Is This a Commodities Supercycle Or a Precious Metals Supercycle – Or Both?

21 July 2007

Two conflicting worldviews underlie the current commodity and precious metals bull market. It is worth taking time to contrast the two views explicitly.

An Optimistic View

The more popular commodity supercycle views holds that a booming world economy, driven by Asian demand, will restore the commodity cycle to its previous (inflation-adjusted) highs. If this view is correct, commodities generally will continue to increase in value for at least the next decade or two, if not for the remainder of the century. Commodity prices will be dramatically higher than they are today, and our ability to cover the cost will be enabled by continuing global monetary inflation (ever-increasing money supply).

The commodity supercycle view holds that demand will outstrip the supply of most commodities as far as the eye can see. We will be able to afford higher commodity costs because global free trade will continue to keep labour and production costs of finished goods relatively low.

This relatively benign worldview is based in large part on continued acknowledgement by the international community of the benefits of expanding free trade with the developing world, particularly southern and eastern Asia.

Within this worldview, gold and silver will increase in value because they are commodities in short supply in a world with unceasing demand growth. Also, some commodities will increase in value much more than others, based on ultimate limits in supply.

For example, as mining activity increases, relatively plentiful materials (such as uranium, for example) will increase in supply, and their costs will not rise so dramatically as scarce materials, such as – in particular – oil, natural gas, gold, silver and platinum.

A More Pessimistic View

However, the precious metals bull market view offers a darker perspective on of the future of our global economy.

In this view, monetary inflation is destabilizing economies and societies around the world, and our world is becoming a more dangerous place.

This darker perspective allows for the possible rise of multiple negative developments:

- Traditional rivalries may intensify rather than be resolved.
- Competition for scarce resources may stoke rather than douse the fires of international rivalry. The practice of warfare may increase rather than decrease.
- Ideological conflicts may intensify, resulting in the rise of anti-business and anti-free market sentiment, particularly in relatively poor but commodity-rich nations (think Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, for example).
- Concerns about globalism and free trade may fuel rising protectionist sentiment, resulting in more constrained rather than freer trade between nations.
- Inflating currencies may reach the point of crisis, leading to the decline or collapse of unstable currencies, even among the world’s leading nations.
- Unsustainable individual, corporate and government debts may be rendered unpayable due to slowing business activity, resulting in individual and corporate bankruptcies and the failure of governments.
- Unsound economic fundamentals could sink vulnerable economies, including those of such major powers as the United States and France, as well as those of second tier players such as South Africa, Russia and Venezuela. The fallout from this development could lead to global recession or depression.

The precious metals supercycle view is a much less benign conception of how world events may develop over the coming decades.

To be honest, I would much prefer to see the commodity supercycle view prevail. It is far more benign and optimistic than the precious metals supercycle view of the unfolding future.

However, I don't know which of the two models will best describe our global future.

An inherent advantage of precious metals investing is that it allows for either development. Gold and silver will do well whether the unfolding future delivers a continuing business-based commodity boom, or a liquidity and debt-driven global crisis and economic collapse.

A Combined View

In fact, some parts of both scenarios could unfold simultaneously.

For example, the Asian economies might continue to do well in the face of declining US and possibly European economies.

The US might fall into crisis due to its more unbalanced economic fundamentals, but perhaps many nations might avert the development of similar crises within their borders, due to sounder economic fundamentals.

Europe might continue to perform comparatively well, based on relative fiscal conservatism, in contrast to the profligate United States.

I expect Canada to perform much better than the United States in the coming decades due to Canada’s role as a global leader in mining investment and commodity production, as well as to our smaller population base.

Will our future therefore be expansive, even if perhaps somewhat unstable?

If so, that will mean that the commodity supercycle view has predominated.

Will our future be harrowing, difficult and dangerous?

In that case, the darker precious metals supercycle view will have proven correct.

