What I watched: Tim’s Vermeer. This is a fascinating documentary. This guy named Tim Jenison, who got rich with his computer graphics company, decided to try and figure out how Vermeer was able to utilize light to make his paintings. The film is produced and narrated by Penn Jillette who is a friend of Tim’s. Penn has obviously learned how to create pace for his audience and his skills translate well to the film. I enjoyed watching it and seeing a realistic hypothesis come to life. Granted, nobody would mistake what Tim did for a real Vermeer, but I don’t think that was the point. The point was to show how an artistic master like Vermeer was able to create what he did.
What I read: My wife came home with a stack of New Yorker magazines from 2021 that she got from a coworker. I decided to try and plow through some of these before my Christmas haul of books arrived. There were some really interesting peeks into the recent past that I found interesting. One was a story called “The Other Afghan Women” which was written by someone who spent months in the rural areas of Afghanistan to talk to the women there and get a picture of what life has been like for them over the decades. It gives a much clearer picture of just how fucked up our entire approach toward that country has been. Another story about geneticist Kathryn Paige and how her research is pissing off liberals (which is a good illustration of our own blind spots when it comes to “following the science”). Another fascinating story of how Israel protected a Syrian war criminal and allowed him to seek asylum in Europe. I have more magazines to get through, but it will be some time because I’ve got six new books (including another tome from my step-daughter that I’m sure will be a fucking slog).
What I listened to: Rival Sons put out a couple of albums this year.
I’m watching something called Hightown on Starz. It’s drugs, cops, and murder on Cape Cod. It’s pretty well-written and well-acted. I recommend it.
I’ve had Kathryn Paige Harden’s book in my to-read pile for about a year now. It’s a fascinating thesis that should seemingly only bother the most reactionary liberals who are probably alsomissing the message.
Her theories don’t make me angry but I see where some folks (especially those who don’t have a science background) might get upset. Genetics is one part of our makeup as individuals.
Well the “missing the message” part is that, while some abilities such as intellect may have a genetic component, I’m pretty sure she argues that this doesn’t justify Social Darwinism and people shouldn’t just be left behind. But this is why I need to read the book.
Me too. At least from what I read (which isn’t much) is that her theories view any genetic advantages the child gains is based on winning a genetic lottery rather than superiority of the parental genomes.
I’ve seen it, even in my family. To my dad’s dismay I wasn’t the Noble prize winning physicist he imagined I would be instead of the average engineer I became. I think my dad is/was smarter than me.
I haven’t read her either, so also coming from a place of topical ignorance.
But I would suspect a lot of the liberal panic about it (if they are panicing) is the concern that her work would just be used to justify eugenics.
Kind of like how there was that big kerfluffle earlier this year from the conservatives about “the end of marriage” and how white people in America needed to increase marriage rates to save society etc etc and that … wasn’t the point the data made.
She very rightfully has gotten a ton of pushback on her science, to be clear. She’s not really engaging in serious science in a meaningful way.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/04/21/why-biology-is-not-destiny-genetic-lottery-kathryn-harden/
She’s essentially on a par with someone who takes a few scientifically recorded phenomena and puts together a theory of psychic connections which is unsupportably vague and confused.
The winning feature from a rhetorical standpoint, though, is that the vagueness and confusion makes it devilishly hard to refute. If a proponent can’t even establish what a “psychic mind wave” is, how does an opponent prove it’s not there?
It’s not there are haven’t been cases of two unconnected people coming up with the same idea at the same time, or someone correctly thinking their brother just got run over in another state. But the connection of these things to psychic power is sumultaneously easy to hypothesize and fantastically hard to prove.
The obstacles to proving what she’s claiming have been established for a very long time, and have in fact grown stronger as the understanding of human intelligence has deepened. She’s essentially running the same failed playbook of people decades ago but with slightly differently designed uniforms. But she’s no closer than they were to what she’s claiming.
