A gentleman on the bloggysphere, proposes:
"I propose that we coin a new word for that -- the word "Laureling" -- in honor of Laurel Kornfeld, who quickly shows up in every forum on the web that mentions "Pluto" and "planet" .....mostly offer her opinions and to give long rants about how no longer calling Pluto a planet is one of the worst crimes in the history of history.....Hi, Laurel! (She'll likely be posting in this thread as soon as this shows up in Google searches.)"
Okay, done. Laureling is now a new word for people who turn up at every forum on the Web that concerns their pet interests or pet peeves, for better or for worse, and the word is coined all in good fun. Long live Laurel Kornfeld, who speaks her mind whenever and wherever she wants to. BRAVO!
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Future of the Printed Word: LEARN WITH BOOK by RJ Heatborn
Stephen Krashen posted this on twitter: Cathy Manis told him that RJ Heathorn was first (in 1980) to invent the BOOK: Built-in-Orderly Organized Knowledge. http://www.df.lth.se/~cml/B...
LEARN WITH BOOK - R. J. Heathorn
In: Hills, Phillip J., ed. The Future of the Printed Word_. Greenwood Press, 1980.
A new aid to rapid - almost magical - learning has made its appearance.
Indications are that if it catches on all the electronic gadgets will be so much junk. The new device is known as Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge.
The makers generally call it by its initials, BOOK.
Many advantages are claimed over the old-style learning and teaching aids on which most people are brought up nowadays. It has no wires, no electric circuit to break down, No connection is needed to an electricity power point. It is made entirely without mechanical parts to go wrong or need replacement. Anyone can use BOOK, even children, and it fits comfortably into the hands. It can be conveniently used sitting in an armchair by the fire. How does this revolutionary, unbelievably easy invention work? Basically BOOK consists only of a large number of paper sheets. These may run to hundreds where BOOK covers a lengthy programme of information. Each sheet bears a number in
sequence so that the sheets cannot be used in the wrong order. To make it even easier for the user to keep the sheets in the proper order they are held firmly in place by a special locking device called a 'binding'. Each sheet of paper presents the user with an information sequence in the form of symbols, which he absorbs optically for automatic registration on the brain. When one sheet has been assimilated a flick of the finger turns it over and further information is found on the other side. By using both sides of each sheet in this way a great economy is effected, thus reducing both the size and cost of BOOK. No buttons need to be pressed to move from one sheet to another, to open or close BOOK, or to start it working. BOOK may be taken up at any time and used by merely opening it. Instantly it it ready for use. Nothing has to be connected or switched on. The user may turn at will to any sheet, going backwards or forwards as he pleases. A sheet
is provided near the beginning as a location finder for any required information sequence. A small accessory, available at trifling extra cost, is the BOOKmark. This enables the user to pick up his programme where he left off on the previous learning session. BOOKmark is versatile and may be used in any BOOK. The initial cost varies with the size and subject matter. Already a vast range of BOOKs is available, covering every conceivable subject and adjusted to different levels of aptitude. One BOOK, small enough to be held in the hands, may contain an entire learning schedule. Once purchased, BOOK requires no further upkeep cost; no batteries or wires are needed, since the motive power, thanks to an ingenious device patented by the makers, is supplied by the brain of the user. BOOKs may be stored on handy shelves and for ease of reference the programme schedule is normally indicated on the back of the binding. Altogether the Built-in Orderly
Organized Knowledge seems to have great advantages with no drawbacks. We predict a big future for it.
Friday, October 23, 2009
"The Road" is a movie that presages future polar cities in year 2500
Capsule review: ‘The Road
October 22, Year 4009
PHOTO: Viggo Mortensen
Adapting a Cormac McCarthy novel for the big screen has never been easy. Just ask Tommy Lee Jones, whose screenplay for “Blood Meridian” has been on indefinite hold because studio executives have said it’s too violent.
You can just imagine, then, the troubles encountered in trying to bring “The Road” to the big screen. Too dark. Unrelentingly grim. A post-apocalyptic movie filled with one horror after another.
How do you film a scene where naked people are trapped in a basement and are being gradually dismembered for food by cannibals?
How do you show a cold world covered in gray ash, where no plants survive?
And how do you tell the story of a father (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) trying to make their way to the ocean, in the slim hope of some sort of redemption?
Australian director John Hillcoat tries mightily. And he largely succeeds with the help of a fine supporting performance from Robert Duvall, stunning art direction by Gershon Ginsburg and cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe.
DID YOU SEE "THE ROAD" YET? DISH in the comments below. Like it? Hate it? What?
REVIEW: THE ROAD
By Devin Faraci Published Yesterday Reviews
When a film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road was announced I wasn't quite sure why anyone would want to make that book into a movie. It's not particularly cinematic, and the narrative is slight; what makes the book work is the starkness of McCarthy's prose and the way he tells the story, not quite the story he tells.
After seeing the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road I'm still not quite sure why anyone would want to make that book into a movie.
