Quote of the day

"He urged me not to fall into the trap that so many aging directors fall into – that the women get younger and younger and nuder and nuder. That's all I needed to hear. I most definitely intend for the women in my films to get younger and younger and nuder and nuder."
- Lars von Trier

Midnight in Paris

I already mentioned on Facebook that I liked this movie, but I didn't say why.  The movie has a dash of wish fulfillment (who hasn't wanted to be able to engage with their long-dead heroes?), some amusing brief character sketches, and an over-all framework that actually works.  Meeting with people of the past has been done before in writing and in film (the Odyssey, Dante's Inferno, and the Riverworld series take the people OUT of their native environment; this movie and many time-travel stories allow them to be viewed in their native time), and their is a danger of getting carried away by dumping too many past characters into the story to the detriment of the main character.  In this movie, the other characters are enjoyable but actually bring the main character into better focus.

My wife Jocelyn loves movies with costumes and scenery from other places and times, but she was a bit worried at the beginning that the director seemed obsessed with displaying too many Parisian vistas.  Do not fear, this does not degenerate into a family travel album.

My favorites in this movie were Adriana (Cotillard), Hemingway (Stoll), and Dali (Brody).   I never noticed how much Owen Wilson resembled Woody Allen before, but he seemed to absorb Allen's character in a younger body.

Quote of the day

He experienced her presence in his house not like that of a dog, which has no secrets from human beings, but like that of a cat, which is itself a secret -- and to that extent he felt free and unthreatened.
  - Harry Mulisch, "The Discovery of Heaven"

Quote of the day

"Never tell a woman anything, because she'll misuse it in order to understand you."
- Onno, from Harry Mulisch's The Discovery of Heaven

Quote of the day

Basically, we don't have any macro models that really work, in the sense that models "work" in biology or meteorology. Often, therefore the measure of a good theory is whether itseems to point us in the direction of models that might work someday.
 Noahpinion

Who knew (St.) Augustine was a Berber?

Language Log has a post focusing on the Berber language as spoken in Libya.  Apparently, there is a sizable (suppressed) Berber minority there.  I think I first heard about Berber in the context of an article I read as a child about the Tuareg (Tuareg is a Berber language), notable because "In Tuareg society women do not traditionally wear the veil, whereas men do."


Apparently, Berber is an Afro-Asiatic language, like Arab, Hebrew, and ancient Egyptian (which survives in daily use only among Egyptian Christians (Copts) who use it in their services like Catholics used to use Greek and Latin).

Quote from Dave Barry, in Language Log:

"The Hawaiian language is quite unusual because when the original Polynesians came in their canoes, most of their consonants were washed overboard in a storm, and they arrived here with almost nothing but vowels. All the streets have names like Kal'ia'iou'amaa'aaa'eiou, and many street signs spontaneously generate new syllables during the night."

My own explanation for this was the Hawaiians were once united with the Czechs, divorced, and in the settlement one got the vowels and the other the consonants.

"A good samurai will parry the blow"

She must have loved that quote, I lost track of how often she quoted it.  It can't have been too many, because that would be wrong -- and for me there was nothing wrong with this book.  I'm not sure which book this one pushes off my top ten list, but it's position is secure.

Art, science, religion, philosophy, growing up, settling vs. striving....this book weaves them all into a fabric that wraps reality and dreams together.  At various points I might have told friends what I though this book was about, but that changes as you read it.  Unlike Cien Años de Soledad, which also follows a family through the generations, this book comes into sharper and sharper focus as the years go by, and you realize the character you at first enjoyed is really background for the more vibrant character you are enjoying now.

One point that should be kept in mind: this book has no relation to the Tom Cruise movie of the same name, and only a passing relation to samurais - the title is an allusion to the Kurosawa movie "The Seven Samurai", which is a favorite of one of the characters.  It does have some negative criticism for the movie:

Cast your mind back to this film for one moment.  Identify, if you can, a suitable moment at which to place your arm around the shoulders of your companion and kiss her.  You cannot?  No more could I.  After half an hour, no suitable moment presenting itself, I chose an unsuitable moment -- I was rebuked.

I really want to recommend this book, but I'm not sure that everybody can appreciate it.  Although the book has no sluggish parts, it does use some techniques that might be confusing and off-putting if you don't get them.  There will be things beyond your comprehension you might want to just skip over, but they are brief.  If you are contemplating suicide, there are some helpful techniques to avoid it (for example, watching "The Importance of Being Earnest"), but they might not work -- but if you do commit suicide after reading this book, it is not because the book depressed you, it is because the depression was just too deep for the book to lift.