…I’d have to guess, having not read the way she actually puts it…but an ostensible goal to distinguish the use of data analysis in sets that have DNA components & eugenics is at least plausibly not a bad thing…if one rife for people reading causation into correlated data
…if you dial in a DNA group that broadly corresponds to “white privilege” it doesn’t seem remarkable to observe they might be taller or longer lived than a demographic that polls lower for good healthcare outcomes…or diet…or education…or income…none of which (except maybe the diet thing where metabolising alcohol or whatever goes) are reliant on genetics per se…but the correlation seems worth considering when framing what might seem to be at issue & why it’s important not to bolt to a conclusion just because someone points out some numbers line up a certain way
…pretty much stuck on the fence about whether she walks the walk on that unless/until I read the thing…but she does a moderately passable job of talking the talk given half a chance…even if the guardian maybe didn’t ask her the same things I’d like to in the ways I might have picked?
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/12/kathryn-paige-harden-psychologist-genetics-education-school
My friend visited me for a few days so we went to the movies. We selected Godzilla Minus One instead of Poor Things thinking it would be more mind numbing but entertaining.
It didn’t start out well as I fell asleep bored from all the fucking commercials and missed the first 5 or so minutes of the movie and snoring to my friend’s dismay.
After that, it turned into one of the better movies I had seen in a while with an emotional impact that I didn’t expect.
Funny enough, it took a long deep shit on right wing Japanese’s 60 year campaign to alter history to their own liking (blaming the US entirely (instead of partially) for WW2, ignoring what they did in China and to the Chinese people among most other folks in Asia, and for their own actions that turned the WW2 Pacific Theater into a meat grinder for the Japanese.) It even took a swing at Japanese arrogance.
The writers knew their history (not just what the Japanese version of MAGA wanted them to read.)
The emotional impact occurred when the main hero was dealing with his PTSD and fighting off the nightmares he had as people around them were dealing with the trauma of the firebombing/death they endured at the hands of the USAAF. Even my friend was sniffling during the movie (at least it showed how far we matured as males as we didn’t even mock each other for having the feels.)
For me it struck home because I was reminded of the stories my parents told their healthcare workers about the Korean War and how my mom would wander around the dementia ward looking for her family.
Fans of old style Godzilla movies will be freaked out, I think. It lacks the wooden acting and irritating Kennis (Kenni is a term used to denote irritating cute and indestructible kids that the later ‘Zilla movies put in to cater to kids and that many ‘Zilla fans wished Godzilla would stomp on.) To be blunt it’s like they jammed in a serious emotional movie about post WW2 Japan with a minor Monster interlude.
The New Yorker has its own strange—vibe, I guess you’d call it—but it still does excellent work. Or it can, when it doesn’t slip into self-indulgent nonsense.
We have watched the Margaret Rutherford/Miss Marple oeuvre:
They’re fabulous, of course. They’re black and white, because Britain was still crippled by their experience in World War 2 and their loss of the colonies and the catastrophic Suez War, so while MGM was pumping out Technicolor musical extravaganzas Ealing Studios, or wherever these movies came from, were using technology from the 1920s.
The movies are everything that the nonnative Brit could want. And what I have experienced, as recently as the 1990s. Grand houses in the countryside. Shooting parties (which I didn’t fully participate in, although I have fired rifles at shooting ranges, and my flippant comment a while ago about shooting shoplifters was not meant to be taken seriously) and those normal commuter and long-distance trains with small compartments where you could get some peace and quiet and smoke and drink away. Has anyone taken a privatized train in Britain recently? It’s pure savagery. The Long Island Railroad is widely considered to be one of the worst managed in the world but some of those rail lines in England are even grimmer. I can just imagine what goes on in Scotland.
