Eremitic:
Characteristic of a hermit [YourDictionary.com]
Noted in Wikipedia’s entry for Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, citing a review of the movie by Stanley Kauffmann:
The New Republic critic Stanley Kauffmann said it offered “teasing yet satisfactory glimpses- vivid, funny, cranky, passionate, eremitic, humane”.
The protests continue in Iran. WaPo reports an interesting tidbit:
On the fourth day of the largest protests since an uprising over disputed election results in 2009, Iranian protesters chanted “Death to the dictator!” as they tore down posters of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds absolute authority in Iran. Public criticism of Khamenei is generally taboo.
That’s the sort of thing I’d expect would draw significant attention. Is someone operating under the cover of the protests to push their own agenda? Or is this an upheaval? And this is a little hard to believe:
Allies of Rouhani, including Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, initially suggested that his political opponents had orchestrated the demonstrations. But as they escalated and many chanted for the return of Iran’s monarchy, several conservatives disavowed the protesters and called for a tougher response.
Return of the monarchy? Yeow. Meanwhile, according to AL Monitor the Iranian conservatives continue to blame the protests on economic issues:
Some of the most interesting comments have been made by conservative officials and pundits who have all previously condemned protests, especially the 2009 Green Movement protests. Ahmad Tavakoli, a former parliamentarian and member of the Expediency Council, called the street protests “predictable” due to the administration’s economic policies. He compared the policies to those of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s presidency in the 1990s; Tavakoli called them “harsh policies,” presumably referring to neoliberal economic measures to cut subsidies.
Addressing the protests that started in Mashhad, former hard-line parliament member Hamid Rasaei accused media linked to Rouhani of censoring those who are “protesting the current situation.” Mehdi Mohammadi, the former adviser to Saeed Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wrote that “protesting against economic difficulties is the right of the people.” Conservative analyst Vahid Yaminpour tweeted, “It has been reported that the president has called an emergency meeting. I hope that before the security and intelligence ministers give their reports on how to quiet the protesters, the economic ministers will think about how to improve the current situation.”
Special consultant and voodoo huntress. Does more work than all the soldiers combined.
It’s a little like constructing a train engine without designing in the wheels: why bother? Lost Brigade (1993, aka The Grey Knight, The Ghost Brigade, The Killing Box) has many of the accoutrements of good movie, but in the end the plot does it in.
Captain Harling, aching to be dismissed from the Union Army, is assigned as a tracker for an assignment involving the apparent survival of a group of Confederate soldiers thought massacred early in the Civil War. His commanding officer permits him to interview the captive Colonel and only known survivor of the Alabama 51st, Colonel Strayn, and Harling persuades Strayn to accompany the mission.
Behind enemy lines, they come to the area of the massacre, where Strayn disappears into the creek and, impossibly, discovers his young nephew, the drummer boy of the 51st, alive in an underwater cave. The boy won’t leave and gives Strayn a dire warning and a bite on the hand. Returning to the mission, Strayn falls ill and is nursed by a young former slave who happens to be a mute. His former object of disdain becomes his best friend as the healing commences.
Soon, the detachment commander, Colonel Thalman, thinks they’ve discovered the location of the survivors of the 51st, and the he leaves to break through the lines and bring the Union forces in to finish the job. Strange incidents occur and then Thalman returns in the night … changed. He attacks the Union forces and seems invulnerable to their weapons, but they luck into disabling him. As he lays dying, he reveals all: the 51st, and in fact other dead soldiers of both sides, have been raised from the dead by African voodoo powers inadvertently transported to America by slavers. They are invulnerable to most weapons, but “pale metal” is deadly. The Union detachment arms itself appropriately with some stolen silver and awaits the 51st’s attack.
The attack comes, and it’s appalling, but the Union wins the day.
The movie seems well-made technically speaking, showing acceptable special effects when necessary, and well-chosen occlusion when possible. The acting is acceptable, cinematography is fine.
But … why? If there is interesting thematic material here, I don’t see it. Maybe it ended up on the cutting room floor. Characters run through actions that are logical, yet fairly lifeless. The supernatural pokes in, but for no particular reason.
My Arts Editor said she didn’t care about any of the characters, and, in the end, we shrugged and moved on.
In the continuing drive to stop the development of autonomous weapons, the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots (which I’ll just call “the Campaign” in this post) has released a video which is a bit of fake reality. It explores the spectrum of results, none exclusive of the other, that they believe would come with the development of autonomous weapons combined with swarming drone technology. It’s effectively done, and finishes with a note from Professor Stuart Russell, University of California-Berkeley, Computer Science, which is a plea that this is a road we shouldn’t walk down. Here’s the video:
The one avenue they didn’t really explore was counter-measures, which is understandable in that counter-measures are often hard to predict. In this scenario, many counter-measures would take a toll on those so-defended, such as an electronic counter-measure that not only disables the drones, but everyone’s smart devices (communications, medical, etc) as well, to physical defenses which may result in collateral damage, as they called it in Vietnam.