Quote of the day

Nearly finished the book (highly recommended for those who crave highly intelligent reading material, and aren't put off by the occasional challenge), so here's one more:

My mother went to a Swiss finishing school -- her mother was Lebanese, and frightfully cosmopolitan -- and the girls were all made to study French, German and English, with Italian for bad behavior.

(Helen DeWitt, "The Last Samurai")

Shipwrecks in Shakespeare

I don't think they got it quite right tonight on Jeopardy, although I might not have gotten the text of the question completely straight - I thought it was something like "One of the two plays of Shakespeare where the action began with a shipwreck".  My first thought was "The Tempest", and that's the answer all three contestants got.  The second choice offered was Twelfth Night, which was not the first thing I thought of when looking for a second choice.

How about The Comedy of Errors?

From Act I, Scene I (bolding mine):

O, had the gods done so, I had not now
Worthily term'd them merciless to us!
For, ere the ships could meet by twice five leagues,
We were encounterd by a mighty rock;
Which being violently borne upon,
Our helpful ship was splitted in the midst;
So that, in this unjust divorce of us,
Fortune had left to both of us alike
What to delight in, what to sorrow for.
Her part, poor soul! seeming as burdened
With lesser weight but not with lesser woe,
Was carried with more speed before the wind;
And in our sight they three were taken up
By fishermen of Corinth, as we thought.
At length, another ship had seized on us;
And, knowing whom it was their hap to save,
Gave healthful welcome to their shipwreck'd guests;
And would have reft the fishers of their prey,
Had not their bark been very slow of sail;
And therefore homeward did they bend their course.
Thus have you heard me sever'd from my bliss;
That by misfortunes was my life prolong'd,
To tell sad stories of my own mishaps.

Since nobody guessed that, I guess I'll never know why that was not considered a valid answer

Quote of the day

"Andy Warhol is still famous for saying 43 years ago that in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. It’s more likely that in the future everyone will be famous to 15 people."


- Steve Sailer

Quote of the day

Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,

Now patches where some leanness of the soil's

Broke into moss or substances like boils;

Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him

Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim

Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

Robert Browning, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"

Quote of the day

An American in Britain has sources of solace available nowhere else on earth.  One of the marvelous things about the country is the multitudes of fried chicken franchises selling fried chicken from states not known for fried chicken on the other side of the Atlantic.  If you're feeling a little depressed you can turn to Tennessee Fried Chicken, if you're in black despair an Iowa Fried Chicken will put things in perspective, if life seems worthless and death out of reach you can see if somewhere on the island an Alaska Fried Chicken is frying chicken according to a recipe passed down by the Inuit from time immemorial.
   - Helen deWitt, The Last Samurai

Quote of the day

"I conclude that economics is not yet a science.  Economics is most like a science when people do not care about the outcome of the argument."
- Tyler Cowen

I had to apologize last night....

Of course, it is not all that rare for me to apologize.  When I inadvertently jostle somebody, or I step on somebody's foot, a heartfelt "sorry" or "get out of my way" slips past my lips without much emotion.

But this time I was actually wrong.

One of the most likely things for me to order at a bar is "a Grand Marnier, straight up in a snifter".  I've been ordering this since the 80s without the occurrence of any disasters.  Sometimes I just say "Grand Marnier", figuring it's the most likely way for it to be served - in a brandy glass, without any ice.

Last night, before the RPO concert at Max's across the street, I ordered a "Grand Marnier" and the bartender asked "neat?" and I said "straight up".  She brought me a concoction I didn't even recognize, cloudy and cold.   After looking at her incredulously, I repeated "Grand Marnier, straight up"?  She nodded cheerfully.  I informed her what I thought "straight up" meant...she seemed dubious, but set the original glass aside and poured me a new one the way I wanted it.  As I enjoyed it, I decided to look up "straight up".

To my amazement, it was exactly the concoction she brought me in the first place....strained through ice to chill it and then served without any further ice to water it down (logical, if you want your drink cold).  For almost thirty years I've been ordering drinks "straight up" without finding out what that actually meant (OK, the article DOES say

"Straight up" means "chilled and served without ice in a cocktail glass" but is often used to mean "neat."

