(no subject)
Oscar has started repeating his lines. Maybe I'm spending too much time with him. In any case, 'it's horrid how people go around these days saying things behind one's back that are perfectly true' or roughly to that effect is in A Woman of No Importance, and Dorian Gray if I remember correctly.
I've recently heard both Veruca Salt's cover of Straight Outta Compton, and Ben Folds's version of Bitches Ain't Shit. As well as Jonathon Coulter's Baby Got Back. It's not like a lounge version, which would just be for humor. Like, is any of this homage, or all irony? Someone told me Dynamite Hack did another one after their Boyz in the Hood cover. Trying to make it a cottage industry is lame. God, I heard one of Cube's latest ...embarrassing. Make more Friday movies. I can't believe it's the same guy who wrote Today Was a Good Day or No Vaseline. Speaking of No Vaseline...I downloaded a version, and someone blurred out the word 'Jew' for 'douche' in the line 'it's a case of divide and conquer cuz you let a Jew break up my crew' and 'you can't be the nigga for life crew, with a white Jew telling you what to do' -- I wonder if someone did that for Cube, or if Cube was making sure to cover his bases because he knew he was getting into the movie business?
Speaking of movies:
Scenes From A Marriage - Bergman's 6 hour series for TV. Plays like a play. Usually only two actors, a lot of dialogue. In color. Huge success. The moral is that guys are dicks, and that people are emotionally retarded, and that sex is important in a relationship.
Saraband -- same couple 30 years later, having been divorced for that long and not seeing each other. The moral of the story is that people don't change, guys are dicks, all good qualities come from women, and Swedish people always sit too close together. It bugs me.
Children of Heaven -- I'm done with fucking Majid Majidi, the Spielberg of Iran. 2 movies I've seen, 2 sickly sweet pieces of crap about kids. The only thing I hate more than overly sentimental pap is overly sentimental pap about kids.
Pickpocket - Bresson is God. Also, life is bleak, meaningless and shitty. People oversell the redemption angle; he's not really redeemed, she just needs a baby daddy. Not a happy ending, and not quite the same as the Dostoevsky thing where a bad guy is made good through a woman's love.
Capote -- have to give credit to the writer when everyone in the movie except Harper Lee is an asshole, but you still feel sympathy for all of them. Why the hell what's her nuts was nominated for best supporting actress here is beyond me. she didn't do anything special.
Put down Oscar long enough to read a book of interviews by Sue Blackmore with a bunch of leading neuroscientists and philosophers. Opinion was pretty much uniform in agreeing on a) materialism b) atheism c) lack of free will d) the uselessness of philosophy e) hatred of the chalmers zombie. Also, Ramachandran doesn't think animals are really conscious.
"If you mean 'Are my decisions not caused?' surely not. From everything we know, the brain is a causal machine. It goes from state to state to state as a result of antecedent conditions, and if the antecedent conditions were different, the state would have been different." - Pat Churchland.