My own preference is to think optimistically. Martin Seligman has argued that optimists are individuals who plan for the best and prepare for the worst.

Think of me then as an optimistic gold investor.

In the best case, gold will rise with commodities, and developments in supply and demand will drive the price ever higher as gold becomes so precious that only the richest individuals and nations can possess it.

In the worst case, gold will remain a store of value as currencies collapse, economies slow, and our world becomes more uncertain and/or dangerous. I don't like this view of the future, but owning gold is a prudent way to prepare for such an undesirable set of eventualities.

Whether you are an optimist or a pessimist about our global economic future, gold appears to be a particularly wise investment at this point in our planet's history.

How Rare is Gold?

18 July 2007


"How rare is gold? If you gather together all the gold mined in recorded history, melt it down, and pour it into one giant cube, it would measure only about eighteen yards across! That's all the gold owned by every government on earth, plus all the gold in private hands, all the gold in electronics, in coins and from bars. It's everything that exists above ground now, or since man learned to extract the metal from the earth. All of it can fit into one block the size of a single house. It would weigh 91,000 tons - less than the amount of steel made around the world in an hour. That's rare."

Daniel M. Kehrer

From Jim Sinclair's website.

Al Qaeda Does Not Exist

11 July 2007

Believe me, I am not smart enough to bring forward the assertion indicated by the title of the present entry independently.


But I am a subscriber to the Stratfor Intelligence Service, and these people will tell you what is really happening in the world – behind – and around – the news headlines.

Take my word for it, what the news items tell us and what our politicians tell us is not what is actually happening.

The official version of global news is not necessarily intentionally false, but it is so superficial as to be drastically misleading.

And misleading interpretations of news events are ultimately just what this particular adjective implies – they lead us to the wrong place in terms of understanding the causation, implications of, and appropriate responses to disruptive world events.

Today’s Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report, entitled “The Many Faces of al Qaeda,” was probably the last straw for me. The primary argument and the conclusion are so persuasive as to be difficult to dismiss.

What is the author suggesting?

(1) The morally degenerate and reprehensible but tightly knit group of conspirators who masterminded the unspeakable September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on innocent civilians in the United States (not to meniton the equally deplorable African embassy and Saudi residence attacks, harming dozens or hundreds of their fellow Muslims in each attack), is no longer functional. The original group has degraded due to attrition and to the requirements of their own pact of secrecy.

(2) Al Qaeda per se is no longer capable of mounting a large-scale terrorist attack on a western target.

(3) The mythic al Qaeda terrorist training camps in Afghanistan were, by and large, teaching basic and/or amateurish terror skills to junior-grade initiates, though no doubt with broad-scale genocidal intent.

(4) However, al Qaeda is a wonderful franchise for petty terrorists and common-to-garden evildoers around the world who wish to affiliate themselves with the broad idea of global Islamic terror. That is, Al Qaeda has become to terrorists what Starbucks is to independent businesspeople – a vehicle enabling almost anyone anywhere to set up shop in a particular region or community, in this case, to launch whatever terrorist attack of any type that their twisted minds can imagine.

(5) Perhaps most disturbing, the “Al Qaeda” name has also become a franchise for those in the west (regrettably, mostly in the United States) who represent the interests of the post-World War II military industrial complex. These individuals wish to promote their own agenda of problem-solving by means of military expansion and force rather than by the usually more practicable and effective means of negotiation, compromise and, where necessary, confrontation.

It can be argued that the US military industrial complex, against which Eisenhower warned us in the 1950s, has caused as much if not more suffering and grief both in North America and around the world, than have its combined and often self-styled adversaries, for example, the Russian, Chinese and Cuban communists, Latin American socialists, Islamic dictators, and now, al Qaeda terrorists.

The gravest of all policy errors is for the executive and legislative branches of the US government to succumb to the policy recommendations of the military industrial complex, and in the case of the Bush administration, the disastrous and premeditated decisions which led the west into the Iraq quagmire were spearheaded by the devastatingly misguided Project for the New American Century, many of whose members constitute the core cabal around President Bush.

