Actually, it's an entire family of kookaburras, and they are adorable.
It's nice to remember that there are, after all, a few creatures in Australia that aren't bound and determined to kill you or frighten you to death.
Monday, March 23, 2015
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Up in Flames? Oh the Humanities!
Why are humanities not only valuable but freaking awesome? You'd better figure it out on your own, because university presidents can't mount a substantive defense of the humanities. Of course, I think most university presidents aren't worth the pixels it would take me to express my displeasure with most university presidents. No wonder higher ed is in trouble: its putative leaders have no idea about education.
Music Hath Charms: Vivaldi's "La Primavera" (Spring)
The calendar tells me that spring arrived on the 20th, even though the weather is still chilly. Ah, well. Let's have some Vivaldi, shall we?
Awesome Nerd News: Meet John Urschel, Chess Player, Mathematician, and NFL Athlete
John Urschel, offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, is one smart cookie. He's just published a paper entitled "A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector" in the Journal of Computational Mathematics. Sound mind in a sound body, indeed, mens sana in corpore sano.
Here's the abstract:
Here's the abstract:
In this paper, we develop a cascadic multigrid algorithm for fast computation of the Fiedler vector of a graph Laplacian, namely, the eigenvector corresponding to the second smallest eigenvalue. This vector has been found to have applications in fields such as graph partitioning and graph drawing. The algorithm is a purely algebraic approach based on a heavy edge coarsening scheme and pointwise smoothing for refinement. To gain theoretical insight, we also consider the related cascadic multigrid method in the geometric setting for elliptic eigenvalue problems and show its uniform convergence under certain assumptions. Numerical tests are presented for computing the Fiedler vector of several practical graphs, and numerical results show the efficiency and optimality of our proposed cascadic multigrid algorithm.I have no idea what that means, but I do know how hard it is to get published in a scholarly journal. Congratulations, John!
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Thoughts on Bibi's Return and Its Ramifications
I ended up wanting to excerpt too much, so let me suggest that you read the whole thing as a jumping off point for analysis. More off-the-cuff nonsense after the fold.
Friday, March 20, 2015
Supermoon, Solar Eclipse, Vernal Equinox, March Madness, Starbucks Race Hustling, and Netanyahu Derangement Syndrome All In One Day!
Well, I guess the only thing I can do as commentary is post this Onion story.
It's been a lunatic day, in which learning that Starbucks is actually encouraging its baristas to engage customers in discussions about race relations wasn't even the craziest thing that happened. The inevitable backlash has, admittedly, provided its own form of Schadenfreudelicious entertainment. (Of course the incomparable Iowahawk has a quip.)
Elsewhere, my head is spinning from all the post-Israeli election howling from various people and quarters and media outlets. I really can't take any more of it, because all the yelling and yammering has coalesced into one wordless collective shriek. Maybe later I'll try to consider the fallout and talk about foreign policy again, but for now let's just call the furious reactions together "Netanyahu Derangement Syndrome" and let it go at that, mmmkay?
Finally, let me add: THANK GOD March Madness has finally started. It's the only madness right now that makes any damn sense at all.
(PS: Go, Anybody-But-Duke!)
It's been a lunatic day, in which learning that Starbucks is actually encouraging its baristas to engage customers in discussions about race relations wasn't even the craziest thing that happened. The inevitable backlash has, admittedly, provided its own form of Schadenfreudelicious entertainment. (Of course the incomparable Iowahawk has a quip.)
Elsewhere, my head is spinning from all the post-Israeli election howling from various people and quarters and media outlets. I really can't take any more of it, because all the yelling and yammering has coalesced into one wordless collective shriek. Maybe later I'll try to consider the fallout and talk about foreign policy again, but for now let's just call the furious reactions together "Netanyahu Derangement Syndrome" and let it go at that, mmmkay?
Finally, let me add: THANK GOD March Madness has finally started. It's the only madness right now that makes any damn sense at all.
(PS: Go, Anybody-But-Duke!)
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Proposed Euro Coin Design Spawns Fight Over Napoleon's Legacy
The design is intended to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. The French are objecting. At least there's no doubt where this op-ed writer's sympathies lie.
Oh, since we're on the topic ...
Oh, since we're on the topic ...
Bibi Got (Come)Back
Well, whaddyaknow? Several folks I know are calling it "a St. Patrick's Day miracle."
Nobody puts Bibi in a corner.
Nobody puts Bibi in a corner.
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Happy Saint Patrick's Day!
Today we're all Irish, my dears! Have fun, be safe, and take a listen to an old favorite:
Monday, March 16, 2015
Quote of the Day: Kurds vs. ISIS
From an anthropologist and a retired general writing together in the New York Times opinion pages today (well, that's not a combination you see every day):
Together with Lydia Wilson and Hoshang Waziri, our colleagues at Artis, a nonprofit group that uses social science research to resolve intergroup violence, we found that the Kurds demonstrate a will to fight that matches the Islamic State’s. The United States needs to help them win."Them" means the Kurds.
A Law Professor Considers the University of Oklahoma Speech Kerfuffle
The umpteenth reminder: free speech also protects speech that you don't like.
