First, let me quote hattrickflyer: 'People who are saying it's "the best comic book movie ever" are doing it a disservice - it's so far and above the best comic book movie ever that there's not even a discussion.' Indeed, saying that judges it as a genre film, when it is more.
The intriguing depth that lay beneath parts of Batman Begins is full-flung here. It's well worth it. Only complaint is that Batman gets lost in the situation of the whole second half of the film. This would have been fine if he wasn't the title character, but I guess you could never get a Batman film greenlit by the studio where he wasn't.
Which sounds more liberal and which sounds more conservative?
Restricting M-rated video games because they increase obesity - sedentary lifestyle.
Restrictive M-rated video games because they either make people violent or glorify violence.
I think the first one is more liberal and the second one more conservative. Liberals are more about issues about a person's physical well-being while the conservatives are more interested in issues dealing with morality.
I've often seen the phrase "quod me nutrit, me destruit" attributed to Seneca, sometimes specifically the Epistulae Morales. When I searched for its context out of curiosity, I found myself unable to locate its origin. Does anyone have a specific letter I ought to look for, or is this simply a common misattribution?
I once found a link to a website here but I lost the link and I don't manage to find it again.
It was a side with latin texts/prose, I think the works from one single person, but I forgot as well by whom (I'm really no help here.). You could read it in Latin or the same text in many other languages, or compare two languages so that you could put the latin text at one side and in another language on the other. And I think remember the website was held in a brownish colour. Bad description, I know.
Still, someone can understand any of this and perhaps even has an idea which site this is?
Jul. 19th, 2008 @ 10:51 am Cuba reforms turn to state land
did the Romans say mane bonum to one another? I realised I don't know this, or even where I might find out, short of reading through every piece of Latin drama we have. What other greetings do we know of besides the hackney'd salve?
I decided to do a little slideshow for my Post-Materialist slot in the Times this week -- basically, these are all the chairs I photographed this year, crammed into a short YouTube video with a somewhat rushed commentary.
Judging by the comments, while some found 5000 Years of Chairs in 5 Minutes "very interesting", others were mystified. "What’s the point?" demanded Steve, apparently some kind of academic, "If I received this presentation from a student, I would fail him/her." Jared's jab was more sly: "The anticipation of a conclusion or insightful comment kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time!"
I figured people wouldn't want a ton of editorializing in a little slideshow of chairs, but for the record here's the thinking behind the piece.
1. Things are just as valid and interesting when they're in use out in the world as they are when they're new and standing in a showroom, and possibly more so.
2. This is what Rem Koolhaas called (in a recent edition of Domus D'Autore) "post-occupancy design" -- the stuff that happens to design after it's left the designer's workshop (and architecture after it's left the studio) is the real test of its quality and character. Occupancy and use shouldn't see the designer and the architect melting away. They should stick around, take notes, and take photos. The processes of time and decay can be beautiful. The way people use stuff and adapt it can be instructive.
3. You don't have to buy stuff to be smitten with it -- public furniture that we just see on our travels (and maybe photograph) is worth writing about too. That's one of the things The Post-Materialist is all about.
4. There's also the idea that things come full circle: the slideshow takes us from paleolithic stone benches on the island of Orkney to modern concrete benches in the same place. There's a "before industrial design" and an "after industrial design", and they look remarkably similar. That's something I think Jan Lindenberg's Sweatshop 2.0 project was about -- coming up with chair design that deconstructs the distinction between amateur and professional, between the past and the present, between new and secondhand... and between shelves and chairs!
5. One word: recycle!
Finally, though, the slideshow is a little tribute to the dizzying diversity of forms out there, and about the kind of beauty -- or ugliness, or oddness -- that compels you to turn your camera on an inanimate object. Do I get to graduate from your course now, Steve, whatever the hell it is?
Jul. 19th, 2008 @ 03:49 am Daniel Quinn on Food Production
Please feel free to rage against this guy in the comments, I have an autistic relative and believe me this is no act. Also, if you can stomach reading under the cut, I find it funny that quite a few conservatives like to say that there isn't racism any more and thus affirmative action should be stopped, while their fellow conservatives are still being incredibly racist.
Summary: On his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage claimed that autism is "[a] fraud, a racket. ... I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.' " ( Read more... )
Jul. 18th, 2008 @ 11:43 am Fear on the American Interstate
"You know it and I know it, everyone goes over 65, the police need only to wade out into the pool of innocents and pluck 2 or 3 out a week and shake them down for cash; it’s so ingrained into our national conciousness that we don’t seem to think that’s odd. But honestly, think about it; what value does a law have if no one obeys it? It just makes a mockery of the country where the law exists. I’d be laughing right now if it weren’t for the jackbooted marauders prowling the highways at this very moment looking for poor innocent working men to harass and extort."
Absent evidence of physical harm, or psychological harm (let's face it, a sizable fraction of all "beliefs" might be considered as arguably psychologically harmful) of the kind that inevitably results in sociopathy, I do not believe the State ought be seizing the childrens.
It's a cliche, yes, but at which point does one draw the line. Right? Some Christians probably believe homosexuals and even non-believers are at least as deplorable as POC, or that they themselves are least in a similar stead, as to superiority, as does White Pride Mom. Some Islamic people probably believe in the destruction of infidels and Jews and others. Etc, you get the drift.
Yah, sure, send the kid home from school with instruction not to return with her mom's heart on her sleeve, as it were, but seize the children?
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2. This is what Rem Koolhaas called (in a recent edition of Domus D'Autore) "post-occupancy design" -- the stuff that happens to design after it's left the designer's workshop (and architecture after it's left the studio) is the real test of its quality and character. Occupancy and use shouldn't see the designer and the architect melting away. They should stick around, take notes, and take photos. The processes of time and decay can be beautiful. The way people use stuff and adapt it can be instructive.
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