I was sparked to write today’s entry by the stark contrast between today’s Stratfor release and the following news headline: “U.S. says al Qaeda will "lash out" in Iraq.”

Please allow me to quote from the article, redolent of George Orwell’s 1984:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military expects al Qaeda in Iraq to strike back with "spectacular attacks" after major U.S.-led offensives that have disrupted its activities, a military spokesman said on Wednesday.

Brigadier-General Kevin Bergner said 26 leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq had been killed or captured in operations in May and June across the country.

"Over the past two months our collective efforts against the al Qaeda leadership have begun to disrupt their networks and safe havens," Bergner told a news conference.

"We fully expect al Qaeda in Iraq operatives to lash out and stage spectacular attacks to reassert themselves."

If we are to take the Stratfor analyst at his word – and I am far more inclined to trust Stratfor’s people than those representing the US military – the US military spokesman (read spin doctor) is proposing that the United States prepare itself to respond to the retaliatory strikes of a mythical enemy that in fact does not exist.

Are there terrorists in Iraq? Without a doubt, and certainly a thousandfold more now than ever existed there prior to the US military intervention. Are these terrorists linked to a multi-headed international hydra united under the rubric of al Qaeda? It appears now, not at all. There is no such internationally organized terrorist organization.

We are fighting a ragtag band of angry young men in Iraq who are practising guerrilla warfare and terrorism under the highly marketable (but fundamentally valueless) al Qaeda franchise.

Terrorism in Iraq and around the world is now an increasing reality, and much of its growth is a testimony to the success of the original al Qaeda strategy – but al Qaeda as an international terrorist organization driving the growth of international Islamic terrorism doesn't in fact exist at all.

Al Qaeda is a convenient myth for tin pot terrorists and US military merchants of death. We will be better off to talk about the world as it is, rather than as we imagine it to be.

Note (30 August 2008): A combination of the US troop surge and disastrous tactics on the part of Iraqi insurgents seem now to have turned the tide in the Iraq War in favour of stabilization. I admit that I was unprepared for this turn of events, but it is very pleasing now to report that my earlier pessimism appears to have been incompletely founded. Thanks to Michael Yon for being one of the first to report the favourable news - independently - from the front lines!
_

Interesting Firefly Events Ending 2007

8 July 2007

For the Browncoats among us - who of course are known to be a secretive group - there are some interesting events scheduled for later 2007.

Serenity LA is operated by a British-based convention company featuring several cast members over a 3-day period on November 2-4, 2007 at the prestigious Element Nightclub in Hollywood. This will provide an opportunity to meet Shepherd Book, Inara, Jayne and Kaylee, among others.

Shepherd Book and the consumately evil Adelai Niska will also be available for a Browncoat Cruise on the Carnival Elation from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas on December 1-6, 2007.

Click on the links (above) for more information.

Excess Liquidity, Though Poorly Understood, Is Our Primary Social and Political Problem

8 July 2007

I am here revisiting a topic I have discussed previously.

Consider the news topics of the past several months:

1. Escalating terrorist attacks (planned or executed) against the west, most recently in the UK and Canada.
2. Continued deterioration in the quality and safety of civil life and the rise (return) of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Iraq and Afghanistan.
3. Rising commodity prices (recently oil, lead and copper have been highlighted).
4. Shifting currency values (the rise of the Euro and the Canadian Loonie, the decline of the US dollar, etc.).
5. Civil war in the oil states of Africa.
6. The ongoing rise of violent Islamic fundamentalism both at home and in the Islamic world.
7. Rising human migration and homelessness around the globe.
8. Corruption, greed and excess of every imaginable kind in the world of business, including flawed accounting practices used to conceal the worthlessness of balance sheet assets, and corresponding systematic executive overpayment.
9. Government overspending and unrepayable deficits.
10. The global real estate bubble.
11. Tension in the Middle East around Palestine and Israel, Iran, and Lebanon.
12. Rising US antipathy towards China due to cheap imports and an under-valued Yuan.
13. Continuing military and civilian casualties at the battlefronts of the Middle East.
14. The return of the KGB and the dismantling of democracy in Russia.
15. The resurgence of anti-American, anti-business movements in Latin America following a long quiescence.
16. Irresponsible practices in the provision of consumer and mortgage loans to unqualified recipients, with the repackaging and sale of portfolios of these questionable loans to third parties (often pension funds, mutual funds and other large “arm’s length” investors).
17. Mexican peasants can no longer afford the cost of corn meal.