I think it communicates its message quite well.
But do you know what brought this to my attention? I received an MP4 in my email, which unfortunately WordPress doesn’t let me usefully embed in a post. (Mail me if you want a copy, using the mail link up on the right.)
If you’ve already viewed the first video, you know it starts with a faux-TED talk, and follows it with realistic fake news coverage of attacks on various institutions, and finally the cautionary message from Professor Russell. The second video consists only of the faux-TED talk, and thus no real context. It’s distributed without explanation or commentary.
Why and who? Viral marketing by the Campaign? Someone just decided to edit and distribute this for their own reasons? It’s quite curious.
Moving onwards, it strikes me that this is a vivid example of how the cost of goods continues to drop, with the usual hard to predict consequences. The drop in the price of computer power, once only within the grasp of the United States government and certain very large corporations following the end of World War II, and now so cheap that smartphones sit in your pocket, has been bloody well huge, if you think about it, and has enabled personal power and autonomy to a degree unseen in human history. This has also been true of powerful weapons, by which I mean weapons for which counter-measures are difficult. Anyone can pick up a rock and pitch at someone. A machine-gun is a lot harder to evade. Not coincidentally, the United States bans the individual’s ownership of machine guns, which is generally the goal of the Campain.
But now we may be on the cusp of a magnitude jump in individual firepower, and a concomitant increase in difficulty of counter-measures. Because software is trivial to reproduce once it is developed, drones are consumer-level cheap, and development continues with few, if any, legal constraints in the areas of drones or Artificial Intelligence, once someone (singular or plural) actually develops the software that can do these sorts of things, and (if necessary) it leaks out, then we may see personal or small group firepower leap to an entirely new level.
Perhaps the NRA will be foolish enough to argue that everyone should have these killer drones and then everyone will be safe, but I think that’s both naive and shallow thinking. A first strike may be undetectable and completely effective, thus making your ownership of a retaliatory force useless. And such a technology would render guns refreshingly … quaint.
But more importantly is the hidden assumption that we are a rational species. As science has discovered, this is not true. We are a species that is capable of being rational, it’s true, but we often are not rational. We formulate rules which help us survive, and then rely on them without applying our intellects. An innocuous example is the rustling in the bushes. It might seem most rational to investigate to see if it’s a tiger or not, thus permitting you to expend precious calories in running away only when necessary, but the general rule is just run. You can see this in many things we do, from driving cars to our voting habits. Some of us examine the issues and the candidates and make a decision based on what we perceive – and some of us are dyed in the wool Democrats. Maybe it’ll be rational to simply vote Democrat next time around – but how about the time after that? Or will you just vote Democrat, because you perceive that as the safe default choice, and you can now spend your time and precious intellectual bandwidth on subjects that truly interest you?
Rather than continue down the prose path of this discussion, let me toss this in your lap.
Oh, Lord, thank you, Lord, for this gift of power, that blesses us to smite our enemies and bring them low, all in Your Name, oh Lord, for you are the Creator, and we are the Chosen, who thank you now for your blessed weapon and child, the Drone of Death!
Yeah. Generally, the irrationality of religion can be seen to have a certain survival utility, but there’s little to keep its adherents from wandering into the territory of xenophobia, backed with the arrogant belief that the Divine is in their corner. Can you imagine Jim Jones equipped with this technology? Or David Koresh?
One sect against another. Perhaps that’s how we’ll de-populate the world. I wonder how the elephants are betting tonight.
Happy New Year.
I’ve been meaning to mention this important article in The New York Times from a few weeks ago by Aaron E. Carroll regarding the use of private sector mechanisms to protect the future profits of private sector corporations from the findings of science sector entities.
That is, corporations whose products are found to be ineffective – or worse – suing scientific researchers for publishing findings that negatively impact the prospects of corporations’ products:
We have a dispiriting shortage of high-quality health research for many reasons, including the fact that it’s expensive, difficult and time-intensive. But one reason is more insidious: Sometimes groups seek to intimidate and threaten scientists, scaring them off promising work.
By the time I wrote about the health effects of lead almost two years ago, few were questioning the science on this issue. But that has not always been the case. In the 1980s, various interests tried to suppress the work of Dr. Herbert Needleman and his colleagues on the effects of lead exposure. Not happy with Dr. Needleman’s findings, the lead industry got both the federal Office for Scientific Integrity and the University of Pittsburgh to conduct intrusive investigations into his work and character. He was eventually vindicated — and his discoveries would go on to improve the lives of children all over the country — but it was a terrible experience for him.
