Terra Infirma The rise and fall of quicksand. By Daniel Engber

 http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/08/terra_infirma.htmlhttp://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/08/terra_infirma.html

LEADERSHIP LAB: The Craft of Writing Effectively

 

https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM

 

 Link to the handout:

https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/5/7046/files/2014/10/UnivChic_WritingProg-1grt232.pdf

Eric Weinstein wants to take back MIT

Eric Weinstein on taking back institutions. I think he is a bit naive on this topic but I love his attitude and language in this segment.

The Age of Suveillence Capitalism

I wish I had time for a lengthy review with quoted excerpts because this book deserves one. I have great respect for the way Zuboff wrote this and she did not need to explain-I wish she would have written this more apologetically. I loved the poetry and autobiographical passages and would have preferred much more of them.

It is a difficult book to read and took me far longer than I expected but she is trying to invent a new vocabulary and search out ways to explain the unprecedented so it is entirely understandable.

Zuboff has enshrined democracy and bought entirely into it's self-congratulatory myths and interpretation of itself as the savior of history.

There are two texts that seem to be missing from her discussion: Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars and especially Industrial Society and it's Future.

Her biases are unfortunate, but instincts are largely correct and for me, I think this is the critical thing. Ultimately, I am on her side on this.

“Call of the Mild” a good family adventure despite lacking male nudity, animal cruelty, indiscriminate slaughter, graphic disembowelment, and French Canadian bastards

Call of the Wild is so different than the book that it’s almost a new story entirely, but this is unavoidable. It doesn’t depict dogs starving, being shot, drowning, killing men*, or even killing each other. It shows a dog hit with the club once. Otherwise the extended beating and whipping necessary to the story is merely implied or described in voice over. It’s been meticulously scrubbed of any ethnic or racial controversies by re-writing and casting. The only slurs that remain, rather than being racial, are simply a tragic characteristic of Harrison Ford’s inebriated speech.

Ford delivers a stunning performance as a sad drunk living in constant fear of an imaginary dog knocking over his glass or stealing his whiskey bottle. It’s almost as if he’s not even acting. I’m not sure he realized that a CGI dog couldn’t really stop him from drinking or that he knew they were filming when he hid his bottle in the rafters of the cabin. I have a theory that the cabin is just where Harrison Ford lives, and a film crew showed up one day to interview him. Realizing they had hours of him drunkenly planning a quest to find gold with his invisible dog, they adroitly constructed the rest of the movie around this footage.

I got some strange looks as we were leaving the theater and I was explaining to my daughters that “the male character should have removed his clothes, then taken off the woman’s clothes and held her directly against his body.” I felt impelled to deliver this impromptu cold water safety lecture due to a somewhat irresponsible scene. After a character experiences near drowning in ice cold water, it cuts away from her situation entirely while the male character is foolishly concerned only with one of his dogs. The woman would have been at immediate risk of death in the remote wilderness with no readily available shelter or heat source.

That man had a moral responsibility to let his dog drown while he removed the unconscious woman’s clothes and held her against his naked body. His failure to do so sends the wrong message to children. Since being submerged in cold water is dangerous, being removed from cold water must be a complete solution. This dangerously stupid and oversimplified “logic” makes sense if you see it enough times. Why couldn’t Harrison Ford stumble onto this scene and once again shove a hypothermic person into the freshly killed carcass of a large animal, perhaps a seal? I have to take off a few points for missing the obvious opportunity for a good disemboweling. Isn’t The Empire Strikes Back a cherished family adventure featuring a classic and beloved graphic disembowelment scene? Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

Call of the Wild has many positive elements and it is apparent that talented people worked hard on it. It’s not lazy. We get to see excellent set design, creative shot composition, great lighting, some good acting, appropriate and understated music, and cowboy guns (lever action rifles, single action revolvers).

It suffers from bad editing in the beginning, some terrible acting, and one unforgivably terrible shot at the climax of the action. The antagonist’s motivation was strange and unclear because the script condensed too many characters from the book. My 8 year old daughter, who knows the book, was confused and asked me about this afterwards. There was one overly cartoonish and childish action sequence. There was a better and I think obvious way the antagonist could have been defeated. It was very off-putting that the man who was cruelest to the dogs appeared to be distinctly Appalachian. Where did he come from? The film has a mysterious and unfortunate dearth of French Canadian dog abusers.