What do these news events have in common?

All are driven by global imbalances, and in my view, by monetary imbalances in particular.

Though contrary to common knowledge, the underlying thread of excess liquidity actually plays a key, and in many cases, a primary role in the causation of each.

Let’s walk through the basics again.

Excess liquidity refers to the “printing of money” to generate “instant cash” so as to provide immediate solutions to economic problems that have complex and often non-economic causes. Basically, governments expand the supply of money to an extent that exceeds the supply of new goods and services, making possible the continued easy availability of funds to meet public and private debt obligations.

Governments resort to policies of excess liquidity when they are cut adrift in terms of policy direction and lack the courage to address shifts in public mood and perception. In today’s era, virtually every government on the planet is pumping up its money supply at a drastic clip, resulting in what has sometimes been referred to as a global liquidity boom.

A rough estimate of current liquidity growth is 10% per year, against an increase in goods and services of probably 2-3% per year, resulting in a real inflation rate in the range of 7% or so. (The other variable in the calculation is the velocity of money, or the rate of turnover of money as it changes hands, and this is presumed to remain constant over moderate periods of time.)

This 7% inflation amount is 4-5 percentage points higher than officially-published government inflation figures. Governments “massage” the inflation numbers through various manipulative practices in order to enable their ongoing commitment to money printing as a strategy to address all constituent needs and as a panacea for all social ills.

Economics 101 will teach you that this policy causes monetary inflation, and in practical terms, this means that money loses its value. The inevitability of monetary inflation is based on the simple principle of supply and demand. That is, the supply of money exceeds the demand for money, so money loses its value.

However, Economics 101 will not teach you that inflation of the money supply generates disruptive and dangerous psychological, social and political imbalances and readjustments as well.

How does this occur?

Monetary inflation never works its way through local, national and international economies smoothly or predictably. At its root, monetary inflation engenders deep psychological insecurities in its human participants.

A simple way to picture this is that the economic pie is growing 7% larger in inflation-adjusted terms every year. Therefore, if your piece of the pie is not also growing at 7% per year - you are falling behind. And if your piece of the pie is constant or shrinking, you are in fact losing ground at a rapid pace.

This rapidly shifting economic ground creates a psychology of "entitlement." Individual and collective participants in a global economy in flux are quite able to see not only that the size of the pie is ever-changing, but also that the rules for slicing it up are also inconstant.

Each of us for his or her own reasons feels a natural sense of entitlement to a fair share of the increase. Thus we become embroiled in disputes at every level of society - from the individual to the international level - in which each of us feels increasingly driven to struggle to win recognition of our own right to receive a fair share of the (in fact largely illusory) gains.

A more subtle aspect of the psychology of entitlement is that winners are perhaps more driven to protect their gains - which can be easily lost as the pie continues to grow - than those who are merely holding their own or falling behind. It is a peculiarity of human psychology that we are more averse to losing what we have than to foregoing what was never ours. Thus the global winners - those with expanding opportunities to gain from excess liquidity - become the most dangerous and potentially disruptive participants in the global liquidity game.

