Stefan Pernar

Well - what can you say, I always knew that I had it in me. So today I got a spam message that introduced the ‘modeling agency’ OKM3 LLP. Instead of sensing the warning signs I thought I will be nice and joked with the sender if they do male modeling as well.

Low and behold they do - how nice! So the person sends me a message with an email to send a picture of me to, which I did. The person promptly replied saying how cool I looked and if only the Levis’ Jeans job would not already be finished. No alarm bells yet - can you imagine?

Anyways, so I ask what we should do in terms of next steps. And this is the reply I got:

Ok Stefan, for new models, you will have to pay a one-timed registration fee of S$38 nett.

Next is portfolio, $488 including studio rental of 3 hrs, photographer and image-stylist.

You will received 8 pcs of edited 4R photos and a CD.

*Cos our portfolio is different from ours so I will need my models to have their portfolio shoots with us.

I will show u the difference when we meet

Training next, I can’t possibly give my clients a model who dun know anything, so training is very important.

My training fees is $888 ($100 per session for ala carte) which includes:

1. Runway Coaching (Basic Cat walking and posing) - 2 sessions of 1 hr each

2. Basic Make-Up - 1 session of 2 hrs

3. Confidence and Charisma Building - 2 sessions of 2 hrs each

4. Etiquette - 2 sessions of 2 hrs each

5. Acting Skills - 3 sessions 2 hrs each

Thank you

Needless to say that by now all alarm bells went into over drive and I humbly declined citing high upfront cost. But the story continues. Next the person protested and how I could confuse upfront cost with a fair service charge (my words). So I took the trouble to find an appropriate website and forwarded it to her hoping to maybe enlighten her as to the questionable nature of her business.

The exchange went downhill from there (yes - I was surprised too!).

By the way: knowing your Chinese numerology the various prices all contain at least one ‘8′ and thus suggest ‘wealth’. Math however is clearly not their strong side since the overall package costs $1414:

Number 14 is considered to be one of the unluckiest numbers in Chinese culture. Although 14 is usually said as 十四 “shí sì,” which sounds like 十死 “ten die”, it can also be said as 一四 “yī sì” or 么四 “yāo sì”, literally “one four”. Thus, 14 can also be said as “yāo sì,” literally “one four,” but it also sounds like “want to die” (要死 pinyin yào sǐ). In Cantonese, 14 sounds like “sap6 sei3″, which sounds like “sat6 sei2″ meaning “certainly die” (實死).

Doh! At least change your unlucky pricing…

Where to start? After finishing Jame5 in September 2007 I sat down and outlined what was supposed to be my next Novel - Gu1d3. Gu1d3 is still very much on my mind, but feeling that my work on rational morality being more important, it has been on the back burner for the better part of the last year. Being in essence a near future stealth singularity novel, Gu1d3 is set on the background of a collapsed US and Great Britain struggling to define a new vision for themselves.

A year hence and the notion of a collapsing US does not seem so far fetched anymore as it did in 2007. Well - to most anyway, not to me, as those around me know, I have made no secret about my believe of a shaky US and the - in my eyes - high likelihood of a systemic collapse even before 2007. But when Russian government analysts start to put their reputation on the line by making similar statements, the matter begins to be viewed in a different light. I call it ‘I-saw-it-on-TV’-effect. Once something is said on TV - it suddenly works like the general key to people’s believe systems.

The circumstance, that the US government has now pledged a whooping T$US7.7 to easy the financial crisis while refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return wrecking havoc on the national debt in the process and combined with the fact that those who have predicted this crisis years ago keep insisting that all that does is further compounding the problem does not exactly help to instill confidence in the many skeptics among us. Acclaimed Sci-Fi author Charles Stross even goes so far as to say that writing near-term Sci-Fi “is not currently possible“.

Well - I happen to respectfully disagree. Forget about my insignificant predictions of this mess and look at the real experts like Ron Paul and Peter Schiff. They seem to have a firm grasp on how all of this is going to play out - hmmm, I wonder why? And I bet Bruce Bueno de Mesquita would have a word or two to say about the situation as well. Charles, I suggest you overcome your group think and turbo charge your world view with a pint or two of fresh memes. The world will start to make a whole lot more sense again - I promise. Its all about proper models  - you see?