I acknowledge they could never depict the ending from the book in any movie but I wanted to see Buck become not just hardened and dangerous, but legendarily so. In the book, generations of people won’t venture to the place where Buck took his revenge and they consider him to be a demon. We see nothing like this in the movie.

I dreaded this movie because of the terrible CGI dog in the trailer. But after seeing it I’m going to partially defend the CGI dog. Yes, it’s far too Scooby-Doo at times. I think the concept was to have Buck be silly at first, then become hard by the end, and they could do this much more effectively with a CGI dog. It is a smart idea and it generally worked. They just slightly mis-calibrated. I also think they might have planned to show much more violence towards the dogs, and again the computer generated dog makes mores sense. The quality should have been better, but it was not nearly as bad as I had feared. In contrast to Buck, the white she-wolf was done well. I appreciated the realistic depiction of this white bitch, an area where many family movies fail.

See it with your kids if they like dogs. Otherwise watch Togo, a much better sled dog movie, starring Willem Dafoe and real, living dogs. I also thought it was odd that Willem Dafoe didn’t remove his clothes in several scenes of Togo. Not because the scene called for it, but just because it’s Willem Dafoe. When you hire Willem Dafoe, do you need to pay him more or pay him less to remain fully clothed? It’s quite difficult to say.

Call of the Wild is decent family movie, but like almost all “family” productions, it is at war with itself because it’s made for at least 3 different target audiences. You can always tell these movies were stepped on and can just feel the meetings while watching them. This one is better than most and it had much potential. If only the suits would have unleashed their creative team and allowed them to run wild rather than forcing them to do the heavy pulling for the marketing department.

I would have liked to see this much effort dedicated to an R rated, 2.5 hour Call of the Wild that is more true to the source material. The theater we went to was pretty full for a sunny Sunday afternoon, and there were only one or two children other than mine there. I think there is a good market for hours of realistic violence towards innocent dogs followed by a triumphant, one-sided slaughter of First Nations people. But maybe it’s good that people like me cannot be put in charge of such decisions. Perhaps the bean counters and focus groups got it right once again and Scooby-Doo on Ice is the best of all possible worlds.

I Have Forgotten how to Read

An outstanding article by Michael Harris in the Globe and Mail.

Out for dinner with another writer, I said, "I think I've forgotten how to read."

"Yes!" he replied, pointing his knife. "Everybody has."

"No, really," I said. "I mean I actually can't do it any more."

He nodded: "Nobody can read like they used to. But nobody wants to talk about it."

For good reason. It's embarrassing. Especially for someone like me. I'm supposed to be an author – words are kind of my job. Without reading, I'm not sure who I am. So, it's been unnerving to realize: I have forgotten how to read – really read – and I've been refusing to talk about it out of pride.

What we'll have to look out for is how cynical – how efficient and ruthlessly algorithmic – that next thing is going to be. "A book," one author told me, "is really just a reverse-engineered TED Talk, right? It's a platform that lets you do a speaking tour."

For many writers, this is the new wisdom. A cynical style of reading gives way to a cynical style of writing. I've watched my own books become "useful" as they made their way into public conversation. I never meant them to be useful – in a self-help sense – but that was how they were often read. I say this with less reproach than surprise: Almost every interviewer has asked me for tips and practical life advice, despite the fact my books offer neither.

Preventing Stunted Conversations

Two interesting rules presented around 1:52 into Dave Rubin's interview with Brett and Eric Weinstein.

1. A very smart person saying something obvious should be assumed to be saying something subtle until proven otherwise.


2. An intelligent person who is saying something wrong should be assumed to be saying something counterintuitive until proven otherwise.

Now, how to identify "really smart" people?

Whatever happened to pork bellies?

