2014 — 15 January: Wednesday
I dipped my (visual) toe1 back into the water that is Tarantino's Django unchained for long enough last night to know that I wanted my own copy. I haven't seen any of the films he's made since Kill Bill unless you count a segment of Sin City.
Today is looking set to be...
... a rainy one, so I shall ignore that and simply get on with stuffing my next crockpot — for starters, at least. I haven't planned any further ahead than that yet. Apart from breakfast, obviously. And finishing the other item Brian lent me yesterday — an excellent book ("Roadstrips") right up my road (as it were):
I was mildly surprised to find that about half of the artists were unfamiliar. Though (much as I enjoyed his "Ghost World" in both book and film form) whether Mr Clowes' generous assessment of them all as "leading geniuses" is quite another matter.
The slicing and dicing...
... was performed against an audio backdrop of "Dinosaurs in the Drawing Room", which I can heartily recommend. Though I confess I hastily slammed off the programme that followed it, and am now perfectly happy with Philip Glass as this week's "Composer of the Week". There's a lovely segment from Koyaanisqatsi washing over me as I type. Dare I see if that's out2 on Blu-ray? (Though I admire the trio of Godfrey Reggio films, I still prefer the raw music.)
While I take...
... the point here:
[Intelligent Design] is a "God of the gaps" theory, inserting a supposition of the need for supernatural intervention in places that its proponents claim science cannot explain. Various cultures have traditionally tried to ascribe to God various natural phenomena that the science of the day had been unable to sort out — whether a solar eclipse or the beauty of a flower. But these theories have a dismal history. Advances in science ultimately fill in these gaps, to the dismay of those who had attached their faith to them.
I note that "those who had attached their faith to them" rarely — if ever — seem to be either dismayed, or convinced, by any gap-filling managed by science. Collins, by the way, is head of the US National Institutes of Health and apparently is prepared to attribute certain selfless acts to divine intervention... I also liked Bloom's characterisation of babies: "pint-sized psychopaths". That strikes me as about right.
This doesn't:
Australia accepts the principle of atheism as a belief to be protected, while the United States doesn't.
Delusional marketing
Poor Crispin Odey (of Odey Wealth Management) sends me (gawd knows why) an annual snailmail invitation to see what he can do for me. I'm sure he'd stop if he only knew how very far short of his £500,000 of "investable assets" I fall. Even shorter now that I've just arranged for a nice Lithunanian on eBay to ship me that set of Blu-rays.
Wealth is, of course, a relative delusion. Much like religious faith, I suspect.