In my view, this key psychological insight explains much of the wave of terrorism and violence now sweeping across a Middle East burgeoning with liquidity, as well as the growing hostility of the resurgent Russian neo-communists and the so-called populist leaders of the Latin American commodity-producing nations (presently most visible in Venezuela and Bolivia, but similar movements are growing in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, etc.)

In response to inflation, individuals on fixed incomes perceive their financial security to be dwindling and possibly threatened. Savers see the returns on their savings – in interest rate terms – lagging behind real rises in the cost of living. Politicians feel empowered to promise more funds to more parties and projects – but those in receipt of the funds develop a competitive mindset with respect to gaining their “fair share” of the increased funds. Those who are left behind in the process may feel cheated, mistreated, bitter and hostile.

Excess liquidity generates shifting price imbalances associated with capital misallocation. That is, the revaluation of goods, services and assets never proceeds smoothly when the value of money is disrupted by inflation.

In most cases, excessive increases In the money supply result in temporary and unsustainable but often dramatic bursts of economic growth, typically driving up the prices of materials or services which are in relatively short supply – often, and certainly in our present era – commodities in particular.

Periods of excess liquidity tend to drive increasing amounts of this new wealth in the direction of “new players” in the global economy, and this can be seen today in the flow of previously inconceivable quantities of funds to the Middle Eastern, Russian and Venezuelan oil producers, for example, and to the providers of low-cost manufactured products (in today’s case, typically located in southeast Asia).

Under these conditions, money is loaned and spent in increasingly irrational – even crazy – ways, and budgeting decisions are driven by ever shorter-term considerations (for example, “flipping condos in Florida,” packaging loans for low-income and unqualified home buyers, generating investor excitement over riding the wave of new trends – such as marketing portable communication devices in China and dominating the web search marketplace, launching grand military adventures that could not be considered in more sober eras – in our case, the American invasion of Iraq, and investing in ever-riskier and ever more improbable ventures – in particular, hyper-leveraged hedge funds, unprofitable technology companies, third world business ventures, low quality corporate and consumer loans, etc.).

The point I wish to emphasize is not that excess liquidity is monetarily risky, though it certainly is.

My primary point is that excess liquidity is psychologically, socially and politically risky.

The environment of global competition over how various assets will be revalued in response to monetary devaluation creates a background atmosphere of deep psychological insecurity.

This insecurity – caused by increasing financial uncertainty – is devastating in its implications for individuals, families, communities and societies. Ultimately, the process is politically disruptive as well, as individual strives against individual, interest group against interest group, and nation against nation, to be dominant players in the direction of the flow of the newly-created wealth caused – at its heart – by the devaluation of global currencies through the expansion of the global money supply.

Humans are extremely dangerous when they are insecure, and the policy of money supply expansion (excess liquidity), by its very nature, makes humans everywhere progressively more insecure – and therefore – progressively more dangerous.

I have stated several times that poor people are rarely dangerous or disruptive. Dangerous behaviour arises when anyone anywhere – whether poor or rich – is placed in a position to have to compete for new resources (and to defend the resources they already possess), particularly those coming available through disruptive adjustments in value resulting from currency devaluation.

In the Middle East, Russia and Venezuela, rising oil prices have forced the citizens of those societies into competition to be participants in the new wealth resulting from the rise in the value of a commodity (oil in this case) which is largely driven by the collapse in the real value of the currencies with which it is purchased (though this part will mostly be played out years later).

The competition to be participants in – and recipients of – the flow of new oil-generated wealth is creating massive psychological and social insecurity in the nations affected by the oil boom.

Because the new wealth is in fact of low quality (due to the collapsing value of the currency which is paying for the commodity), the competition for the inflow of new funds becomes more dangerous and disruptive still.

This drama is being played out many times over in many spheres around the world.

African despots and dictators are redirecting their energy to plays in the new global game of excess liquidity, creating disruptive social and ethnic conflicts over who shall and shall not participate in sharing the new wealth.

Pakistani clerics are preaching vitriol while funds flow into their coffers from wealthy donors who are themselves players in the global oil money game.