I started wondering why you never hear about pork bellies anymore and thought maybe it's become some underrated investment with tons of potential. I found this article in the NY Times that explained what happened. It contains one hell of a paragraph:

Still, the demise of the futures means something else is really gone now, too — a unique belly culture and its hard-charging, daring cast of characters who, decades ago, made their fortunes in the high pressure of the belly pit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/us/31porkbelly.html

Passion II

I'm not excited for Mel Gibson's sequel to the Passion of the the Christ.  Passion is much closer to being a bad movie than it is to being a great movie. I simply do not understand the following for this film. The most glaring problems are the lighting and the awkward scene when Jesus invents the kitchen table, but the entire thing is "off".

Also, Jim Caveziel is now too old for the role.

On the other hand, Gibson's Apocalypto is almost perfect. If he wants to go biblical he should do an old school sword & sandal movie with the action sensibilities of Apocalypto. I suggest a remake of The Robe from 1953, one of the few movies that ought to be remade but has been ignored in the remake era.

Pa Ingalls is a real jerk

Someone on facebag took one of those intrusive "which character are you" tests and came up as the Charles Ingalls. This touched a raw nerve and set me off:

Pa Ingalls is a loser. Ma should have traded him for an extra horse or a rifle and went back to the woods.

He moves his family away from the woods that have abundant resources and friends and family close by just because he likes to see wilder animals or needs to find himself or some nonsense. The family are nearly drowned crossing the frozen water as the ice breaks up less than 12 hours after they cross. He doesn't allow Jack in the wagon to ford the river so the girls think the dog drowned. His wife is seriously injured when she is forced to build the cabin. They are surrounded by wolves and he does absolutely nothing to scare them away or discourage them from holding the family prisoner in the cabin. He builds a chimney that almost kills his family while he is off in Independence doing who knows what. And why is he going to town all the damn time if he wanted to move away from people in the first place? He allows hostile Indians into the house and just watches as they steal his belongings. At least Jack has some damn sense and is protective of the house and family but Pa leaves him chained to the cabin 24/7 so as to not trouble the Indians! Then the Indians decide to massacre the family and terrorize them for days with their war drums. This wasn't some random kill the white people attack. Pa was such a jerk they had to have tribal council and really plan this thing. The Ingalls only survive by dumb luck when one Indian who happened to have some authority changed his mind at the last minute. But it would have been something like 200-1 if they put it to a vote. Shortly after this they have to abandon their homestead anyway and start over since U.S soldiers are coming to roust all the white settlers. That's when Pa decides to leave? He is so stubborn he thinks he's just going to hunker down and power through a war with the Indians but leaves before the soldiers even come to kick them out. I doubt the soldiers would have outright murdered them and would have been somewhat sympathetic but he doesn't even think about trying. Great year, thanks Pa.

DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism

I somehow missed this excellent essay until today:

https://www.edge.org/conversation/digital-maoism-the-hazards-of-the-new-online-collectivism

"The question isn't just one of authentication and accountability, though those are important, but something more subtle. A voice should be sensed as a whole. You have to have a chance to sense personality in order for language to have its full meaning"

Thoughts on the Ringling Brothers shutting down

Remembering Joys that Have Passed Away by Edwin Mulready

The circus shutting down is a big deal. I would never support the circus and should feel pleased about it. However, I admit I shared the same instinctive negative reaction felt by a surprising number of people that commented on the news stories about this event.

Why?

1. We have a much larger amount of “circus” talk in our language than you would first think:

“balancing act’

“high wire act”

“walking a tightrope”

different kind of “acts” in general

“juggling” different tasks or priorities

“clown’ as a pejorative and verb

“ringmaster”

“safety net”

“dog and pony show”

“circus” meaning disorganized or absurd

The traveling circus is a major part of American culture and source of many metaphors. The impact is similar to baseball. If there was suddenly no market at all for baseball and it vanished it would feel odd. We would sense that our language and culture lost a little bit of meaning.

2. There was an inordinate amount of concern for the minuscule number of out of work circus employees. I suspect the reason this is on our minds it is a loss of jobs that cannot, even in theory, ever be automated. No one will pay to see a computer or launched out of a cannon. This again evokes anxieties about cultural transition.