Here's a bit of it:
Here's a bit of it:
Though some ignorant people argue that "hate speech" is unprotected under the First Amendment, that is not the law and never has been. Nor should it be. The test of our commitment to free expression, after all, isn't our willingness to tolerate speech that everyone likes. If you only support free speech for ideas you agree with, you're a hack. If you only support free speech for ideas that everyone agrees with, you're a coward.
The Best Ad of the Israeli Election?
Apparently Netanyahu is not doing very well in the polls, but I have to say that I really liked this ad. I thought it was clever, funny, and made its point without being nasty.
Thursday, March 05, 2015
Movie Review: "The Imitation Game" (2014)
Demand the genuine article.
This movie review is long delayed, but I promised La Parisienne that I would write one ... and a lady keeps her promises (even if she's not always punctual!). The Imitation Game is Oscar-bait biopic filmmaking at its most quintessential, and even if the film ultimately failed to win that golden statuette for fangirl favorite Benedict Cumberbatch in his role as Alan Turing, it is still a largely solid project even if it (inevitably) takes liberties with factuality and (even more inevitably) verges on hagiography.
In short, The Imitation Game is a movie you watch once and enjoy in the watching (hey, look, it's Tanner from the Bond movies, Tom Branson from Downton Abbey, and Tywin Lannister from Game of Thrones!), but it is also a movie that (aside from Cumberbatch's elegantly messy turn as Turing) I swiftly forgot when I left the theatre. Maybe I should simply refer to the famous Turing Test for seeing if an intelligent machine can be mistaken for a human being. This movie plays as a machine. It's not human. Oh, it tries. Cumberbatch tries, and he tries on an Oscar caliber level. But this movie both tries too hard and not hard enough.
I think part of the problem is that the movie keeps leaping among three different time periods: Turing's schoolboy days as an awkward adolescent, the thick of World War II and Bletchley Park's attempt to break the devilishly complex Nazi code enabled by the Enigma machine, and then 1952, when Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality (still criminalized under British law at the time). The three separate threads do not come together into a unified whole, and so the final product seems disjointed and not a little incoherent. Besides, Turing as a historical figure is far more (and far more interesting) than "tortured, persecuted genius," and I'm sorry to say that in the end, that is what the film makes of him, first and foremost.
Mad Minerva gives The Imitation Game the grade of B+. Part of that grade is in grateful acknowledgment of how the flick resists the temptation to be a bloated, 3-hour-long, self-indulgent behemoth. Another part is for Keira Knightley, who manages not only to be not annoying but actually interesting as a character. Most of the B+, though, is for Benedict Cumberbatch, who is hands down the single best thing about this entire film.
The Imitation Game runs 114 minutes and is rated PG-13 for sexual references and some adult themes and situations.
Rotten Tomatoes gives The Imitation Game the Fresh rating of 89%.
The Imitation Game runs 114 minutes and is rated PG-13 for sexual references and some adult themes and situations.
Rotten Tomatoes gives The Imitation Game the Fresh rating of 89%.
Thursday, January 08, 2015
Quote of the Day: Charlie Hebdo
Time to repeat this fundamental point:
... it is vitally important to resist the impulse–so common among “responsible” institutions, whether foreign ministries or large newspapers–at a time like this to somehow imply that the victims brought their fate upon themselves and that the best line of defense against such attacks is to practice greater self-restraint in the future. ... That is giving the terrorists precisely what they want, indeed the very reason they carry out such attacks is to deter others from similar mockery in the future.
The right to offend is the very essence of free speech–and as long as a publication doesn’t incite violence (which neither Charlie Hebdo nor The Interview did) its right to say whatever it likes must be defended to the last inch. That is, after all, the very bedrock of freedom upon which Western democracies rest–and the very opposite of the kind of totalitarian state that Islamists have created in Iran and a large chunk of Syria/Iraq.
Monday, January 05, 2015
Nerd News: Home Schooling in the News
Article in the New York Times. Honestly, with education being the mess that it is with No Child Left Behind and Common Core and the obsession with standardized testing, I would probably want to home school too if I had a Mini-Me. As it is, I've already been asked to consult a bit on my areas of specialization by some friends home schooling their little ones.
Sunday, January 04, 2015
LOL: A Deliciously Demented Detail
I just saw this hilarity on Imgur: "After ten years and many viewings, I just noticed the streets of Paris are paved with croissants in Team America, World Police." OMG, HOW HAVE I NEVER NOTICED?! Go and look for yourself!
Thoughts on Broken Windows
William Bratton, NYC police commissioner, and George Kelling, criminal professor emeritus from Rutgers, take time to write:
Critics have posed a variety of arguments against Broken Windows. Some assert that it is synonymous with the controversial patrol tactic known as "stop, question, and frisk." Others allege that Broken Windows is discriminatory, used as a tool to target minorities. Some academics claim that Broken Windows has no effect on serious crime and that demographic and economic causes better explain the reductions in crime in New York and across the United States. Still other critics suggest that order-maintenance policing leads to over-incarceration or tries to impose a white middle-class morality on urban populations. It is rare to have the opportunity and space to correct all the misconceptions and misrepresentations embedded in such charges. We will counter them here, one by one.Thoughts?