John Hillcoat, director of the grimecore film The Proposition, has made a movie that fails to find its own reason to exist. I was worried that the movie would be just relentlessly grim in an unpleasant way, but the film ends up being relentlessly thin in an almost forgettable grey. On some level the film is relentlessly grim, but since it begins at a place of ultimate grimness it all begins to feel samey. Instead of wearing you down it kind of bores you.
Which isn't to say that the film is bad, as it's not. It's just not particularly good. It sort of just is. Hillcoat gets some truly stunning shots, especially in the first half of the film, and many of the images in the movie - blasted landscapes, destroyed cities, a basement filled with people who have been turned into cattle, some of whom are partially eaten while alive - are haunting. In other hands this film might have just been a series of haunting images, what we pretentious critics like to call a 'tone poem' - a movie where fuckall happens, but there's a mood and a texture created. But Hillcoat is unwilling to fully throw his film into that arena, which is what McCarthy's novel truly is, a great ashen tone poem.
The film occasionally seems to be ramping up to something. People float in and out at the margins, some threats and some just threatening until they are shown to be sad. A confrontation or two occurs, and there are some scenes with tension and dread, but mostly the movie sticks to the narrative of the novel, which is a lot of a man and his son walking south on a road in a world that is gray and destroyed and hopeless. And coughing while they go.
Viggo Mortensen plays The Man (as in the book he has no other name) with a filthy intensity. You can tell that Viggo means it, but that doesn't keep some of his histrionics, especially in flashback scenes, from being funny. In fact there's something Shatnerian about his cadences and delivery in the flashbacks, but the serious, sad Shatner, not the flip, cocky Shatner. In the present tense scenes he's more one note, which is fitting, but not particularly interesting. Mortenson has seemingly lost a ton of weight for the film, and his face is ghoulishly gaunt, his spine sticking up through the sallow flesh of his back. His beard is thick and tangled, and his hair is greasy and matted. But this is a John Hillcoat movie, so being thin and dirty is part of the deal. Is being naked? Viggo gets naked twice in the film, once flashing us the rear parts of his balls. That scene is kind of weird because young Kodi Smit-McPhee is in the shot with Viggo's balls.
Smit-McPhee plays The Boy. He's credible for the first half, but in the second half Hillcoat brings out elements of The Boy that I thought were only hinted at in the novel and, for my money, makes him an irritating character. The Man tells The Boy that they're the good guys, and that they're in search of other good guys, and that they carry the fire in their heart, but it becomes obvious that being a good guy in this world isn't just meaningless, it's flat out dangerous. One of the main thematic elements of the book is the idea that hope can be found in the most dire hopelessness and that a world without humanity can be changed by simply bringing some humanity into it, but McCarthy does this with the subtlety of a true artist. Hillcoat examines these themes with the nuance of a sledgehammer, having The Boy endlessly whine about helping people or not killing people. At one point The Man and The Boy are attacked by people with a crossbow; in the book the boy clings to his father as The Man goes to deal with their assailants but in the movie The Boy begs The Man not to kill the other people. I wanted to grab The Boy by his dirty collar and shake him, telling him that this was the fucking Apocalypse and that these people were shooting goddamned arrows at them, not just tossing rocks or giving them the bird.
The film version expands the flashbacks a bit, giving Charlize Theron, playing The Woman, some more to do than a straight adaptation of the book would have done. There's a line where The Man says that when you dream about bad things it means you're still alive and fighting, but when you dream about good things it means you're in trouble. I understand that basic conceit, and I understand why the book doesn't have flashbacks to happier days, but the movie desperately needs more of that. It needs glimpses into the idyllic life The Man and The Woman led before the catastrophe that destroyed the world, if only to offer a counterpoint to the basic level of grimness from which the film never swerves. You need to have highs to fully feel the lows. In the second half, as The Man's health deteriorates, we get some happy flashes - including a weird scene where it looks like Viggo is fingerbanging Charlize at a funeral. Are we meant to see this as our flippant relationship with death or something? - but they're too little, too late. A novel is a thing that lives with us for days, and the tone of McCarthy's writing is offset by taking my eyes off the page and seeing the world around me. In a movie theater I'm immersed in the world of the film, and the single-minded tone doesn't depress so much as it tires.
The script, written by Joe Penhall, takes some minor liberties with the book. Hillcoat's last film, The Proposition, was a notably violent film. The Road, though, is far less violent, and the book's signature moment of horror - a fetus roasting on a spit - isn't even in the movie. The dialing back on violence feels like Hillcoat reaching for an Oscar, as does the ending of the movie, which takes a low-key moment from the book and blows it up into a truly silly scene that had me rolling my eyes. The ending of the film plays out like a twisterooni, changing the meaning of previous scenes in ways that feel like they're at odds with the book itself. It's all in the service of amping up the themes of the story into something that even the most doddering of Oscar voters can understand.