Back to the point. Assuming the Singularity does not happen by 2016 (but that’s a whole other blog post) there is real opportunity in an US collapse. It could pave the way for a society (or societies) that are much better aligned with evolutionary principles and could thus result in a more co-operative and enlightened world order.

I agree with Charles Stross however in one major point: interesting times indeed.

UPDATE 2009/02/23: I am now running a weekly commentary on gold as well as silver prices on the blog of the internet catalog of world coins. Check it out!

I have been intrigued by GATA’s recent series covering the sudden and steep decline of the Gold price which was apparently brought about by 3 colluding banks in the US. Having some real gold in my bank deposit box myself I was quite delighted to hear that ‘real’ gold would be sold at a premium in this new reality.

Not wanting to take this assertion on faith alone I set out to track down and calculate the ‘real gold’ price. Since I own and run a coin related information services website for collectors I extracted all US gold bullion 1 oz gold coins (Eagles and Buffalos) sold on eBay from late March 2008 until today and set out to compare actual sale prices with spot gold closing prices.

The data was cleaned up by removing higher value and thus high priced coins of numismatic interest - so called ‘graded’ coins and auctions of multiple coins. The data was then aggregated to daily and then weekly averages for actual eBay sales prices as well as spot gold prices and then compared (raw data and detailed results).

After analyzing the data the results are rather interesting: In the weeks preceding the sudden decline the premium paid on eBay for 1oz American gold bullion coins was on average 6.76% over spot and rose in the two weeks since the manipulation to and average of 11.26% over spot constituting an increase of 66.76%.

Examining this data it can mean one of two things:

a) Ebay auction dynamics allow for higher returns during periods of falling prices

This actually makes sense considering that auctions on eBay typically last 7 days and assuming that some buyers place an early bid close to the actual gold price. Then, when the auction finally ends, the actual gold price is lower than such bids.

b) The ‘paper gold’ spot price is a fiction

The GATA and others are right and the gold spot price based on paper gold futures is not representing the price people are actually willing to pay for ‘real gold’ of the under-my-pillow variety.

At the moment I am not discounting any of the two possibilities. The fact remains however, that I am waiting for more than two weeks already to get an oder of mine filled with my preffered supplier of gold coins. In any case, if you are holding paper gold these days - why not try and convert it into the real deal? Just for kicks - I mean, what is the worst that could happen? Right?

Digg this!

I was buying my new system for two reasons. One - I was tired of the constant jet plane level noise of my old system all the time. Two - I wanted to experience Direct X 10 quality graphics. So last weekend saw the release of Crysis - arguably the largest jump in graphics quality and environmental interaction since the original Doom. At least that was what they made me believe.

You know what they say, right: You can only foul me two or three dozen times before I start getting suspicious. I downloaded it and sure - the graphics where ok, but not worth putting up with Vista madness. So I took the plunch and installed the cheeky monkey. No dual boot, nothing - from now on it will be Ubuntu all the way.

So beside my system being quieter than my purring cats I now have Mac level eye candy and a rock solid OS. Oh - did I mention that my mic does not work yet? I guess you can’t have everything. But I am not looking back…

…especially about the future. Yes they are. So back before 9/11 I predicted that the US government will be sued over greenhouse gas emissions. And now guess what? Not only are they being sued for exactly that - no sir-e - in addition a woman and not one but two ethnic minority candidates are running for president in the 2008 elections.

Sure - I was off with the dates a bit, but what are a few years among friends - right? Wake me when Cuba is admitted to the union.

Why I posted that as Axemaster Setfeb you ask? Now that’s a story for another day….

Honestly? No - I can not paint like Picasso. But ask any artists with some basic skills and they will paint for you in his style. Don’t expect to get rich quick doing so however. The reason why Picasso’s paintings command such a high price is not because they have been painted in this particular, highly recognizable style, but because his paintings where the first that were.

Picasso’s name thus is entangled with his genius of creating a new, unique and appealing style, the actual style itself is of little value as it is easily repeatable. Analogously this can be applied to other great artists such as Monet, van Gogh or Zhang Xiao Gang. If you want to be a

successful artist you can’t just suspend a shark in formaldehyde - not because it would not sell, but because it already did.

One would best have to be appealing, simple and immediately understandable. Like selling a pixel of ad space for a dollar. Most importantly however, one would have to be the first.

Well - probably not. But here I go anywhere. Not sure what to expect from this blog? Welcome to the club - ha!