…our matt mentioned agatha christie & I have to say the haunting in venice outing for ken brannagh’s poirot was…uneven to be charitable…& frankly his mustache game leaves a lot to be desired compared to your ustinov or suchet eras…so…not entirely impressed
…haven’t got around to I-can’t-believe-they-made-another-indiana-jones-movie or whatever it’s called…but aim to
…& despite it being a zack snyder movie & thus irritating me in a variety of ways…rebel moon is not entirely rubbish…just…snydered away from being as good as it arguably could have been…& at least one bit of foreshadowing is laid on with a trowel but would probably count as a “spoiler”…so…whenever the next installment of grimdark not-star-wars turns up I’ll probably watch it
…also I think that bill nighy sitting in for iggy pop was a more than once thing that might be available to listen to as a podcast-style thing…as is richrd e grant reading wombles stories…which is pretty great, actually
I can’t excuse the Indiana Jones movies for how atrocious they handle actual archaeology so I’m 100% not their target audience and I also haven’t watched the most recent one yet.
However! We were joking that a tenured professor in his late 70s or however old Harrison Ford is who refuses to retire and let someone else have a chance at a steady job in their field? 100% realistic and plausible.
…oh…& I forgot to mention I’ve been dipping into brandon sanderson’s prolific output…there seems to be a few that are sort of standalone books but tie in to his bid to weave his various what-if-magic-worked-like-this series into a wider “cosmere”
…I mostly prefer the stormlight archive ones over the metalugical alchemist ones or the sort-of-like-the-boys-with-less-comic-book-ness steelheart ones…but I enjoyed tress of the emerald sea & am enjoying the frugal wizard’s handbook for surviving medieval england…so will probably read yumi & the nightmare painter along with the sunlit man to round things out
…the frugal wizard one is sort of like altered carbon meets a connecticut yankee in king arthur’s court so I may regret not having saved it for last…but I’m a sucker for sci fi & leaning in to the absurdity of the fantasy genre for comedy value so that’s probably a me thing?
ive started watching yu yu hakusho on netflix
and based on the whole 1 episode i watched last night…it seems pretty fun….keeps reasonably close to the anime too
well…so far anyways
and listening to grossstadgefluster – icke
I watched Bad Surgeon on Netflix this week and holy fuck what a shitshow. Quick summary is this dude was a surgeon claiming he could make artificial windpipes for people and he had at least 8 patients that folks know of. I say at least 8, because he had permission to do surgeries in Russia and Sweden and might have been operating elsewhere.
Top tier charlatan using humans as test subjects.
The part that I found so astounding is how easily he scammed so many women into believing his lies in relationships with him. Like one lady, a journalist!, he had her convinced they were getting married in a castle in Italy by the pope!
…I heard an interview one time on the BBC where that lady told the story herself & it was a real “wow, really?” kinda ride…complete with her actually saying “seems crazy now but when I thought [some crazy shit] seemed a bit nuts & tried to get some questions answered about it suddenly [insane shit swamps the field] & that part actually seemed to be true since there we were with these people in this place that I couldn’t really believe”
…made for a pretty compelling story that way…& I remember thinking she came off a lot more…well-balanced, you might say…than some of the coverage low key implied as I recall?
I can see that. I don’t think she’s unbalanced or anything, just incredibly gullible. As was the other woman who was with him.
Like if you’re dating someone and seems like he’s written straight out of a bad Harlequin romance (“My Love Affair with the Surgeon” or whatever), it’s too good to be true.
I’m saving my watch/read/listen for January BrainDrain fodder. Today the Christmas tree decorations 🎄, decor, table linens, and gnome bathroom will be/are being packed up and stored. Soon all that will be left are pine needles, some of which I will still be finding in March.
I haven’t watched or read anything worthwhile lately other than sports.
Just found this gem of a song and pretty cool band to get me to The Place That Makes Me Happy…
Eldest daughter brought back from Europe the gift that keeps on giving and tested positive for Covid yesterday. Nobody else has it yet & we are supposed to be hosting a NYE party tomorrow. Ugggggg.
Oh no!
I started watching the last season of Good Eats, and Alton Brown goes to some dark, explicitly apocalyptic places that surprised me from some of the earlier episodes I’d seen from time to time.
Evidently he was going through some tough times personally, breaking away away from his wife and her fundamentalist church. and that may have bubbled up in his cooking show. It’s still entertaining, though.
I’ve always found him to a have a dark streak simmering under the surface. Watch enough iron chef (cerca early 2000’s) back to back and you get a sense for it.