2014 — 9 October: Thursday
Last night's awesome little 'Nature' video on Laniakea1 was the last item in a set of (supposedly) thought provoking visuals Big Bro drew to my attention (while I was in the middle of several other things, naturally, and was inclined to give it less than my full attention). It was actually the only image set "off Earth", as it were. His previous educational salvo along similar lines was more stellar-oriented. Still, both sets accord well with Richard Feynman's observation:
"The theory that it's all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate."
Even as a master of understatement (Christa's occasional opinion of me) it strikes me that "inadequate" is totally, well, inadequate. Mind you, Big Bro's continuing attempts to educate his handsomer young sibling are also a lot more cheering than the depressing news of the latest militaristic clutch of misadventures from the Middle East, or at least the Turkish border with Syria. I would much prefer to read about the Crusades as a distant piece of remote history from more primitive times when we knew no better, rather than see and hear about them as current news.
Not that our latest 'coalition' will be registering on news bulletins anywhere outside our solar system for many years to come, of course.
The gaping hole...
... in Mother Hubbard's cupboard has, once again, been partially filled by adroit use of my John Lewis credit card. It's much the best time to get out there, ahead of nearly all the ankle biters and the Chelsea tractors in which so many of them seem to be conveyed these days. I have both a lunch date and an assignation for afternoon coffee to factor into today's (excuse the word) "planning". And I suppose I'd better eat some breakfast, too. Preferably before I collapse in a quivering heap. I have, after all, been up and about for a couple of hours.
I thought this...
... hits just the right (discordant) note.
B = f(P, E)
Kurt Lewin's founding equation of social psychology (apparently). Behaviour is a function of a person in an environment.2
It's only been a couple of months since I last mentioned dear old Stanley Milgram and his 'shocking' experiment in the context of Gina Perry's 2012 book about it, in which she dug out facets that somehow evaded publication. I'm faintly dismayed to realise that I don't now recall — I'm getting old, you know — exactly when I first read his paper (through I did subsequently find a good write-up of it in "Pavlov's heirs" by Steven Schwartz in April 1987). And I certainly missed this unjoyous little snippet from a 1979 interview Milgram gave to "60 Minutes" on US TV:
This afternoon's...
... delivery (while I was out) of "Cinderella Liberty" brings to two my total of excellent films...
... made from equally excellent novels by Darryl Ponicsan — that I first read 40 years ago.
This evening's...
... unexpected "treat" saw me salvaging what I could of a no-longer-quite-so-fresh grapefruit before it went into total meltdown to the accompaniment of a programme about fungi and their vital rôle in helping organic material to rot.
I mentioned the arrival of that sort-of documentary "This Film is Not Yet Rated" last weekend. It deals with the secretive (and, from the sound of it, eminently corruptible) machinations of the MPAA. Looking closely at the little pamphlet that fell out of the case of my American NTSC DVD of "Cinderella Liberty" I spotted an interesting quotation from its director, Mark Rydell, who had decided to film the actual birth of a real child for one of the film's key scenes. The MPAA was threatening him with an "X" rating (the kiss of commercial death at the time for successful film distribution in North America). He refused to back down, and spoke out in December 1973:
An audience can watch people being blown apart but they're not allowed to see nudity or good lovemaking or the birth of a baby. It's incredible that these attitudes still exist.
Quite so. My word, how much things have changed :-)
"Shut up, and pass me the ammunition."
I gather...
... what's left of Pink Floyd are just about to call it a day. Great shame. End of an era, etc etc (Link.)