I often complain about a lack of solid evidence on guns’ relationship to public health. There’s a reason for that deficiency. In the 1990s, when health services researchers produced work on the dangers posed by firearms, those who disagreed with the results tried to have the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control shut down. They failed, but getting such work funded became nearly impossible after that.
In case it’s not apparent, the problem here is that the goal of the researchers is knowledge, while the goal of the corporations is profit. These goals need not always clash, but they often do, and when the morality of the corporation – to the extent that it can have a morality – conforms to the popular, if incorrect, idea that profits are all, then there’s going to be problems.
I view it as a problem of making truth a secondary item, which is always disappointing for me, and I think is a primary cause of many problems American society experiences.
So what to do about it? Aaron mentions anti-SLAPP laws, but in at least one case …
But in Dr. Cohen’s case, the court refused to give full weight to Massachusetts’ anti-Slapp statute on the ground that dismissing the case would undermine the supplement company’s constitutional right to a jury trial.
Perhaps rather than preventing lawsuits, they should impose a penalty on the entity bringing the lawsuit if it’s found to be specious, or if the entity does not show a sufficient loyalty to the idea of a proper scientific conclusion and its willingness to abandon a product which is ineffectual or may even result in harm to the consumer.
I dunno. I can’t imagine that an effective law could really be constructed around such an idea, to be honest. It’s one thing to have an intuitive notion of a good law, and quite another to construct such a law that would withstand constitutional challenge. Part of the problem is the difficulty of constructing an objective definition of the various concepts involved, and along with that is the problem that society doesn’t really recognize our various sectors very well. You can see it a little bit, such as the tax-sheltered status of non-profit organizations, but it’s not well developed, and I have no idea how to develop it more thoroughly, even if I was in a position to do so.
So I suggested a few months ago, after Vikings quarterback Sam Bradford went down, that Colin Kaepernick would be a great replacement. Well, although I haven’t watched the Vikes this season, I understand that the backup quarterback,
Case Keenum, has performed well beyond my expectations. The Vikes made the playoffs with great ease.
So I see I was wrong. The Vikes made the playoffs with great ease. Kudos to them. (Try not getting knocked in the head – the whole concussion thing makes me queasy about watching.) But how did the other teams in the league perform? Could any of them have used a Super Bowl caliber quarterback? Or are we awash in great quarterbacks? I haven’t been paying attention … but I’m having a visual of an ocean with great quarterbacks swimming about in a feeding frenzy over the chum thrown into the water. Yeah, it’s about as ridiculous as the concept that there is an excess of Super Bowl quarterbacks out there.
I’ll have my Arts Editor work on that.
But speaking of Kaepernick, an update on a change.org petition calling for the boycott of the league until Kaepernick is signed to a team is proclaiming victory despite its palpable failure:
This is the final week of the NFL Season, on December 31st. With the exception of a Jan 1st, 2017 game, Colin Kaepernick has not played a single NFL game in 2017.
This is incredibly sad. However, the impact of his absence has been felt not only throughout the league, but throughout America, and even the world.
You have boycotted NFL games, resulting in one of the worst TV ratings seasons this league has ever seen. ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” games had its WORST season since 2007. NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” games had its WORST season since 2008. (source: https://twitter.com/AustinKarp)
Overall, more than 150 MILLION less people watched the NFL this season than last season, a total 9% drop in viewership.
To those that say “well, millennials don’t watch TV anymore”, TV viewership of the five NBA Christmas games ROSE 21% than last year. (source: https://twitter.com/AustinKarp)
Many articles (like the one linked below) have listed many reasons why people haven’t watched, like Donald Trump, to concussions, “older white fans” who are upset, how people watch TV…but rarely mention Kaep’s treatment. We wrote about this in an update last month. The good news is that more people have noticed this “new” reason, but won’t give it the credit it deserves. That’s fine. THE RATINGS WILL STILL SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.
Seems sloppy, just from the language. 150 million people? No, that’s half the size of the United States, or a bit less. You need better terminology to characterize how viewership has declined. And how does a rise in 5 NBA games connect to the topic, or for that matter Millenials’ TV habits? A little more work might clarify the worthiness of these claims to acceptable levels, but right now they just raise red flags for me.
I noticed there are reports of protests in Iran on CNN, and, wondering what might be going on, I checked on AL Monitor, where Mohammad Ali Shabani is analyzing the possible causes. After noting official pronouncements and some eye-popping inflation numbers since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, he zeroes in on the probable real causes:
As such, inflation in itself is not likely to have ignited the protests in Iran. What should rather be considered is the element of thwarted expectations as a powerful and potentially motivating factor in the broader equation.