3. According to many of the news articles the circus lost its value because because we now have a seemingly infinite choice of other entertainment options. In other words our entire lives have become circuses filled with entertaining distractions. Yet another cause for alarm.

4. Mainstream Fake News took advantage of the story to push an insidious subliminal message in the from of a stupid joke-”there is nowhere left to run away to". Really subtle and masterful work.

Bonus thought: my advice for what's left of the circus industry

A traveling circus is regressive and crass and just couldn’t keep up with the times. They stopped using elephants and installed the first woman ringmaster but perhaps they didn’t go far enough to appeal to today's sophisticated consumer. What they need to bring in a modern crowd is a complete reversal of their former deplorable practices. By that I mean a show where the elephants torture humans.

 

Name Change

“For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!”

Yes, Melville wrote "small erections" and I'm sure he was having a laugh about it. I'm still going with the Moby Dick reference but this is a much stronger title and also relates to writing. Maybe it will inspire me to actually work on this thing. Also, I like lists of single words that tell a story, like Mrs. Flite's birds in Bleak House or DMX's Who We Be.

The Marketing Algorithm demands more Sea Turtle - a review of Finding Dory

There are three primary criteria I use to judge movies. A great movie will meet at least one of these requirements:

1. Magic. A single scene, if it contains enough magic, can be enough to carry an otherwise mediocre movie. Sometimes there is no single remarkable scene but something about the movie as a whole just works. You know it when you see it. Something that can't be replicated by merely studying the technical elements.

2. Would I feel exceptionally proud to be listed in the credits if I worked in the film industry? Is it a product of extraordinary quality? Sheer craftsmanship can be enough.

3. An astonishing acting performance. It can redeem any movie.

Finding Dory hints at magic on a few occasions, particularly during the ray migration scene, but these moments are too short and are placed too close to annoying scenes to be effective. A sequel should bring some extra magic and this movie just doesn't have it. Nothing about it feels special.

I would not feel exceptionally proud to have been a part of making Finding Dory. It's too routine and by the numbers. It would be a good paycheck and a nice credit, nothing more. I must note here that the short we are treated to, Piper, easily achieves greatness by sheer craftsmanship. The team that made Piper gave themselves the the most difficult technical challenges imaginable and created something stunning.

Finding Dory is almost redeemed by the acting. This movie would not even be worth discussing without Ellen DeGeneres in it. Yet it's not enough to overcome the flaws in the material and the story. Her performance is very good but it's not astonishing like it was in Finding Nemo.

Clearly, this it not a great movie. Is it even a good movie? My test of a good movie is simpler; Can I imagine that I will want to watch it again someday? It does some things well. The acting is good. The dialogue is well written and truly funny at times although it could have used more quality jokes. There are some very engaging scene transitions and clever storytelling. Sigourney Weaver as herself was an inspired insight by the casting director. However, Finding Dory has some major problems that prevent me from wanting to watch it again.

The most obvious shortcoming is that the stakes aren't high enough. Are Dory's parents still alive? Will she find them? It doesn't make any difference. We already know she is a competent enough character to be instrumental in saving a lost disabled child (that's real peril). It is fully established that Dory is a grown-ass fish. We even see her grow up in an awkward montage that takes place within the first few minutes.

That's right. After 13 years of development Finding Dory manages to beat Bloodsport for the record of getting to the montage first. At least Bloodsport has magic, and lots of it. I can't explain it either but you know in your heart it's true.

The “fastest time to montage” placard is displayed. The adjacent placard flips over and reveals that Pixar now holds the new record. Chong Li storms over to the edge of the elevated mat. He holds Dory's fin tag above Pixar's head, taunting Pixar. “First you break my montage record. Now I break you, like I break your frien'!” Pixar reaches out to grab the fin tag but the sneering Chong Li snatches it away.

The other major problem is that the scope is too small. They cross the entire ocean in a few minutes for seemingly no reason other than to bring back the weakest link from Finding Nemo, those insufferable surfer sea turtles. The rest of the movie takes place in a small location, the Marine Life Institute. The story follows the characters navigating within this confined space with no sense of wonder, danger or surprise whatsoever. This limited scope may have worked better as a first movie but it is simply insufficient when compared to the epic adventure of Finding Nemo. The first film involves a worldwide search into the unknown. This feels more like finding Dory in a department store.