"In Pat's[Churchland] case, methinks the lady doth protest too much, because she has no explanatory power whatsoever, not to mention the fact that she doesn't understand what we're saying. Pat just says consciousness is synaptic computation and ridicules any other possibility. Her view of chemical synapses carrying consciousness is exactly what she said, pixie dust in the synapses. Why should neurotransmitter chemicals cause conscious experience?" -- Stuart Hameroff
"Essentially philosophers ask good questions, but they have no techniques for getting the answers. Therefore you should not pay too much attention to their discussions. And we can ask what progress they have made. A lot of problems that once were regarded as philosophical, such as what is an atom, are now regarded as part of physics. Some people have argued that the main purpose of a philosopher is to deal with the unsolved problems, but the problems eventually get solved, and they get solved in a scientific way. If you ask how many cases in the past has a philosopher been successful at solving a problem, as far as we can say there are no such cases." - Francis Crick
"Philosophers pose interesting questions, but their answers usually are not very useful or meaningful. Scientists are very different, you tend to be more humble because you know you've got a very limited ability to understand a system with even three of four variables. " - Christof Koch
I've recently heard both Veruca Salt's cover of Straight Outta Compton, and Ben Folds's version of Bitches Ain't Shit. As well as Jonathon Coulter's Baby Got Back. It's not like a lounge version, which would just be for humor. Like, is any of this homage, or all irony? Someone told me Dynamite Hack did another one after their Boyz in the Hood cover. Trying to make it a cottage industry is lame. God, I heard one of Cube's latest ...embarrassing. Make more Friday movies. I can't believe it's the same guy who wrote Today Was a Good Day or No Vaseline. Speaking of No Vaseline...I downloaded a version, and someone blurred out the word 'Jew' for 'douche' in the line 'it's a case of divide and conquer cuz you let a Jew break up my crew' and 'you can't be the nigga for life crew, with a white Jew telling you what to do' -- I wonder if someone did that for Cube, or if Cube was making sure to cover his bases because he knew he was getting into the movie business?
Speaking of movies:
Scenes From A Marriage - Bergman's 6 hour series for TV. Plays like a play. Usually only two actors, a lot of dialogue. In color. Huge success. The moral is that guys are dicks, and that people are emotionally retarded, and that sex is important in a relationship.
Saraband -- same couple 30 years later, having been divorced for that long and not seeing each other. The moral of the story is that people don't change, guys are dicks, all good qualities come from women, and Swedish people always sit too close together. It bugs me.
Children of Heaven -- I'm done with fucking Majid Majidi, the Spielberg of Iran. 2 movies I've seen, 2 sickly sweet pieces of crap about kids. The only thing I hate more than overly sentimental pap is overly sentimental pap about kids.
Pickpocket - Bresson is God. Also, life is bleak, meaningless and shitty. People oversell the redemption angle; he's not really redeemed, she just needs a baby daddy. Not a happy ending, and not quite the same as the Dostoevsky thing where a bad guy is made good through a woman's love.
Capote -- have to give credit to the writer when everyone in the movie except Harper Lee is an asshole, but you still feel sympathy for all of them. Why the hell what's her nuts was nominated for best supporting actress here is beyond me. she didn't do anything special.
Put down Oscar long enough to read a book of interviews by Sue Blackmore with a bunch of leading neuroscientists and philosophers. Opinion was pretty much uniform in agreeing on a) materialism b) atheism c) lack of free will d) the uselessness of philosophy e) hatred of the chalmers zombie. Also, Ramachandran doesn't think animals are really conscious.
"If you mean 'Are my decisions not caused?' surely not. From everything we know, the brain is a causal machine. It goes from state to state to state as a result of antecedent conditions, and if the antecedent conditions were different, the state would have been different." - Pat Churchland.
"In Pat's[Churchland] case, methinks the lady doth protest too much, because she has no explanatory power whatsoever, not to mention the fact that she doesn't understand what we're saying. Pat just says consciousness is synaptic computation and ridicules any other possibility. Her view of chemical synapses carrying consciousness is exactly what she said, pixie dust in the synapses. Why should neurotransmitter chemicals cause conscious experience?" -- Stuart Hameroff
"Essentially philosophers ask good questions, but they have no techniques for getting the answers. Therefore you should not pay too much attention to their discussions. And we can ask what progress they have made. A lot of problems that once were regarded as philosophical, such as what is an atom, are now regarded as part of physics. Some people have argued that the main purpose of a philosopher is to deal with the unsolved problems, but the problems eventually get solved, and they get solved in a scientific way. If you ask how many cases in the past has a philosopher been successful at solving a problem, as far as we can say there are no such cases." - Francis Crick
"Philosophers pose interesting questions, but their answers usually are not very useful or meaningful. Scientists are very different, you tend to be more humble because you know you've got a very limited ability to understand a system with even three of four variables. " - Christof Koch