Friday, January 02, 2015
DVD Review: "Pacific Rim" (2013)
Jaegermeister
The holidays are for watching all the things you never had time to watch before! This time it's 2013's unabashedly silly summer popcorn flick Pacific Rim, which is really more entertaining than it has a right to be. Disclaimer: I was a kid who loved Voltron and mech suits and Gundam and Godzilla and all that, so I was pretty much going to consider Pacific Rim a guilty pleasure and love it (and then feel no guilt about any of it), especially since it has a cast that includes Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, and Ron Perlman. Anyway, the premise is simple enough: gigantic monsters called kaiju are invading the planet via a fissure in the ocean floor, and it's up to hotshot warriors in enormous mechanical suits called Jaegers to fight them.
Sure, there's plenty of nonsense and silliness in the flick, but - hey, let's be honest - I didn't care! I was willing to let it all slide because the movie itself is so much bombastic FUN. It's style over substance, but come on, it's hilariously entertaining. This is a movie that features Idris Elba (!) as a commander named Stacker Pentecost, for goodness sakes! Charlie "Jax Teller" Hunnam plays a pilot named Raleigh Becket (seriously), and he has a Jaeger called (I'm not making this up) Gipsy Danger (ex-girlfriend of Anthony Weiner perhaps?). A trio of hoops-shooting Chinese pilots run a machine named Crimson Typhoon. Another pilot is named (with a straight face) Hercules Hansen. The nomenclature of everything seems to have an uproarious Engrishy twist to it. Alessandra, watching with me, shouted, "It's pure anime!" and meant it as a compliment.
Ignore the silliness ("drift compatible" and whatever), logical pitfalls, Rinko Kikuchi's almost unintelligible Mako Mori character, and a climax that is a little too reminiscent of Independence Day and The Avengers. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the sight of giant robots battling giant monsters while wrecking Hong Kong with cheerful abandon. For an hour and a half you can be a kid watching a cartoon and having a grand old time. You can be a sensible adult before and after, but for the run time of Pacific Rim you can be a schoolboy/girl enjoying eye candy mayhem, monsters, and mechs. Oh, and be sure to sit through the first bit of credits.
Mad Minerva gives Pacific Rim the grade of B+ for sheer enjoyable popcorn amusement. Yes, it's ridiculous, but it's ridiculous fun ... and rather more fun than the latest Godzilla.
Pacific Rim runs 132 minutes and is rated PG-13 for monster/mech action, some disturbing images (kaiju guts are gross!), and Charlie Hunnam's abs (they could give Thor's a run for their money).
Rotten Tomatoes gives Pacific Rim the Fresh rating of 72%.
I could give you the actual trailer, but I think it'd be far more amusing to give you the Honest Trailer:
Nerd News: Winter Commencement at the University of Hawaii
A nod to one's heritage. Congratulations to all the new grads!
Thursday, January 01, 2015
The 2015 Rose Parade
This year's Tournament of Roses, one of my favorite New Year's traditions, has the theme "Inspiring Stories" to honor remarkable men and women. I was surprised and delighted to see this beautiful float!
Recognize the motto "Go For Broke"? It's from the 442nd, of which several veterans were on the float this morning. If you aren't familiar with its history, please do look it up when you have a moment.
Happy 2015!
Delightful Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has a great message about optimism and the conscious resolution to do some good this year to make the world a better place:
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Sunday, December 28, 2014
I'll Fly Away: Jetliner Cross-Section
Since we're all traveling a lot for the holidays, here's something cool and relevant. Ain't technology grand!
*tries to hang onto sense of wonder about human flight even as babies howl in crowded cabins and people drop bags on one's head from overhead compartments*
*tries to hang onto sense of wonder about human flight even as babies howl in crowded cabins and people drop bags on one's head from overhead compartments*
Saturday, December 27, 2014
The Movies of 2014
How many have you seen? I reviewed a selection, and you can find all my raves and rants under the movie reviews tag!
Nerd News: Diversity Initiatives vs. Asian Americans
Yet again. One could do an entire case study on Stuyvesant in NYC:
These challenges have a bearing on K-12 schools, too, suggesting that the the bamboo ceiling may be even lower than once thought. Stuyvesant, one of New York City’s nine specialized public high schools, doesn't consider race in its admissions process; students only need take a standardized test to apply. Still, the policy has come under fire because of the student demographics that result: 73 percent of 'Stuy's' current students are Asian, while 22 percent are white. Just 2 percent of the school's population are Hispanic, and 1 percent is black.
Friday, December 26, 2014
Houshi Ryokan: Japan's 1300-Year-Old Family-Run Hotel
You can stay there too. It's listed on Booking.Com. Lots of (gorgeous) photos. The ryokan was founded in 718. The mind boggles!
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Movie Review: "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"
"Will you follow me one last time?"