To reiterate, drastically reduced inflation and the return of economic growth under Rouhani have not yet translated into sufficient job creation. This has occurred in an environment where higher anticipations about the future are clashing with a reality in which the promised dividends of the nuclear deal — which while greatly strengthening state finances — have yet to trickle down to the average Iranian. If parliament passes the Rouhani administration’s proposed budget bill for the Iranian year beginning March 21, 2018, citizens will not only face the prospect of higher fuel costs but also potentially being cut off from monthly cash subsidy payments.
Despite these serious conundrums, both revolutionary theory and the Iranian experience show that although low living standards are a constant preoccupation, they are not a constant threat. Neither should socio-economic discontent be equated with effective political resistance. Without necessary resources to maintain autonomous collective organization(s) and form popular opposition that is channeled into effective political action, change remains a remote prospect. This is not to mention the absence of a forward-looking ideology that is understandable to the wider population, capable of providing a powerful alternative vision of societal order and narrative of state identity.
Not unlike some of the problems in the United States, where despite an excellent nation-wide unemployment rate of 4.1%, there are geographic areas and demographic groups which are experiencing much higher unemployment rates.
But I also found interesting this subtlety, no doubt familiar to professional Iran observers, but of course new to me:
Iranian authorities have stated that the protests were organized via the popular smartphone app Telegram, pointing the finger at “counter-revolutionaries.” Meanwhile, the administration of President Hassan Rouhani believes that its conservative foes are the culprits behind the unrest.
Note how “authorities” are differentiated from the administration of Rouhani, and how they come to different conclusions. It really suggests there’s the permanent, theocratic power structure in Iran, and then the democratic part, limited to those who pass the theological tests imposed by the permanent structure, that has some of the responsibilities of government, but not all. The first, of course, like any permanent human institution, is susceptible to normal human corruptive forces of desire for wealth, power, or even malignant theological interpretations.
And, given the split in power, mutual jealousies, as illustrated by the differing interpretations of the motivations of the protesters.
I somehow missed the news that Saudi Arabia granted a robot citizenship back in October, which apparently caused quite a stir. The Crux’s Lauren Sigfusson gathered up some opinions on the matter from the learned set. This one’s representative:
Kerstin Dautenhahn
Professor of artificial intelligence school of computer science at the University of Hertfordshire
Robots are machines, more similar to a car or toaster than to a human (or to any other biological beings). Humans and other living, sentient beings deserve rights, robots don’t, unless we can make them truly indistinguishable from us. Not only how they look, but also how they grow up in the world as social beings immersed in culture, perceive the world, feel, react, remember, learn and think. There is no indication in science that we will achieve such a state anytime soon—it may never happen due to the inherently different nature of what robots are (machines) and what we are (sentient, living, biological creatures).
We might give robots “rights” in the same sense as constructs such as companies have legal “rights”, but robots should not have the same rights as humans. They are machines, we program them.
I have a simple test. When the robots want some sort of set of rights, they can have them. I.e., self-direction is the key. Or self-programming.
One day, Schippers says, we may implement a robotic Bill of Rights that protects robots against cruelty from humans. That’s something the American Society for the Prevention and Cruelty for Robots already has conceived. [Lauren Sigfusson in “Do Robots Deserve Human Rights?“, The Crux]
Glad I’m not a robot. I think. The real name? The American Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Robots.
On D-brief Leah Froats describes an enhancement to those algorithms which show you this based on that (known as the “nearest-neighbor search problem), which draws on as inspiration the neural architecture of fruit flies:
Fruit flies, however, have a mechanism in their brains that performs similarity searches in a very different way. Specifically, they expand the stimuli information, as opposed to compressing and simplifying it.
When fruit flies first sense an odor, 50 neurons fire in a combination unique to that smell. But instead of simplifying that information as computer programs would, the flies’ brains then send that information to a total of 2,000 neurons. With more neurons in play, the fly’s brain is able to give each smell a more unique label, meaning that it’s easier to categorize.
The flies then pare this information down to the top five percent or so of neural signals, effectively sorting out only the most salient information. This creates a pattern similar to a digital hash that the fly can then use to identify scents and respond accordingly.
When implemented on computers against a standard test set, it out-performed what I take to be current algorithms (her language is a bit confused). I’m having trouble understanding exactly how this all works, but it sounds fascinating. The Science article this is based on is behind a paywall, and I don’t currently have a subscription.
When you’re surrounded by your entire fan club.
Frenetic and wild-eyed are the keywords for Tank Girl (1995), based on the cartoon of the same name. Set in the years following a cometary strike of Earth, the world’s water supply has dried up, and what little remains is controlled by Water & Power, the corporation of the evil Kesslee. But he doesn’t have full control, as Rebecca and her compatriots occupy some land under which there is water.