Before the movie started, I had to suffer through an endless series of appalling previews for movies I'd pay not to be released. This experience pushed me a couple of steps closer to the decision of throwing away the TV and being done with all of it. Maybe the perspective of Nemo could be useful at a time like this. I don't mean the animated fish, I mean Jules Verne's Captain. “I am not what you call a civilised man! I have done with society entirely, for reasons which I alone have the right of appreciating. I do not, therefore, obey its laws, and I desire you never to allude to them before me again!” 
 

These utterly wretched previews made me equally salty. I had to wonder if the caretakers at the ranch called in a silver alert before they discovered that Robert Redford had wandered onto the set of Pete's Stupid Fucking Dragon. I hate to write that because I think All is Lost is a great movie but I really was perplexed about what Redford was doing. After a little thought it became obvious. Environmental activism. That movie is going to push a certain political agenda far too hard. It's the only reason it was made.

This was one of my concerns going into Finding Dory. There was some chatter about messages the film might be pushing, but this mostly proved to be unfounded. There is a message about treatment of animals by Sea World, an easy and safe target. It was done fairly well and was not too heavy-handed.

Unless I missed it there is no reference to LGBTQIA issues. (Yes, I had to look it up.) Where are my transgendered sharks? (Yes, I looked it up and dodged a bullet. Transgender would have been offensive.) Where are my lesbian manatee weddings? (Pretty sure I'm safe here.) Given the tremendous variation in reproductive strategies of ocean life, surely this sort of thing was considered. At the very least it could have provided a cheap and easy joke, the kind this movie loves. Why don't we see it? It's likely that any content approaching these topics was forbidden. There could be absolutely zero risk of any group boycotting this film.

Our Man climbs the mast to fix the radio.  We get the sense he is trying to spot a genderqueer porpoise while he is up there. The search proves futile, as does the attempted repair.

The lack of lesbian fish was a good decision but it wasn't a great decision. Yes, they would have botched it. It would have been cringe-inducing and seemed immediately dated. But wouldn't it have been something special if they addressed the topic in just the right way? It would have required a delicate touch, with just the right amount of force to release pent up potential energy - an emotional dim mak. (See? That's why Bloodsport has movie magic. It just gets into your brain somehow.) We needed something startling and cathartic. A joke or gag that people on all sides of these currently contentious issues could laugh at themselves about. Shouldn't we forget about all of this and just enjoy a kids movie? I agree, but it would have meant something to see this exact point skilfully made by the movie itself.

There is another controversy to address. Does finding Dory make fun of the differently abled or autism? Is it mean? We have 3 characters that seem to be affected by some kind of neurological something. I can't say more than that without offending so let's leave it at that. Dory, who suffers from short term memory loss; Becky, an easily manipulated loon with limited capacities to perform standard loon behavior; and Gerald, a non-verbal sea lion that is constantly bullied by the other two sea lions. Don't write to me about “suffers from”. The movie itself dredges up this oppressive and archaic phrase from the dark ages of 2003. I am fully aware that we now substitute “is experiencing” in our far more advanced and enlightened current year.

The film does make fun of Dory but that's unavoidable. With one brutal exception, it is done in a kind way, and this is the entire charm of the character.  Indeed, her manner of adapting is glorified to a troubling extreme. Pure spontaneity works for her because she has to make it work but that doesn't make it a virtue. I didn't like seeing it encouraged to children as an answer to every situation. It would have been good see a few contrasting situations where Marlin's more cautious strategy succeeded.

I found Becky the loon to be quite likable. She is a very capable bird but easily distracted. I didn't mind how silly she was but I was a little disturbed by how thoughtlessly her instincts were hijacked by the other characters for their own purposes. The way she is treated clearly and deliberately makes the protagonists look worse and Becky look better.  Some characters treat her poorly but the movie doesn't. 

