 1,300 years with a correspondingly devastating impact on early human societies and culture which existed in the region at that time. Until recently it was considered, based on ice core samples from Greenland, that the mini ice age took at least a deacde to evolve but this has now sharply contradicted by the new findings. The conclusion to draw from this research is simply that climate change phenomena can occur much more quickly that first thought and simply delaying essential decisions does little to reduce risk.