Rebecca is on guard duty when W&P attacks, and her band is wiped out, with the exception of herself and a young girl, both taken away by the attacking force. This leave the dangerous and mysterious Rippers as the sole opposition to Kesslee’s plan for domination. Therefore, he deviously uses Rebecca to search out the Rippers and lure them into a trap. However, they overwhelm the trappers and win the day.
Sounds mundane? I’m guessing there was a modicum of illegal drugs distributed among the moviemakers, between the wild makeup, the crazed plot, and Rebecca’s antics. And, to some extent, in a post-apocalyptic world, it almost seems like the desperation and skewed realities that might exist in such a world are mirrored in Rebecca’s behavior.
But under the remarkable, if scant, dialog and sometimes frantic creativity, there’s almost nothing. No clever twists to the plot, no real insights into much of anything. Does Rebecca care about the young girl? I couldn’t tell ’til the end. Rebecca may be insane, charismatic, desperate, frenetic, smart-mouthed, or many other adjectives, but she swims in an ocean of nothingness, where nothing really seems to bother her. Is she Superwoman, the next step in human evolution – or someone better suited for an insane asylum? It may be entertaining to speculate on the final answer, but this movie is all flash, with no footprints left in your mind afterwards.
Colonnade:
In classical architecture, a colonnade is a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature, often free-standing, or part of a building.[1] Paired or multiple pairs of columns are normally employed in a colonnade which can be straight or curved. The space enclosed may be covered or open. In St. Peter’s Square in Rome, Bernini’s great colonnade encloses a vast open elliptical space. [Wikipedia]
Noted on a sign in the movie The Hustler (1961).
Among thousands, of course, but that’s what makes science fun. Linear virgae are parallel lines that appear on certain icy moons. The following is from the 47th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (2016):
Introduction: Mysterious linear features (hereafter referred to as linear virgae) appear to be ubiquitous across the outer solar system’s icy satellites and have not been explored in detail. Virgae as described on Titan (Fig. 1) are long (100s of km), linear, slightly darker than surrounding terrains, and may exhibit sharp angles along their trace. Titan’s virgae may be tectonic, but also may be wind-streaks or possible deposits from flood-outflow. Virgae observed on Titan are seen in Cassini VIMS, ISS, and RADAR images. Here we explore virgae across multiple other icy satellites.
Here is part of Figure 1:
Can’t wait to hear what caused these!
Margaret Sullivan of WaPo decided to go out and interview her audience, potential and actual, to see how they feel about “the media.” This is what really caught my eye:
How to explain this disconnect? And why had I heard so much intense resentment from some readers by email or phone when that hostility didn’t surface face-to-face? Tom Rosenstiel provided some insight. An author of seminal journalism books and the director of the American Press Institute, Rosenstiel once worked for the Pew Research Center, which has done extensive polling on attitudes about the media.
For many, he said, there’s “the media” (bad) and there’s “my media” (fairly good). That’s also the way many feel about Congress generally, compared with their local representative. “Most Americans like their own media pretty well,” said Rosenstiel. When asked about whether they trust press reports, people are probably thinking about that first category. And who can say what “the media” means to these respondents — are they thinking of Fox News or the New York Times? Are they assessing the local TV station or their Facebook feed?
But what about the people who think I ought to be physically harmed or who call the mainstream media “fake news”? Rosenstiel explains one of the paradoxes: The highest levels of distrust come from the heaviest news consumers. Because they have strong views of their own, they get upset when they don’t see those views reflected in the news they take in. When they see what they consider biased reporting, it angers and frustrates them — and that eats away at trust. Most people, though, are busy living their lives; they’re not thinking about the media intensively, though they may feel, in Rosenstiel’s words, “a general unease or frustration.”
But an adult consumer of information should not be trying to fit the pieces that make up the news into their favorite puzzle, because the information should define its own picture. These are who I consider the least adult in their outlook on life – they’re so frozen into their positions, left or right, that nothing will leverage them out of it. It defines them, and they don’t dare to challenge themselves on their very foundations.
And this is what I find so epicly frustrating about people who doggedly pronounce Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting a hoax. It doesn’t fit into their thesis that more guns makes for a safer society, so they pronounce it a hoax and walk away, angry for no good reason. Good God, you’re going to disbelieve the police, the EMTs, and the parents of the children lost in this tragedy? These are the prime examples of adults who’ve failed the primary test of being an adult – being open to the idea that, as a friend puts it, your shit stinks – that You Can Be Wrong.