In retrospect, there have been times when bartenders asked  whether I wanted it chilled, but I thought they were just offering an additional unrelated service.  On this occasion, since I had just overruled her "neat" (thinking I was actually confirming it) she couldn't have asked for further clarification without seeming argumentative.

I bought the original glass as well to get an idea of what I've been ordering all these years (not bad, actually, but the temperature tempts you to pour it down the throat much faster than is wise) and apologized.  I'll be ordering it "neat in a snifter" from now on (although back in the 80s "neat", which was the first word I learned for the concept (in a Chinese cookbook, of all places), usually got the bartender to ask "You mean 'straight up'?"

Am I the victim of regional language change, or just delusional?

Favorite mistranslation involving goats....

This has been around for a while....a question posted to a computer oriented help group:

This is question, engish is faulty therefore the right excused is 
requested.  Thank google to translate to help.  SORRY!!!!! 

At often, the goat-time install a error is vomit.   To how many times like
the wind, a pole, and the dragon?   Install 2,3 repeat, spank, vomit blows 

14:14:01.869 - INFO
[edu.internet2.middleware.shibboleth.common.config.profile.JSPErrorHandlerB eanDefinitionParser:45]
- Parsing configuration for JSP error handler. 

Not precise the vomit but with aspect similar, is vomited concealed in fold of
goat-time lumber?   goat-time see like the wind, pole, and dragon?  This
insult to father's stones?    JSP error handler with wind, pole, dragon with
intercourse to goat-time?  Or chance lack of skill with a goat-time? 

Please apologize for your stupidity.  There are a many thank you 

Hypotheses included anything from a parody to an attempted back-translation:

Often, I get a program error on install. How much do I have to configure? I tried a re-install 2 or three times, and it brings up errors.
Not the same error, but similar: are errors hidden in the program log? A problem with the calling object? JSP error handler configuration connection at runtime? Or perhaps a misunderstanding of the program?

Obscure segue of the month

The prize goes to one of my favorite bloggers (my most frequently hat-tipped, too!), Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution, who bafflingly connects a post about the responsibilities identical twins might have to each other (the idea is here that a twin who reveals details about their genome automatically reveals the same about the twin) with a post about swimsuit pictures.

Amazingly, this actually works.  In the second post, the question is whether women who reveal their bodies are violating some duty to OTHER women not to be seen as sex objects (making both posts about externalities toward other members of a genetic group - one very specific, the other everybody having two X chromosomes).

Reassuringly, the swimsuit pictures are OK by Katja Grace, the philosophical writer of the second post:

In sum, I agree that women who look like ‘sex objects’ increase the expectation by viewers of more women being ‘sex objects’. I think this is a rational and socially useful response on the part of viewers, relative to continuing to believe in a lower rate of sex objects amongst women. I also think it is virtually certain that in any given case the women in question should go on advertising themselves as sex objects, since they clearly produce a lot of benefit for themselves and viewers that way, and the externality is likely miniscule. 

Personally, I think the women in question could go quite a bit further in advertising themselves as sex objects than by just posing for swimsuit issues.

Quote of the day

"Polygamy ends when children cease to be a net economic asset.  As society progresses and urbanizes, there are cheaper ways of having sex with multiple women, if that is one's goal. "


- Tyler Cowen

Sensitivity

Haven't blogged as such for ages, mostly just posted items on Facebook.  Makes sense for bits you just want to pass along without much commentary of your own.

Here's an item from back when (via, no surprise, Marginal Revolution) to break that more-or-less silent streak.  You've probably heard about sensitivity workshops - some unhappy college student says something racist or otherwise insensitive and is sentenced to some sort of re-education, usually without the accompanying risk of death common in Maoist days.  The item is about the opposite, humorously suggesting workshops for people in how NOT to be offended:

Exercise #3: An Awkward Moment.  Stand before the group and tells a story about a time you inadvertently gave offense.  After each story, the group chants, "It was no big deal!"

That's the sort of affirmation I could live with.

Selene of Alexandria

I just might get this book for free.  If you're interested, try Selene Giveaway .  Just click on the "Selene of Alexandria" link and you'll get a synopsis of this historical fiction set in the time of Hypatia ("SELENE is bright, impulsive, stubborn, and a little spoiled by her father, a city councilor.  Since her mother’s death, she longs to forgo the privileges of her class to become a physician—an impossible dream for upper class girls who never engage in a profession. ").

I enjoyed the author's commentary on the movie Agora (set in the same time), so I'd look forward to reading her work..