Thorin Oakenshield asks the other dwarves this question, and it might as well be director Peter Jackson asking his now-exhausted audience to finish his seemingly interminable Hobbit trilogy. By the time my friends and I went to the theatre on opening weekend, I was mentally prepared to slog through the final installment not because I was actually excited to see it, but because I wanted to finish it and get it over with already. I felt pretty much like I did when I went to go see the last Star Wars prequel. Thank goodness the Hobbit finale is better than that, though prequel fatigue set in with a vengeance, and it was not helped by the news that Jackson had included a battle sequence that lasts 45 minutes. There is one point in the movie when something ludicrous happens, prompting a character to burst out with mingled disbelief and annoyance, "Come ON!" and the audience can't help but agree wholeheartedly.
Monday, December 22, 2014
Quote of the Day: Sony Hack Debacle and Its Discontents
Shot: A wee bit of appropriate profanity from George Clooney regarding The Interview:
Chaser: Things took a turn for the ludicrous with Paramount canceling several sassy theaters' attempt to screen 2004's Team America: World Police instead:
By the way, I wasn't even interested in The Interview at first because I really don't care much for the oeuvre of Rogen and Franco, but now I bloody well want to see that flick. Meanwhile, amuse yourselves with this:
"Stick it online. Do whatever you can to get this movie out. Not because everybody has to see the movie, but because I'm not going to be told we can't see the movie.
That's the most important part. We cannot be told we can't see something by Kim Jong-un, of all f*cking people."Of all f*cking people!
Chaser: Things took a turn for the ludicrous with Paramount canceling several sassy theaters' attempt to screen 2004's Team America: World Police instead:
"Terrorist threats are no laughing matter, of course, but the Department of Homeland Security has found no credible threat and evidence that the Guardians of Peace have any sort of manpower that could do anything within the boundaries of the United States (much less at thousands of locations simultaneously) is practically non-existent. This sort of panicked cowardice would be laughably absurd if it wasn’t so damn sad."What I find even more disturbing still are all the self-righteous people who are blaming the victim and saying that it's the moviemakers' fault for making a flick that offended the wrong people. I'm sorry, but THAT IS EXACTLY WRONG. Tyrants are precisely the sort of people who should be mocked by free peoples. Comedy as a genre should be a free space, while we're at it: everything is game.
By the way, I wasn't even interested in The Interview at first because I really don't care much for the oeuvre of Rogen and Franco, but now I bloody well want to see that flick. Meanwhile, amuse yourselves with this:
Friday, December 19, 2014
Movie Review: "Exodus: Gods and Kings"
Schlock like an Egyptian.
It should tell you something that after I saw Exodus: Gods and Kings on opening weekend, I went home and watched 1998's DreamWorks animated The Prince of Egypt on Netflix ... and had a much better time. I would have watched Cecil B. DeMille's monumental 1956 production of The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as Ramses, but - alas - it wasn't streaming. Then when I sat down to write a movie review, I seriously contemplated framing it all as a "I'm sorry, please take me back, I love you!" letter to Chuck Heston.
OK, OK, let's get to Exodus: Gods and Kings (and why in the world do we need that colon and its little subtitle? Isn't Exodus enough?) All cards on the table: I wanted to like this movie. I wanted to like it a LOT. There's no disappointment quite like dashed hope. I almost entitled this review Exodus: All Washed Up. In fact, it would probably take the entire Red Sea to wash all the guyliner off Bale and Edgerton ... though I suppose I must give some kind of grudging acknowledgment of an entire movie in which the men wear more makeup than the women.
Come on, babe. You know it's always been about you.
OK, OK, let's get to Exodus: Gods and Kings (and why in the world do we need that colon and its little subtitle? Isn't Exodus enough?) All cards on the table: I wanted to like this movie. I wanted to like it a LOT. There's no disappointment quite like dashed hope. I almost entitled this review Exodus: All Washed Up. In fact, it would probably take the entire Red Sea to wash all the guyliner off Bale and Edgerton ... though I suppose I must give some kind of grudging acknowledgment of an entire movie in which the men wear more makeup than the women.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Friday, December 12, 2014
Friday Fun Video: Honest Trailer for "Guardians of the Galaxy"
Guardians of the Galaxy, the best movie of Summer 2014, has just come out on Blu-ray and DVD this week, so here's a brand-new Honest Trailer to mark the occasion:
Tuesday, December 09, 2014
Thursday, November 27, 2014
The Onion on Thanksgiving Traditions
This one hits all too close to home, given the travel woes plaguing millions of folks thanks to snowy weather.
Quote of the Day on Ferguson
Benjamin Watson of the New Orleans Saints has what is likely the best commentary yet. You can also read it directly on his Facebook page. For once in this unrest somebody has used social media constructively ... and done so with grace and wisdom. (Take note, reprehensible sensationalist media outlets.)
Monday, November 24, 2014
The Bamboo Ceiling: Asian Students Sue Harvard and Chapel Hill Over Affirmative Action Policies
It's not the first lawsuit in educational circles, and it won't be the last. Remember, higher ed is the place that told me to my face, "You don't count as a minority." In all honesty, I don't want different standards; I want to compete on level ground with everybody else - I will go toe to toe with any white guy you please in this field (and I have). Nevertheless, it is neither fair nor right when the gatekeepers pick and choose the "minorities" that they want (and exclude the ones that they don't).