But I liked this lady, who takes her responsibilities seriously:
Back at my desk in The Post’s newsroom, I think sometimes about Jennifer Clark, a middle-aged woman with long gray hair whom I interviewed at the Erie County Fair. She works two jobs: one in food service and the other at a printing factory where she operates sewing and cutting machines. Still, she finds the time to read the Buffalo News (which publishes articles every day from The Post and the Times) and to watch TV news. She cares about staying informed. But she’s never sure if she’s getting the truth. On the Trump-Russia story, “I don’t know if they’re stirring the pot or if there’s really something there,” she said. Her requests stayed with me: “Report it as it is, without the twist. Report it without being biased. Tell it all.”
The Jennifer Clarks of the country are the ones we need to reach: They have complicated feelings about the media, but they are not dogmatic in their criticism. And if we follow their advice — if we pursue fairness, depth, accuracy — we may not save a democracy that so many feel is under siege, and we will still probably get our share of obscene phone calls and emails, but we’ll have done a job that’s worth doing. One worth spending a lifetime on, if we get that lucky.
Go Ms. Clark. A little skepticism, properly managed, goes a long way – but it’s clear that she has an open mind, not one riveted shut.
“What do you do when you’re not playing pool?”
“I dream of playing pool.”
This morning I began wondering if Paul Newman’s reputation rests only partly on his ability as an actor, and the balance on the scripts that he worked with. Look at today’s selection, The Hustler (1961). In case you aren’t aware of the jargon, a hustler is someone who plays pool for a living, who may sandbag in early games in order to take the later, more profitable games. Put two or more hustlers in a game and it becomes a complex question of who is hustling whom.
But this story isn’t about a game and who is hustling whom, but about the dregs of society, about the new blood on the block and his challenge to the old champion, and the emptiness that is behind all those hours spent learning how to hit the pool balls, how to deceive your opponents, how to drink and drink and drink, and how to hate yourself.
“Fast” Eddie Felson finds the old champion, Minnesota Fats, in Ames, IA, and is taken by Fats in a series of games of pool that lasts more than a day. Leaving his mentor/partner, with whom he quarreled during the marathon with Fats, he heads for the bus station, but there he meets a woman working a puzzle. Her name is Sarah. He falls asleep after his pass at her fails, but later encounters her at the station’s bar, where she admits she’s not taking the bus, she’s just here to drink, and now she agrees to take him home, betraying a limp.
She has no one; she goes to college on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and drinks the rest of the time. Eddie moves in with her, but his demons of action and self-destruction, diagnosed by successful gambler and sometime manager Bert, hinder their relationship. Is he just there for the sex? Is her limp, supposedly from a car accident, but later revealed to be the result of polio, the reason she’s going nowhere, every man she hooks up with her leaves her? Even her own father sends her a monthly check, excusing himself from her life.
But Eddie is special, and when Bert decides to use Eddie, and his growing consciousness that his worst enemy is himself, to make money in Louisville, Sarah forces her way into the trip. But it’s a trip of doom, for Bert, concerned that she may distract Eddie in his transformation from born loser to a winner, tries to manipulate her into leaving Eddie. He is a hustler in his own way.
He succeeds, in the worst possible way: she drinks herself to death, dying in a puddle of liquor and self-hatred in a hotel room on the very night Bert makes his move. When Eddie returns and finds the police, Bert, and dead Sarah, Bert is fortunate the police are there to protect him.
Eddie is not one to give up, and he finally challenges Fats again, destroying the old fat man with empty eyes and an emptier life (for he spends all his time at the pool hall), and then facing down the grasping gambler Bert in his own den of iniquity, knowing him for what he is – a man who worships money, and therefore has a dead zone around himself.
It’s an awakening for Eddie, to the pain of losing one’s love for such minor things.
Such is the story.
And it’s executed so well. My Arts Editor commented on the ongoing ambiguity, how so much of the movie could be a hustler’s move, or it could be straight, and not knowing how to tell the difference. The black and white cinematography is used to excellent effect, and the pacing is measured, not hurried as one might expect. The dialog was unexpected and organic, and if occasionally infected with pool jargon, it merely adds spice without destroying the flavor of the story.
It’s not a happy story. Indeed, it might be considered part of the film noir genre. But it’s a story that examines the underside of the society of the time, and finds society wanting. And this is what Paul Newman did so well, the morally ambiguous character, living on the outskirts of life, and the agony he goes through as his base drives take him places no man wants to visit.
Strongly Recommended.
Taking The Garbage Out, December 29th, 2017.
Regarding The Motley Fool’s error we noted earlier, I received an email acknowledging the error, saying they’ll relay the information to their Marketing team. Good to see a correct initial response. Will there be follow-through?
Politesse:
- formal politeness; courtesy. [Dictionary.com]
Noted in the Leader for NewScientist (23 December 2017) under “A world divided“:
Science and scientists need to get better at reminding the world that they are a force for good – including that all-important prosperity.