Latin American dictators (Chavez in Venezuela is most notable) are driving their popularity with anti-American and anti-business rhetoric while feathering their nests with the proceeds of oil revenues attributable to excess liquidity.

North American executives are rewarding themselves with ever grander salaries, option packages and bonuses in order to seize their over-sized slice of the excess liquidity pie.

North Americans generally are borrowing as never before (at artificially lowered rates driven by rapidly inflating currencies) in order to invest in anything that is increasing rather than decreasing in value – and the current craze remains for real estate together with consumer goods purchased with low or no-interest loans, particularly big-ticket items such as automobiles, furnishings, appliances and electronics equipment.

Anti-democrats are running roughshod over democracy advocates from Russia to Venezuela to Afghanistan to China to Africa so as to assure their monopoly over their piece of the overflow of devaluing global funds.

Mexican peasants have become unable to purchase cornmeal, their staple for centuries, because American government policy has sought to placate agricultural and environmental interests by artificially promoting the production of ethanol from corn.

What is the common theme here?

Again – excess liquidity (expansion of the money supply beyond the value of new goods and services produced) is making humans everywhere psychologically insecure due to the declining value of their money. Individual insecurity leads to social struggles focused around social alliances and political interest groups. Disruptions are visible at the community, national and international levels.

Too much money makes people feel insecure. Insecure people are dangerous. This pattern is repeating itself almost everywhere around the globe today, making our planet an increasingly hazardous one to inhabit.

Consider for example the rise of the National Socialist (Nazi) movement in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s following the notorious inflation of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. (images of German citizens transporting money in wheelbarrows and burning money in place of firewood are iconic to the present day). It is almost certainly no accident that one of the most despicable political movements in recorded history arose immediately subsequent to such a great period of hyperinflation.

What is the cure?

It is both simple and painful. For some, this tried-and-tested solution will be unimaginable, perhaps because most all of us alive today are children of the great era of excess liquidity that with only brief periods of respite has dominated the post-World War II period.

I acknowledge that virtually no world leader will publicly champion the following plan, though history has shown across millennia that what I propose is always and at all times the correct response to the multitude of problems caused by monetary inflation.

As Paul Volcker (then the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board) did in the United States in 1980, we must slow the rate of money creation to match the natural rate of expansion in the production of goods and the delivery of services.

This simple measure will create – at this point – a deep, painful and extended economic recession probably lasting many years – and this is what will temper the excessive growth in the global money supply.

This recession will be more severe than past (recent) recessions because the duration and extent of the preceding monetary expansion has been so egregious (in fact, unprecedented in world history). The greater the excess of liquidity, the greater the resultant pain that must be endured in order to quell it.

The process of withdrawal from excess liquidity is aptly analogous to withdrawal from a severely addictive drug such as heroin. Liquidity is the addictive substance that the dependent user cannot get enough of. Withdrawal from the drug is the only prospective option for survival.

This will create a stable – and paradoxically more difficult – environment within which humans can and must re-learn how to work out the multitudinous problems involved in sharing wealth.

When access to wealth (money) by any means (including borrowing) becomes difficult rather than easy, humans revert to virtuous rather than reprehensible behaviours. Why we do this is somewhat mysterious, but it is a clear lesson from human history – perhaps a topic for another essay at some point in the future.

In response to the proposed necessary economic recession, poor business ideas will fail (they will no longer be sustained by excess liquidity) and good business ideas will thrive (though at a greatly tempered and much more manageable pace of growth), with the result that humans will gradually recover a sense of normality and with it an accompanying sense of recovered security.

This slower-paced and more secure economic environment will gradually restore us to psychological health, re-equip us for cooperation rather than competition, and quell the presently raging flames of liquidity-driven global strife.