Sunday, November 16, 2014
LOL: Queensland Police Vs. Canadian Music
They gave us Celine, Nickelback & Bieber but we’ll still help with their PM's #G20 motorcade #nohardfeelings pic.twitter.com/7ZLSPF88TF
— QPS Media Unit (@QPSmedia) November 16, 2014
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Movie Review: "Interstellar"
Close encounters of the deferred kind.
First things first: You must go see Interstellar on the biggest screen available, on IMAX if possible. The special effects are incredible, from depictions of a luminous black hole lashed with gleaming ribbons of light to starkly beautiful alien planetscapes filled with sea and icy desert. In fact, the epic visuals are by themselves worth the price of admission. This is certainly a plus, for the rest of the movie proceeds as if it were brothers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan's answer to hypothetical questions that nobody asks: "What would happen if Shyamalan and Spielberg made a movie together?" or "What kind of movie would you get if you crossed Signs, Gravity, Inception, and 2001: A Space Odyssey?"
Well, the answer is an overstuffed, rather too indulgently ambitious 3-hour-long excursion to the stars that somehow manages to entrance the eyes without truly engaging the emotions or the intellect. Don't get me wrong: Interstellar does have its moments of orchestrally bombastic heartstring-pulling (at one point or another just about every notable character bursts into tears with varying degrees of credibility). Some of the performances are quite good, even moving. Still, I could not shake the feeling that Nolan was more interested in giving us a puzzle to solve (or see solved) than a coherent, emotionally honest journey. It is a grand puzzle, to be sure, but giving the audience the OCD-ish pleasure of seeing it come together is not same thing as giving it actual profundity.
Interstellar does emphasize the loving but strained relationship between test pilot-turned-farmer Cooper (Matthew McConaghey) and his precocious, temperamental daughter Murphy (played in childhood by Mackenzie Foy and in adulthood by Jessica Chastain). Still, the film's overall treatment of emotional ties struck me as problematic, especially with a scientist arguing at one point that a subjective personal love is as valid as any other rationale for choosing a planet to explore. (I'm sorry, but that simply isn't so, having an otherwise stolid scientist arguing about the transcendence of personal romantic love over time and space seemed cheesy in the moment and I feel stupid even writing that clause now, and the Nolans' insistence on inserting an almost hokey sentimentality into their space epic is a questionable choice at best.)
The basic premise is this: sometime in the future, Earth is quickly becoming uninhabitable as crops fail and dust bowls blow over the plains. In fact, the only crops that will grow at all are corn and okra (so I guess the entire world is eating this). Anyway, NASA mounts a desperate effort to find another livable planet. As the plot would have it, a wormhole fit for just such a search has opened up next to Saturn, and Cooper is the pilot that the mission needs. Here time becomes an issue, specifically the passing of it. From theories of relativity and time dilation to the device of cryo-sleep in space travel to the fear that the mission will not find a new planet before everyone on Earth is dead, time stalks the movie. Cooper is obsessed with returning to Earth and his children, and the endless frustrating deferrals and setbacks push McConaghey's acting to the limit (he acquits himself well).
As for major complaints, I don't want to go into details lest I completely spoil the movie. (I honestly thought the ending was preposterous.) I will say, though, on a nitpicky level that the dialogue is often stilted to the point of inanity; naming a black hole "Gargantua" makes it sound like a busty Spandex-clad villainess from a cheap comic book; everyone misconstrues a Dylan Thomas poem and then refuses to stop quoting it ad nauseam until it turns into schlock; and I absolutely could not take Anne Hathaway seriously in her role as a prickly scientist. I am also going to reiterate my long-running complaint that Nolan doesn't really know how to write complex, psychologically textured (and believable) women.
For all Interstellar's flaws, though, I do fully expect Oscar nominations for special effects (TARS the robot is quite remarkable too aside from the spacescapes), and I do have to give props to the Nolans for even attempting this movie. They dared boldly to create a new sci-fi epic on a grand scale, and if their reach ultimately exceeded their grasp, what else is ambitious, daring, Hans Zimmer-scored filmmaking for?
Mad Minerva gives Interstellar a grade of B. If it helps, just ignore the plot details and feast your eyes on the astounding tableaux like the ship Endurance spinning like a tiny pinwheel in the vastness of space or the looming beauty of Saturn's rings as Cooper and company speed toward the wormhole. Still, it's not the sort of movie that I can see myself rewatching often (unlike, say Apollo 13).
RottenTomatoes gives the movie the bona fide Fresh rating of 75%.
Interstellar runs 169 minutes and is rated PG-13 for some violence and intense action.
Here is the trailer:
Sunday, November 09, 2014
History in Photos: The Fall of the Berlin Wall 25 Years Ago
A picture is worth a thousand words. 25 years already have gone by?!
Thursday, November 06, 2014
Midterm Elections 2014
I'm back!