After the initial vigour of the March for Science last April, attempts to defend science have fizzled out or returned to angry tweeting or academic letter-writing. Such politesse is not enough in the face of determined and unscrupulous opposition.
Science has its weaknesses. Not everyone will be or should be a cheerleader for it. But as we go into the new year, we could all begin by emphasising what science has done and can do for us. If we forget, and allow it to seem irrelevant or threatening, the next half-century really may be no better than the last.
The irony of its usage, above, also reminds me of the straits of the common voter. The occupation of the electorate, by and large, is not politics. For scientists, it’s science. It’s what they do, what drags at their minds, it’s what they wake up thinking about and what they fall asleep thinking about. Politics takes away time away from their lifetime task.
Most of the electorate also does not want to be bothered with the details of politics; thus, we have default political parties that we often inherit from our parents. It occurs to me that our current contretemps may be an inevitably periodic result of how, at least in the United States, we’ve structured our society. The exceptional freedom that lets us succeed on a somewhat titanic scale also leaves us with a political class composed of mostly second- and third- raters, who sometimes hold extremist positions.
I can’t help but wonder about societies with, to be up front, less individual freedom, but more expectations: the expectation that, as you age, you will take up leadership positions within that society, you will be trained in them, and you will be responsible for the results. Would the loss of freedom cripple such a society? Would the failures form too much of an opposition? Would a harmful stasis result?
Hard to say.
Do you like my interior decorating, Mr. Scott?
Continuing an unfortunate recent trend in the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek Beyond (2016) is a movie full of vivid scenes and some mild intercharacter chemistry, but lacking in one of the most important characteristics of the original series: consideration of interesting moral questions. As the original USS Enterprise is destroyed by a mysterious enemy that seems to know more about Star Fleet than the average bear, the bad guy implies his attack will be for the best for the races that make up the Federation. This forms the basis of the closest the story comes to an interesting moral question: does peace and prosperity improve a species, or does pain and toil and struggle?
Unfortunately, this is not a question of prime importance for most audiences, although of course one can always find an individual who might disagree with the broad consensus that peace and prosperity leads to more improvement in sentient, civilized species. Generally, the horror of war tends to set back civilization in its quest for progress, for freedom from famine and epidemic, or so goes the popular opinion, and this movie does not present material that would seriously dispute this view.
The balance of the movie presents how the Enterprise crew reacts to the bad guy’s acquisition of the critical part of a superweapon from them. Regrettably, the bad guy’s motivation is, as noted, rather dubious, and the supporting material, at least as presented in the movie, either incoherent or worse. I mean, I was paying attention and I couldn’t make out if the bad guy was extraordinarily long-lived because of his association with the superweapon or, well, maybe he was related to Dr. Who.
But it’s a fun visual treat, and Mr. Scott’s new interest had some striking makeup. If you like Star Trek, or possibly if you like James Bond (as I found myself thinking some of the scenes in this one are reminiscent of some of the crazier, yet traditional, action scenes in the 007 series), you’ll probably like this, but wonder at what seems to be missing. I mean, besides the silliness of Mr. Spock romancing Lt. Uhura.
As a bookworm growing up, who honors his past more in the breach than the practice, I was delighted to run across this LinkedIn article by Glenn Leibowitz:
The folks in Iceland, by contrast, observe a very different gift-giving tradition. Rather than obsess over exchanging electronic gadgets, DNA testing kits, and Keurig Coffee Makers, they give each other more entertaining, and also more intellectually and emotionally enriching items: Books. …
Icelanders’ devotion to reading is most evident in a remarkable tradition they observe: Between September and November, publishers launch a book publishing tsunami known as the Jolabokaflod, which in English translates roughly into the “Christmas Book Flood.” The annual Flood kicks-off with the printing of the Bokatidindi, a catalog of new publications distributed free to every Icelandic home, courtesy of the Iceland Publishers Association (of course).
On Christmas eve, Icelanders exchange books as gifts and then spend the night reading them, often while drinking hot chocolate or alcohol-free Christmas ale called jólabland. “The culture of giving books as presents is very deeply rooted in how families perceive Christmas as a holiday,” Kristjan B. Jonasson, president of the Iceland Publishers Association, told NPR.
Totally lovely. A devotion to books, particularly a variety, is a devotion to knowledge, a sign of the importance of wondering, thinking, answering, and coming up with more questions – the marks of nations devoted to tolerance, peace, and wisdom.
I received a book on how to cook and a book on cities over the holidays, and I’m frantically trying to keep up with all my other reading as well. I hope you are doing as well – or better.
Scientists are investigating whether an interesting effect in mice is also present in humans, and represents an interesting survival optimization. NewScientist (16 December 2017) has the report:
Mark Mattson of the National Institute on Aging in Maryland and his team looked at 40 mice that consumed the same total calories, but either ate normally every day or ate nothing every other day.