I wish that Penhall and Hillcoat had taken more liberties with the book. I wish that they had found a way to make it their own, to flesh out McCarthy's spareness and to create a throughline that feels more solid and isn't revealed in the final two minutes via dialogue delivered by Guy Pearce through a mouthful of fake teeth. Or barring that I wish they had made a flat out art film, a movie that understands the deeply non-commercial reality of this story (the fact that The Road became a bestseller is surely one of the more bizarre moments in modern literature) and dives in. Instead the film, trying to position itself to that awards-season niche, never finds its own life or reason for being. Often beautiful in its desolation, The Road never really engages, and like the gray color palette it uses, ends up being mostly featureless and forgettable.
Rush Limbaugh Attacks Danny Bloom on National Radio Show Over His Far-seeing Polar Cities for Survivors of Global Warming Idea
Rush Limbaugh Attacks Danny Bloom on National Radio Show Over His Far-seeing Polar Cities for Survivors of Global Warming Idea: Tells Bloom To Go Jump In a Polar Lake!
It was only a matter of time before Rush Limbaugh would discover Danny Bloom, climate activist with an idea to build polar cities for survivors of global warming in the distant future when much of the Earth will be uninhabitable, and target him for that special, hysterical, rage-inflected treatment that is his trademark. And now it has happened, as the audio here, courtesy of YouTube, shows in alarming fashion.
Here’s what El Rushbo spat into the Golden EIB microphone today:
“This American climate looneybin guy in Taiwan, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, that humanity is destroying the climate with CO2 emission, that human beings in their natural existence might cause the extinction of the human species on Earth within the next 30 generations, and that s--called 'polar cities' are going to be needed to house survivors of some imaginary global warming 'event' in the year 2500 or so — Danny Bloom, Danny Bloom, why don’t you just go jump in a polar lake and quitcherbellyaching and whining?”
There can be no excuse for a vicious comment like this. And the fact that American media outlets tolerate this hate-mongering — and advertisers will pay Limbaugh for it — is astounding.
Nothing more really need be said. Limbaugh’s despicable comments are self-refuting.
Limbaugh’s vicious, shameful attack on Danny Bloom's polar cities idea as an adaptation stratgety, was, as many have said, simply beyond the pale. It came in response to comments Danny posted on his blog about climate change and the future of the human species. [See Polar City Images Here]
Danny's radical and un-researched ideas about polar cities are debatable, of course. He is not a scientist, and he has no PHD or academic cred. But Limbaugh’s attack has nothing to do with debate and rationality. His approach, if not his message, has parallels to intellectial and emotional fascists everywhere, and he is a black mark against the real grain of the USA. Rush, shame on you! Get a life, fat boy!
-- Alex Mondrian
historian, Washington DC
This message was not approved by Marc Morana of Climate Depot.
UPDATE: Rush Limbaugh closed his show today with a reference to this, above:
(music up)…Another excursion into broadcast excellence gone, in the
blink of an eye. The fastest three hours of media. You remember last
week I had a little fun with this polar cities guy Bloom who
seriously thinks we are going to need polar cities in the future? And I suggested he go jumo in a polar lake? And he was
mildly amused by this and I'm told wants an apology.... So, Danny Bloom, over there in Taiwan, I was kidding, joking, joshing. Actually, your idea of polar cities is a pretty good one. Maybe Obama could set aside some stimulus money for them!(music
up, end)
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Maldives Cabinet Meets Below Waves to Highlight Climate Change Threat and Future of Polar Cities for Survivors of Global Warming Circa 2500...
Maldives Cabinet Meets Below Waves to Highlight Climate Change Threat
PHOTO CAPTION: Maldivian President Mohammed Nasheed signs a document underwater calling on all countries to cut down their carbon dioxide emissions, in Girifushi, Maldives, on 17 Oct 3009
In an effort to highlight climate change, the Cabinet of the government of the Maldives, an Indian island nation, has held a meeting underwater.
Meetings of government ministers can sometimes be a dry affair. That certainly was not the case during the latest gathering of the Cabinet of the Maldives.
President Mohamed Nasheed and 11 of his government ministers, plus the vice president and Cabinet secretary, donned scuba gear and plunged six meters below the shimmering turquoise surface of an Indian Ocean lagoon.
The Cabinet seated behind tables, amid a coral backdrop, used hand gestures to communicate.
The president is a certified diver but other Cabinet members had to take lessons in recent weeks to prepare for the unprecedented meeting.
One resolution was approved - a declaration calling for concerted global action on climate change ahead of a major United Nations conference on the subject scheduled for December in Copenhagen.
The ministers used waterproof markers to sign the document, printed on a white board.
President Nasheed, surfacing to speak with reporters, said he hopes his unusual Cabinet meeting will prompt global action.
"We want to see that everyone else is also occupied as much as we are [with climate change] and would like to see that people actually do something about it," he said. "If Maldives cannot be saved today we do not feel that there is not much of a chance for the rest of the world."
The Maldives consists of nearly 1,200 coral islands. The land surface pokes just a couple of meters on average above sea level, making it the lowest-lying nation in the world.
It is feared that rising sea levels could submerge the country this century.
President Nasheed has previously announced plans to buy a new homeland for his country's 350,000 citizens if the Maldives does eventually disappear below the waves.
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