Gerald seems to be the character causing the most controversy. I have to admit I can see the problem. They picked on Gerald one too many times to not be bothered by it. Gerald exists only to enable a pretty good gag featuring the other sea lions barking him off their favorite rock. I don't see why they couldn't just bark at an unnamed sea lion one time and be done with it. It would have been equally funny and detracted less from the story. Is Gerald intentionally portrayed as autistic as some critics have suggested? I think that the likable Becky better fits this description. There is just not enough of Gerald to make any conclusion. I would like to think that there was more to Gerald's story at one time. Maybe they were not permitted to waste additional screen time on him (the marketing algorithm demands more sea turtle) so they just recklessly made him an old school dimwit. (A sea lion-person experiencing old school dimwittedness?)

We also meet a depressed clam that hasn't talked to to anyone in years. He presents a similar problem. It's yet another lame joke (he's not happy as a clam) that feels forced and does nothing to advance the story. Our heroes become more unlikable during this encounter because they offer not even a glimmer of hope to this pathetic creature. His plight seems more dire than Dory's and they blow him off entirely when he annoys them.

The cumulative effect of all of this is that the movie is a bit too mean. The tone is off. But there was no nefarious intent behind these choices. It would have been fun for me to write about how the bloodthirsty Pixar hates autistic children and revels in seeing them getting attacked by sea lions. But that isn't it at all. Picture James Caan in Elf sarcastically commenting on publishing a flawed children's book. ”No, I think we should take a $30,000 bath so some kid can understand what happened to a puppy and a frigging pigeon. Ship 'em!” That's all we are dealing with here. 

"Who cares if an autistic kid gets attacked by a frigging sea lion? Is there any gay stuff? No? Ship it!"

Should you watch Finding Dory? Compared to the animated and children's movies that are coming out this year "just OK" is the best we can hope for. I don't regret paying to see Finding Dory only for this reason. Since I won't be paying to see the rest of the incoming tidal wave of dreck, I am in a relative sense punishing the other movies. See it if you must, but only out of spite. Alternatively, sit through the previews and then leave to go watch Tarkovsky's Nostalghia now that you can truly understand why a man would lock his family away to protect them from the world.

 "Just keep walking! Just keep walking! Just keep walking!"

Finding Dory fails to capture the imagination. The only thing I was imagining while watching it was meetings. You can just feel the choices that were made. It could have been art but instead it is only the best product that they could assemble after a decade of higher-ups decimating the storyboard. An obvious improvement to the script would have been to write the Nemo character out of it completely. He is entirely superfluous here and I don't think his physical limitations, the most interesting thing about him, are even mentioned. Maybe he is off on a school trip and can't participate in this story. Of course this is unthinkable. Someone could have been fired on the spot for proposing it. I am certain that a brilliant screenplay for this film was written. It probably didn't survive ten minutes into the first meeting.

Before we left for the theater, I looked on IMDB to see if Willem Dafoe would be back for the sequel and was relieved to see his name. This prompted my daughter to ask me the question every parent dreads: “Daddy, what's a Willem Dafoe?” I stumbled my way through an explanation. How do you explain such an inscrutable thing to a 4 year old? Can't we talk about sex or death or God instead? I think I told her something about future generations of scientists possibly understanding. I'm hoping that one day we will watch Shadow of the Vampire together and she will just get it.

"Yes, I would love to be in your children's movie"

                                         

Anyway, I didn't see Defoe's character, Gil. I read some internet comments and it seems that there is a scene after the credits. It shows the Finding Nemo crew from the dentist office tank still in those plastic bags. So you mean to tell me you have a character played by Willem Dafoe that spent a year in a plastic bag? No need to overthink this one. Here's what you do: you get a Willem Dafoe and throw it naked into a huge plastic bag with a microphone. "Ok Willem, Gil has been stuck in a plastic bag for a year. Go." Then you record the next two hours and there's your third movie. Cheap to cast, cheap to produce, cheap to animate. Guaranteed to be a great movie by my standards. Pixar still has time to release Losing Gil before summer is over to make up for Finding Dory.

Addendum: Further research has revealed the the scene after the credits shows Gerald getting bullied yet again. I take back everything I said about James Caan. The bloodthirsty Pixar hates autistic children and revels in seeing them getting attacked by sea lions.