The team found that fasting caused a 50 per cent increase in a brain chemical called BDNF. Previous studies have shown that such a rise is likely to boost the number of mitochondria, which provide a cell’s energy, inside neurons by 20 per cent.
BDNF also promotes the growth of new connections – or synapses – between brain cells, which helps in learning and memory, says Mattson.
The finding makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, as animals that are hungry would benefit from more intellectual resources to find food, he says. “If human ancestors hadn’t been able to find food, they had better be able to function at a high level to chase down some prey.”
If you feel like you’re slowing down mentally, try some fasting. Interesting thought. A related study might be to survey scientists to see how many are overweight. I don’t personally know enough scientists to make for a good survey – but the three that I can think of offhand are all slender.
I haven’t paid much attention to Marc Thiessen over the years, and had only heard he was a doctrinaire extremist-conservative. He’s a columnist for WaPo, and when I saw he had a list of the top 10 best things Trump’s done, I couldn’t resist a list.
Sadly, it’s not a good list when I can only agree on one thing. But let’s go through them one by one, as it’s illustrative of the far-right mindset.
Doctrinaire to a fault, I’d say. It echoes Trump’s urge to take credit for the work of others, it projects success in the future and then assumes it and takes credit for it when that success is considered doubtful, and generally ignores the promotion of trends which lead us astray when he should be providing strong leadership.
I see little reason to be reading Thiessen.
This long dormant thread shows some life as a WaPo article suggests that former President Obama’s subtle strategy in response to the annexation of the Crimea from Ukraine may be bearing fruit:
VLADIMIR PUTIN boasts of popularity ratings that Western leaders, Donald Trump included, can only dream of — 85 percent and above since Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014. Yet Mr. Putin remains unwilling to test those numbers against real competition. On Monday, the state election commission banned his most popular opponent, Alexei Navalny, from running in the presidential election scheduled for March 18 — meaning that Mr. Putin will face no serious opposition to obtaining another six-year term.
So?
He nevertheless prefers to stage a Potemkin vote in which his only challengers will be two perennial candidates, one Communist and one ultra-nationalist, and Ksenia Sobchak, a 36-year-old celebrity who has called the election “a high-budget show.” Mr. Navalny has now called for a boycott, which means that the Kremlin’s reported goal of a 70 percent turnout may be impossible to reach, barring fraud. In one recent poll, only 58 percent said they would vote.
What could explain Mr. Putin’s seemingly self-defeating tactics? Some analysts argue that the authoritarian regime he has constructed requires not a credible democratic victory but a crushing show of strength. The message must be that there is no alternative. That is particularly true at a time when the regime is failing to deliver the rising living standards it once offered Russians in exchange for their passivity. After two years of recession brought on by falling oil prices and Western sanctions, the economy will grow this year by less than 2 percent.
A stagnant country with a high unemployment could be a kettle ready to explode – and through manipulation of the price of oil by oversupplies by Saudi Arabia and the United States under President Obama, the price of oil has been low relative to its usual prices for several years now.
So Putin is forced to invalidate a dangerous electoral opponent. How important is this in Russia? Beats me – but it’ll surely contribute to the doubts of those Russians who are on the fence.
The path of losing Senatorial candidate Roy Moore could go on for months at this rate, and it may be a laugh riot. Alabama is reported to be planning to certify Doug Jones victory today, and Roy Moore is filing suit to stop it, according to CNN. Here’s a good part:
In its last-minute court battle to stop state officials from certifying Jones as the winner, the Moore campaign said certification should be delayed until a “thorough investigation of potential election fraud,” according to a press release.
Without some sort of solid evidence, I don’t see how the judge could take this seriously. Potential election fraud? At this juncture, it either is or it ain’t. But then we transition into, well, the laughable.
In his election complaint, Moore stated that he took a polygraph test over the sexual misconduct allegations made against him by Leigh Corfman, Beverly Nelson and Tina Johnson. Moore says that he took the polygraph test after the December 12 election, according to his affidavit, included in the complaint.
In the affidavit Moore states, “the results of the examination reflected that I did not know, nor had I ever had any sexual contact with any of these individuals.”
A polygraph? One of the great science superstitions of the modern age. The folks at Skeptical Inquirer never tire of pointing out that all gold-standard tests of polygraphs have shown it performs worse than flipping a coin. Moore’s citation of the polygraph is an irrelevancy. Jones campaign should point this out and just ignore the fact that Moore admits to having taken the polygraph after the election.
Ask if Moore believes in superstitions. Let him flounder around a bit.
While Jones will soon be a sitting Senator, and may think it above his dignity, I’d say that ridiculing Moore and all he stands for is a public service.