OK, a colleague of mine complained that all the candidates suck and that he wasn't going to vote at all because of it. Fine, but by not participating, you are more or less ensuring that the very worst candidates go by ... because they're the ones whipping up their bases to actually show up and cast ballots. Besides, if you wait until you get a good candidate, you'll probably never vote at all. Politics is an absolute cesspool (which is exactly why we should give politicians as little power as possible), but as Churchill said, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
(Or maybe this guy?)
While I'm at it banging my drum about visible inclusivity, note that Tim Scott of South Carolina is the first African-American senator to be elected from the South since Reconstruction. Scott's win also makes him the first African-American to be elected to both houses of Congress.
Oh, and even in victory: GOP, DON'T GET COCKY. You still need to work - and work hard - on outreach to ....well, everybody, but especially women and minorities and libertarian-minded independents. You should not tolerate nut case candidates that make the entire party look stupid. You seriously need better messaging. I am also not on board with some of your loopy social-con fixations, and the fact that I don't want the Dems telling me how to run my life doesn't mean that I want you or anybody else telling me how to run it either!
Watch out, Cleo. Someone else wants to be Queen of Denial.
So to close: Congratulations and good luck, midterm winners. We will be watching, and we will be holding your feet to fire and calling you out if and when you screw up ... because that's a civic duty and responsibility every bit as important as voting.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Movie Review: "Gone Girl"
I am aliiiiiiiiiiiiive, but desperately busy. Still, I promised La Parisienne a review of Gone Girl, so here it is, very late and several weeks after I saw it, but finally posted!
The female of the species.
Director David Fincher's Gone Girl, the psychological thriller/crime drama, is based on the best-selling novel of the same name (a book that I have not read), and author Gillian Flynn also wrote the screenplay. The result is a film that did something that no other film has managed to do for a while: keep me guessing about what was going on and what was going to happen next. Gone Girl has its flaws (some of which are significant), but Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck (yes, La Parisienne, behold my actual, sincere praise for Affleck's acting!) will keep you riveted by their performances as Amy Dunne and her husband Nick, the two halves of a decaying marriage. When on their fifth wedding anniversary Amy disappears from their home, suspicions of foul play soon swirl around Nick.
I can't give you much more detail of the plot because I would ruin the movie viewing. As the storyline begins to unspool, you have to pay attention. This is because of unreliable narrators, or at least biased accounts: both Amy and Nick soon emerge as deeply flawed people, their marriage a tale of the slow rot setting in after a passionate (almost too passionate) start. We see Amy's perspective as a series of voiceovers: we soon realize she is reading aloud from her diary, the entries handwritten in curlicue letters with a feathery pink pen. After a while, the swooping swirls of that almost too-girly pen start getting to you, or at least it did to me. Hearing Pike's disembodied voice, slow, calm and sometimes verging on the creepily melodic, is like hearing the voice of a phantom.
We see Nick's point of view from watching him in the aftermath of Amy's disappearance, and this is where casting Ben Affleck was a stroke of genius for this character. Affleck somehow always seems a little shifty, a little (or a lot) insincere, a little untrustworthy no matter what character he's playing. There's something off about that squint and that handsome, lopsided grin, and the movie plays this to utter advantage. The rumple-haired, clearly nervous Nick Dunne soon begins to rub you the wrong way ... but (and this is crucial) is he actually capable of cold-blooded murder?
The movie then dives headlong into satire with its depiction of the ever-increasing, ever more insane media circus, right down to Missi Pyle as bleached blonde cable demagogue Ellen Abbott, an obvious caricature of shrill pseudo-news harpy Nancy Grace (wait, is it even possible to caricature someone who is already a caricature?). She's counterbalanced by agelessly elegant Sela Ward as a more respected but still emotional string-pulling Barbara Walteresque interviewer. The media angle is even further abetted by the publicity efforts of Amy's overbearing parents. The message is pointed about the role of the sensationalist media in both reporting a news story and then, with its obsessively ravening desire to dig up the dirt, transmogrifying an initial incident into the nearly unrecognizable howl of a mob.
The entire apparatus comes across as being addicted to every sordid, disgusting detail it can find ... or insinuate without proof or simply make up. The media becomes almost a living creature, a monstrous screeching vulture with an ever-widening gullet for gleefully gulping down indiscriminate filth and vomiting it back out over a larger and larger radius. You can't help but feel that somewhere in all this Nick's actual story and any pretense at objective reporting are lost as Abbott and her ilk push their chosen narrative of sweet innocent vanished Amy and wicked dirtbag husband Nick. The thing turns into a witch hunt. There is a fascinating scene of celebrity lawyer Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry in an incredible turn) coaching Nick before an interview. When a slimeball attorney who (famously!) specializes in getting guilty people off is the only sensible one in the room, you're pretty much screwed whether you're actually guilty or not.
Pay attention also to fine performances by Carrie Coon as Nick's harried twin sister Margo and Kim Dickens (recently of Sons of Anarchy) as the detective on the case. Neil Patrick Harris also appears, though somehow that particular casting choice did not sit too well with me, however much I like Harris. Part of the action with him almost descended into camp, but that is not a complaint confined only to him but to the third act as a whole. Still, with Fincher in the director's chair, it's very stylish, evocative camp that looks and feels better than its substance might actually deserve.
