Sunday morning Egg and Bacon

Starting with a little bit of Stereophonics on Sunday morning, which, I guess, is good for any of us..

“Keeping up with the best - is anyone going anywhere?
Everyone's gotta be somewhere
Wait tables for a crook?
Wrote a hard back book?
You teach kids how to read?
Sell your body on the street?
A nurse without a job?
Another uptown snob?
But have I got you wrong?
One look and you were gone is anyone going anywhere?
Everyone gotta be somewhere”

Stereophonics – Traffic. Just suit’s just like a glove in the hand this Sunday…

Anyway, this week has had some mixed feeling, but generally a pretty good one.

First of all, thought that I need to get fitter, so I asked the special police to give me their physical tests and decided that I will try to complete them with normal score. Action line followed- went to the gym thee times this week, plus have a league game today. Let’s see how it turns out, cause next week I already have some misses programmed into the grand plan.

Then it was “The Dark Night” on Monday night with Eva. Although I had heard quite a lot about this film (everybody was very upbeat about it), I was a bit skeptical. In the end however I must admit that it was one of the best Hollywood movies I had seen lately. Heath Ledger played exceptionally well as everyone has already said, but also Christian Bale, who I think this time had a bit easier role to play. Or it could also have been overshadowed by the insanity and fearlessness of the Joker? Some specific spots come in to my mind when I think of the film – the chase in the Chicago streets where the Joker is in the police car, the big lorry being thrown upside down etc. And finally I have my doubts about the last scenes - maybe a bit too simple?

Hah, some more football, please! Saw Estonia lost to Bosnia and Herzegovina – no comments here, left the pub before the end of the game. England played well against Croatia – just hope they will not get too cocky now. This was only one game and things were made a lot easier for them, when the Croats lost one player due to red card. Yesterday I also saw Liverpool take on Manchester on Anfield. The first bit of the game (read the first five minutes) where a bit scary, but luckily it did not turn out as the game I talked in the first place. Without Gerrard in the middle and Torres up front I think we put on a very decent show. The new guy Albert Riera aqured from Espanyol for £8 million impressed me as well - the guy just can take on opposition and really offered that wide role we were looking for. Plus of course Babel, but I knew he was very good anyway. I think we could have a very interesting season coming up in the premiership this year…

R.E.M. concert in Tallinn…
Contrary to many Estonian music critiques, I must say that I actually liked them very much. Since I didn’t know their music that well, I think I anticipated something a bit more subtle, more laid back, but what I actually got was a decent rock concert. Michael Stipe with his exceptionally good form, pulled the show off 100%. And as for the sound, which a lot of people are complaining about, well, I guess it is all about positioning. But on the other hand of course, I admit that Saku Suurhall’s acoustics, to put it mildly, are not the best in the world. Generally, I think that this kind of a rock concert was something I needed- pushed up the feeling a bit. And as for my favorite song that they played – think it is the “Bad Day”. Has some really powerful feeling in it all way from the beginning. Overall, I think you just can’t forget “Nightswimming”…

There some other million things that I would like to comment in this blog more thoroughly, like CERN’s LHC opening on the 10th of September, which hopefully will solve some really interesting questions for us. An interesting quote from this week’s New Scientist – “If you built a $10 billion machine you are allowed to be a little optimistic”. Then strangely there’s a lot of discussion about the traceability in the web – see both BusinessWeek and New Sceintist. To me this is not anything new. What maybe surprised me a bit was what IBM is doing in it’s labs. See: Book Excerpt: The Numerati by Stephen Baker>.

And Finally, Estonian politics.
An interesting subject to be quite honest. Is there any other government in Europe that has the cohones to even discuss raising taxes like this? I don’t think so! I will also not quote the specific numbers here, but in the first glance they seem to be quite high. What worries me is that actually people have not really tried to cut back on operating costs, and that due to this we will have an even tougher situation in 2009 when we compile the budget for 2010. What is good is that the tax calculations actually contain demand curve elasticity and the businesses being affected. The real trick here is about overall macroeconomic aspects on business behavior and communication – how do you bring this information to the public and how do you tackle the issues which are the most sensitive i.e. what does it really mean to me? Or still in other words even if all the macro numbers are ok (compared to, lets say, other EU countries), how do you explain it on the micro level, when they start to hurt people. Anyway, the budget making process is all about mixing different values, which in the public sector context (see my last post), is all but easy. Maybe, and when I have some more inspiration, I’ll write something more about it…