Arts & Letters

Worthwhile Reading and Viewing

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(Every week or so, I post a collection of interesting links at Photon Courier under the above heading. There’s so much interesting stuff this week I thought I’d post it here as well)

Erin O’Connor on California’s universities and their role in the state’s economic debacle.

Climategate: it was an academic disaster waiting to happen. Interesting and contrarian thoughts about the role of peer review.

Richard Fernandez wonders if World War III has already started…without many people even noticing. (via Isegoria)

Solar arbitrage in Germany. (via Maggie’s Farm) It’s hard to believe he will really get away with this, but still pretty funny. See also this related post from Evolving Excellence: Better Call the Waaaahmulance!

AnoukAnge writes about ambition. (One of the great literary works that deals with this subject is Goethe’s Faust…memo to self: a blog post on the treatment of ambition within Faust could be very interesting)

AnoukAnge also has a nice photographic essay on color…including the psychological connotations and cultural-symbolic meanings of various colors.

Speaking of color, this year’s winning images have been chosen for GE’s In Cell Analyzer photography contest. The In Cell system used used by scientists for better understanding disease processes and for drug development; as it happens, it also produces images which are appealing and even beautiful, in a psychedelic sort of way. There’s a nice video, with music, at the bottom of GE’s post about the contest.

One more photography-related link: British industry in the 1950s and 1960s. (via Brian Gongol)

A rapacious and greedy Technocracy

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technocracy

Obama health care plan online. (Relax. It’s a joke. Or, is it?)

The image is by editorial cartoonist Winsor McCay and I came across the image at the wonderful art blog linesandcolors.

Update: In the comments, Michael Kennedy adds: “CBO says there are not enough details to score the new “bill.” What else is new?”

Yes. What else is new? Also, this via Drudge: “An unapologetic Danny Williams says he was aware his trip to the United States for heart surgery earlier this month would spark outcry, but he concluded his personal health trumped any public fallout over the controversial decision….This was my heart, my choice and my health,” Williams said late Monday from his condominium in Sarasota, Fla.”

Be aware: If the health care plans don’t work as smoothly as gamed by the white paper crowd, the connected will exempt themselves from the worst of it. They always do. Do Senators tend to fly coach?

Of Writing and Work

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Bob O’Hara kindly e-mailed me a link to this interesting post at Anecdotal Evidence. The blogger observes that:

As a newspaper reporter I learned that two subjects might open the mouths and memories of recalcitrant interviewees their families and work. People love talking about what they do bragging and complaining — especially when they’re good at it and enjoy the work. Work is central to most of our lives.

…and wonders why there is such an “absence of work” in contemporary literature. He cites two theories: Alain de Botton’s view that “technology has alienated most of us, including writers and other artists, from the means of production,” and Frank Wilson’s assertion that “What this really is about is the extent to which art has become divorced from life as it actually lived by most people.”

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Lamb Amidst the Feral Hogs

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Brian Lamb continues in a tradition of respect for Everyman and for history. Some trading and lobbying may well be part of any but the most unimportant of legislation. Still we should know what is in a bill with the potential of this one. Few bills have the means to change, limit, even shorten our lives than has this one. Sure, many a legislator’s career will be affected if we know – but isn’t that the point? Aren’t they supposed to be willing to stand, publically, by their votes? And a shortened career is not, of course, a shortened or damaged or stunted life.

Lamb’s long and old argument to open up such discussions has seldom seemed more important than it does here. (Note earlier requests.)
Side note: Feral Hogs. Hat tip – Fox News, Instapundit, and (surprise) the Mother Jones article Reynolds linked.

Avatar Redux: The Ghost Dance Works!

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About six weeks ago, I wrote a brief post about the dismal trailer for the movie Avatar, which made it clear that the movie was going to recycle Dances with Wolves. In other words, a turgid, adolescent paean to the Noble Savage, carefully white-washed to eliminate the less savoury elements of hunter-gatherer existence and to emphasize every stereotypical flaw in white men. “Fade to black” before the farmers and ranchers show up. Yawn.

Well, Avatar has just passed the $400 million mark in box office gross income after less than a week in theaters. I caught a late-night showing yesterday and I contributed my $15 (Cdn) to the pile. My wise-ass prediction from the earlier post, that the protagonist would bite the bullet tragically, didn’t come to pass. Foolish me. What was I thinking?

Not “SEQUEL-SEQUEL-SEQUEL” apparently.

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