In fact, Fincher's direction and the art direction elevate the movie to what will probably be award-winning levels, even if - if you get right down to it - the premise of vanished pretty wife and shifty husband-suspect in a whited sepulcher of a marriage is really a genre trope and a melodramatic one at that. Still, Flynn and Fincher push the genre to the limits and - one could well argue - break it in the end.
Mad Minerva gives Gone Girl a grade of B+ . Points off for a messy, often excessive third act and for the fact that this is the kind of movie you watch once. You can't ever recapture the thrill and suspense of wondering what will happen next.
RottenTomatoes gives the movie the bona fide Fresh rating of 88%.
Gone Girl runs 149 minutes and is rated R for violence (there is one particularly graphic scene), pervasive language, nudity, and some sexual situations.
Here is the trailer:
Monday, October 06, 2014
Sunday, October 05, 2014
Quote of the Day: The Strategic Value of Threat Deflation
From a lengthy essay by a professor of national security comes this thought:
... the rhetoric about ISIL has given the group prestige it does not deserve. Washington may inadvertently help ISIL’s recruiting efforts by hyping its capacity for mayhem.
... The group has already proven adept at propaganda; it does not need our help and we should not give it.What say you?
Holy Movie Review Pretending To Be Asinine Commentary, Batman!
Apparently Thomas Friedman is now quoting from The Dark Knight in an attempt to explain ISIS and Boko Haram. An entire quarter of his "analysis" is just lines from the movie. Dude, seriously?
Still, here's a retort worth repeating:
Still, here's a retort worth repeating:
@AntDeRosa I swear to Zod that Friedman likely hasn't even seen Nolan's Batman films. ISIS is clearly Bane, not the Joker.
— Nicholas Slayton (@NSlayton) October 5, 2014
Quirky Asia Files: Eating Autumn Leaves in Japan
Yeah, it's a thing. Those fried leaves look good, though! I wouldn't mind trying them.
Saturday, October 04, 2014
Couch Potato Chronicles: "Walking Dead" Season 5 Premiere Oct.12
So of course I'm busy marathoning the show on Netflix as a way to get ready. If you've never seen it and don't mind some occasionally gory (but not too gory) zombie action horror thrills, you might give it a try yourself. Maybe one has to be in the mood. Some days I want Pride and Prejudice, some days I want Parks and Recreation, some days I want Star Trek, some days I want Justified, some days I want Copper, some days I want Doctor Who (but less and less these days because the current season's plotlines kind of suck), and some days I want The Walking Dead. (Look, I have to have something to watch now that Breaking Bad is over.)
Oh, sure, I would probably last about 3 seconds in an actual zombie apocalypse, and I hate the undead (though Shaun of the Dead is a hilarious movie and World War Z a far better book than flick). Still, there's a lot to love in a show that has a Korean American pizza delivery guy turned action hero (Steven Yeun), a taciturn African American woman (Danai Gurira) who wields a mean katana (!), and a crossbow-toting, squirrel-hunting redneck who manages to steal the show even though he doesn't get all that much screen time (fan favorite Norman Reedus as Daryl). The ostensible lead, small-town cop Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), sometimes seems almost beside the point.
The Walking Dead also refreshingly set in a place other than New York and Los Angeles: the show starts off in Atlanta and takes off into other spots in Georgia where it's filmed on location. So check it out if you're in the mood for a zombie apocalypse, and remember: you have to stab/shoot/bash the zombies IN THE HEAD or else they'll just keep coming. Also remember: you can never have too much ammo during a zombie invasion, so stock up!
Oh, sure, I would probably last about 3 seconds in an actual zombie apocalypse, and I hate the undead (though Shaun of the Dead is a hilarious movie and World War Z a far better book than flick). Still, there's a lot to love in a show that has a Korean American pizza delivery guy turned action hero (Steven Yeun), a taciturn African American woman (Danai Gurira) who wields a mean katana (!), and a crossbow-toting, squirrel-hunting redneck who manages to steal the show even though he doesn't get all that much screen time (fan favorite Norman Reedus as Daryl). The ostensible lead, small-town cop Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), sometimes seems almost beside the point.
MM in the Kitchen: Apple Tart
It's apple-picking time, so here's one thing you can do when you get home: make a honeycrisp apple and browned-butter tart.
Wednesday, October 01, 2014
Thursday, September 25, 2014
On the NFL's Behavioral Issues
The same people who helped drive Tim Tebow out of the nation's spotlight for being too "God-y" and nice are upset the NFL's full of thugs.
— Hugs n Kisses (@Coondawg68) September 20, 2014
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
LOL: Mars Explorers' Tweets Are Out Of This World
Howdy @MarsCuriosity ? Keep in touch. I'll be around.
— ISRO's Mars Orbiter (@MarsOrbiter) September 24, 2014
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Photographing the Flight From ISIS
Photojournalist John Stanmeyer brings images of some 66,000 Syrian Kurds fleeing from ISIS and flooding into Turkey yesterday.
Quote of the Day: Campus Speech Codes
Here's a piece of it:
Oh, related link here. Apparently it's just as bad on the other side of the pond.