Terrorists will return home to feed and care for their families. Self-serving executives will lose their jobs and learn to toil by the sweat of their (collective) brow. Politicians will return to reducing rather than expanding government debts. And warmakers will be voted (or otherwise driven) out of office as a consequence of a broad popular movement towards normalcy and restraint.

Excess liquidity is our present primary social and political problem because accumulating economic imbalances generate escalating psychological imbalances.

The restoration of economic balance through reigning in the growth of the global money supply will make possible the restoration of psychological, social and political balance.

While we humans are dangerous when we are insecure, we are generous and resourceful when we know where we stand and when we perceive that our situation is fair and just.

Bringing an end to excess liquidity is the key global economic policy step that will restore us to this more desirable state.

Serenity & Firefly Have Launched Into Space

8 July 2007

NASA Astronaut Steven R. Swanson is a Firefly/Serenity fan, and has taken the step of launching Serenity into space - in DVD form at least. He has transported both the Firefly and the Serenity DVDs to the International Space Station via the Space Shuttle.

Follow the link:

The Serenity Pilot Is Superior to Serenity the Movie Due to Its Ability to Portray Slices of Life

1 July 2007

I am fine with the result of the recent SFX Magazine poll of 3000 science fiction fans, cited by the BBC, designating Serenity the best science fiction movie ever made. It goes without saying that Serenity’s ability to depict ordinary life in a future setting places it at a higher level than George Lucas’ higher budget Star Wars series, which must rely on such devices as “the Force” in order to draw us into his mythical imagined world.

However, on careful consideration, I thought it worth mentioning that the pilot episode for the Firefly television series, also entitled “Serenity,” is in fact superior to Serenity the movie, and thus, in my opinion, the best piece of dramatized science fiction so far created.

I wish only to comment briefly at this time on the distinction between the two eponymous works.

Serenity the pilot portrays numerous slices of life in the daily experiences of the crew of the space-faring vessel of the same name. There are hints at bigger issues and grander schemes operating in the background, but the pilot episode is mostly about what it might be like to live on a spaceship and to survive at the edges of the human galactic diaspora 500 years in the future.

Serenity the movie focuses on the grand conflict between the totalitarian “Alliance” and a few free people now scattered throughout our corner of the galaxy. There is relentless pursuit by a genocidal Alliance antagonist, with heavy and continuing casualties resulting from the ruthlessness of the Alliance, and an ultimate discovery of the Alliance’s deepest secret following a brutal battle with the dreaded and self-deforming Reavers in the former heart of human interplanetary civilization.

In the pilot episode, we witness a space salvage operation, double and triple-crossing transactions concerning the salvage from this operation, the taking on of the passengers who ultimately form the heart of Firefly’s cast, early hints as to the mysterious status of River Tam, an encounter with an Alliance undercover agent, a first encounter with the brutal Reavers, and powerful character development through illustration of the characters’ responses to relentlessly trying and testing circumstances. As we come to know the characters and to witness how they live through both small and major events, we develop a bond with each of them.

In Serenity the movie, there are continued hints at daily life, but the focus is more at the level of the grand conflict with the Alliance. It is an engaging dramatic device, but to my taste, the slices of life in the pilot are ultimately more satisfying than the grand and costly conflict portrayed in the movie.

I love both Serenity the movie and Serenity the pilot, don't get me wrong, but after some rewatching, I feel confident in suggesting that the pilot stands at a higher level of accomplishment than the movie, which, though more expensively produced, is considerably more plot and theme driven and far more loss-absorbed than the pilot

I have commented previously that the supreme accomplishment of Robert Heinlein’s science fiction writing (never yet satisfactorily transferred to the screen), is in Heinlein's ability to draw us into daily life in an imagined future.

Credit Joss Whedon for his work on both “Serenity” episodes and the Firefly series. Mr. Whedon is in my view the first to accomplish on film what Heinlein achieved in literature, and this is a noteworthy development.

