Category: Religion

As only celluloid can deliver

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Just got back from V For Vendetta (imdb | rotten tomatoes). I liked it, quite a bit actually. More than I expected to, given the negative reviews I read when it first came out. Not sure what I was reading, since it’s carrying about 75% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The storyline, and the implications of the setup, were very well done, and they managed to portray the dystopian future without making the fascism over the top (usually movies in such settings are like watching the marching cartoon hammers from The Wall). There was just enough darkness, hope, and relevance to make it seem like fantasy and warning all at once.

.:.

This NY Review essay of the new book by two writers of Daily Kos (which I found on POGGE) contains some interesting theories, such as the one that Howard Dean’s campaign was attacked from the inside by other leading Democratic candidates (John Kerry included), large political donors and media advisers for subverting the usual “kingmaking” process.
While I find this, if true, very interesting, I do not find it terribly surprising. I suspect the Republicans would have welcomed a fight against Dean (given the political capital their manufactured war had temporarily given them), so it was unlikely they who made sure Dean’s half-crazed yell from an Iowa stage was made the subject of such mockery.

.:.

Still on some heavy topics, Scott Adams — the writer of Dilbert — often says interesting things on his blog, but I took a special interest in this one: he asks why he must be forced to respect all religious beliefs, even the ones he finds ridiculous. He stops short of saying they’re all ridiculous, but I get the feeling he wanted to. One of the commenters sums it up nicely: “I think Scott’s saying that tolerance, as a principle, shouldn’t be taken so far as to distort reason.”

Somebody write that down.

A damnable doctrine

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I was listening to an old episode of Alan Cross’s Ongoing History Of New Music podcast, in which he talked about the cocktail party effect.The Wikipedia article talks about recognizing one voice in a crowded room, but Alan talked about being able to recognize a song playing on a stereo, even in a very crowded and noisy room (like a bar). My brother and I have always been really good at this, to the point where I can sometimes name songs that no one else hears. I could never understand why that was; do my brother and I just subconsciously listen for music in the background? Could be. Do we happen to know way more songs than most people and therefore recognize something? I doubt it; I know a lot of songs but I’ve been in bars with people who know as many or more and who didn’t hear what I heard. Are some people better at “source separation” than others? I have no idea. Maybe I’m like Bruce Willis in unbreakable and this is my superpower. ‘Cept not-so-super.

Does anyone else do this? Identify songs from hearing one or two measures here, a couple of notes there, scattered in the background of a noisy bar? Is it that no one can do it? Or that no one but us music obsessives tries?

.:.

Salon has an interesting interview with Edward O. Wilson about “why we’re hard-wired to form tribalistic religions, denies that ‘evolutionism’ is a faith, and says that heaven, if it existed, would be hell.”

“Possibly the greatest philosophical question of the 21st century is the resolution of religious faith with the growing realization of the very different nature of the material world. You could say that we evolved to accept one truth — the religious instinct — but then discovered another. And having discovered another, what are we to do? You might say it’s just best to go ahead and accept the two worldviews and let them live side by side. I see no other solution. I believe they can use their different worldviews to solve some of the great problems — for example, the environment. But generally speaking, the difficulty in saying they can live side by side is a sectarianism in the world today, and traditional religions can be exclusionary and used to justify violence and war. You just can’t deny that this is a major problem.”

It’s good readin’. It also reminds me why I’m eternally grateful to my parents for making me read and think, as opposed to memorize and recite.

.:.

[bragging uncle] My nephew, who’s 6, finished second in his age range in a chess tournament last week. [/bragging uncle]