The increased calls for sensitivity-based censorship represent the dark side of what are otherwise several positive developments for human civilization. ... I believe that we are not passing through some temporary phase in which an out-of-touch and hypersensitive elite attempts — and often fails — to impose its speech-restrictive norms on society. It’s worse than that: people all over the globe are coming to expect emotional and intellectual comfort as though it were a right. This is precisely what you would expect when you train a generation to believe that they have a right not to be offended. Eventually, they stop demanding freedom of speech and start demanding freedom from speech.Campus speech codes are unconstitutional. You don't give up your First Amendment rights once you step onto a campus, and you have no right to never be offended.
Oh, related link here. Apparently it's just as bad on the other side of the pond.
Nerd News: School Lunches From Around the World
Lunch time! OK, not to cater to national stereotypes, but I gotta call it as I see it: that British lunch looks completely disgusting.
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Quote of the Day: Returning Ghosts
Via Samizdata:
But when we look around in Europe today, we see that not only is Europe not whole and free, we see the ghosts from the painful 20th century returning to our midst. Ghosts that we thought we’d never see again, that we had buried deep in history’s trashbin.
Today, when we look around us, we see it all again. The annexation of territory, the violation of borders, religious conservativism pairing with political authoritarianism and imperialist bravado. 80% of Russians support annexation through military aggression in Crimea, where the Anschluss – and I use that term most seriously here – the Anschluss of territory was justified by the presence of co-ethnics. Moreover, there is widespread support for an anti-liberal attack against decadent Western “permissiveness,” be it in freedom of speech or choice of life-partners. Indeed, we see that liberal democracy has not only failed to win the battle of ideas against authoritarianism, it has failed even to prevent the resurrection of that once vanquished demon, fascism. The nationalist fervor east of us is expressed in arts in a way that makes Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will look like a liberal programme – I suggest you look at the video of the so-called “biker show” staged on August 8 this year in Sevastopol. It is on You Tube. It is a genuine Gesamtkunstwerk. Everything is there – music, art, ballet, motorcycle gangs, it’s all there.
- Estonian President Toomas Hendrik (link to speech transcript)
Friday, September 19, 2014
Thursday, September 18, 2014
LOL: Tweets of the Scottish Independence Vote
@WhiteHouse @Jamie_Merrill NO one in Scotland gives a rats arse what BO thinks as he sits in a nation that broke away from the UK,idiot .
— Ian MacGregor (@macgregor63) September 17, 2014
By the way, the polls have closed in the Scottish referendum, and you can follow the vote-counting live here. "Should I stay or should I go?" - Scotland
UPDATE: Not going anywhere (which is the smart pragmatic move, frankly).
LOL: P.J. O'Rourke and Iowahawk vs. Scottish Independence Vote
The vote on Scottish independence is today, and P.J. O'Rourke casts a characteristically sardonic and hilarious look at the prospect. This is how it starts:
We Irish don’t hate the Scots per se. They’re too much like us Irish, who all hate each other. So we’re just looking for a fine entertainment from across the Irish Sea as Highland Scots have a donnybrook with Lowland Scots, Glaswegians dust up with Edinburghians, and Clan Dewers unsheathes its claymores for battle with Clan Johnny Walker.Iowahawk, on the hand, doesn't need to bother with writing an actual piece when he can just tweet stuff like this:
I'm worried that Scotland independence could disrupt global supplies of haggis and bagpipes.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) September 15, 2014
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Contracts in Spaaaaace: NASA, Boeing, and SpaceX
Well, I'm all for us not depending on others to get our astronauts into space and back.
Monday, September 15, 2014
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Nerd News: A Brit-Bashing Portuguese Professor
Dude's got a position at Imperial College, London, so I personally think it's just a little rich that he's turned right round and published a Brit-bashing book back in Portugal. For extra entertainment, check out this take by a Frenchwoman:
Brit-bashing is a French pursuit, thank you very much – a national sport that we enjoy safe in the knowledge that whatever we throw at Les Rosbifs, they are more than capable of lobbing back at us Frogs. From Joan of Arc to Waterloo and Mers-el-Kébir, we have long known where our most beloved enemy stands: 20 miles and a world away from Calais (never to be surrendered again), in lockstep with us in a love-hate dance . Not for nothing is Wellington’s bust at the British Embassy in Paris displayed next to that of Napoleon . Not for nothing is the inscription on your coat of arms in French; or the fact that we celebrate 1066 (and all that) at Bayeux with the finest and oldest of all tapestries.
So who’s this upstart, insinuating himself right at the heart of our family quarrels?
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Friday, September 12, 2014
Meet Bretagne the 9/11 Search Dog
I didn't read this until today, but now I think I have something in my eye.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Best Commentary Yet On Obama's Messy ISIS Speech
"This speech is supposed to be about ISIS but idk Wtf I'm doing there so lemme talk about the economy and Ebola" #whatobamameant
— Emily (@EmilyChanda) September 10, 2014
@derekahunter "we are all dumber for having heard that"
— Mike Nelson (@mikenelson586) September 11, 2014
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