NOTE ON RUMOURS OF SERENTIY II:

Mr. Whedon commented on August 3, 2007 that strong sales for the soon-to-be-released special edition DVD of Serenity could possibly spark a sequel to a very well-received movie. He does not indicate any communication on the matter with Universal Studios, but he argues that the original project is now in the black, and that a successful special edition launch would cement Serentiy the movie as a successful commercial venture. Under these conditions, Mr. Whedon felt that the studio could possibly rethink a sequel.

He also indicated that the special edition DVD includes truly new special features, including an all-new commentary, as well as an expanded "making of" featurette and the well-received River Tam sessions, produced for the internet in advance of the movie.

I will add that a sequel to the movie is more hopeful than a sequel to the television series, given Mr. Whedon's positive relationship with Universal Studios, versus his more difficult relationship with Fox Network, the producers of Firefly.

Nike Step Over, Mizuno Rules in Running Shoes

1 July 2007

As a long-time runner who has sustained very few running-related injuries apart from sprained ankles and face-first falls on sidewalks (I have been running regularly since November 1969), I consider heel shock absorption ahead of all other factors in selecting a running shoe.

I have been running on Nike runners for decades, and I credit Nike for its persistent innovation in running shoes, though there has been much silly style-focused product development during the same period. The Nike Air front and rear sole inserts were a landmark development, and the more recent Nike Shox another significant advance. (I also tried the Nike Impax, but found them cheaply constructed and inferior to the Shox.)

However, I have just discovered the Mizuno Wave Creation 8, released in February 2007, and I have been running in these shoes for the past two weeks.

The Mizuno represents another stage of progress in heel shock absorption. Not unlike the Nike Impax, the Wave Creation 8 has a lower strike surface bonded to an upper sole surface by flexible structural components. However, the Wave Creation 8 is much more stable and sturdier by far than the Impax, which in my experience has been an economy to mid-priced shoe.

Thus, the only reasonable standard of comparison for the Wave Creation 8 is the Nike Shox, which is certainly an excellent shoe in its own right. The Shox models have either 6 small or 4 large shock-absorbing cylinders bonding the lower strike surface to the rear sole of the shoe. In my experience, the 4-cylinder model is superior to the 6-cylinder model, as the 4 cylinders are larger in cross-section and higher than the 6 cylinders.

As good as the 4-cylinder Nike Shox is as a running shoe, the Mizuno Wave Creation 8 is a better shoe still.

What sets the Wave Creation 8 apart is its sturdy, resilient and novel heel plate structure. What this boldly conceived heel design accomplishes is to absorb a massive proportion of the shock of heel strike, protecting against injury, but then also to transform the energy of the heel strike into a forceful rebound that propels the runner both upwards and forwards, hence the term “wave creation.”

The Wave Creation 8 is incredibly stable while also maximally resilient, and the combination of these two generally incompatible factors is a testament to the brilliance of its engineering.

In practical terms, I find I am simply running faster in the Wave Creation 8, and this is discernible in my maximum heart rate. In the Nike Shox, I will generally develop a heart rate in the 163 range while sprinting. With the Wave Creation 8, little effort is required to reach the 166 level, and a little extra push can deliver a heart rate of 168, which for me is very difficult to obtain with the Shox, and essentially unattainable with most other running shoes (According to the charts, my maximum heart rate is supposed to be 160, so obviously the shoes plus almost 4 decades of training account for some performance edge.)

I had not heard about the Mizuno Wave Creation 8 until I saw it in a Forzani Sport Mart Store in Winnipeg. As soon as I tried the shoe on, I realized that I had discovered something unique, as I was effortlessly bounding about the store with a few test strides, and there was virtually no sensation of impact shock on the hard surface of the shop floor.

When I took the shoe home and tested it on the road, I knew with certainty that I had found the best running shoe I have so far discovered.

Credit to Mizuno for taking us to the next level of running shoe performance.

Nike, it’s your turn to reply – and try to remember, it’s not about style but performance!