/Blog

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
killall Dock
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO
killall Dock

Site 1 (http://www.similarminds.com)

Main Type	Overall Self

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test

——————-
Site 2 (http://www.personalityonline.com/)

Enneagram - Your Results

Your Enneagram Type(s): Type 8
Eight’s need to be powerful to make their own way in life. They are motivated to maintain territorial control over anything that can influence their lives and by the desire to stay on top in any power struggle Of all the Enneagram types, they are the most openly aggressive. They are dominant figures both at work and at home.

They enjoy being strong and judge others according to whether those others are strong or weak. They also enjoy confronting others, and are even willing to take on the whole power structure if they feel a need for radical change. Eight’s are courageous and will crusade for what they believe in. They bring abundant energy to meeting challenges at work or elsewhere.

They are “natural leaders.” Their overwhelming self-confidence is contagious and can generate in others the energy that is necessary to accomplish monumental tasks.

You can get a full decription of the ‘type eight’ here.

From Goodreads 07w49:4

Figure 1. A 22nd Century Bridged City
The above is actually from an episode of the Star Trek series Enterprise. It came to my attention the other day through a montage depicting history in another episode of the series. As fans of the show know, one of the running plots involved time travel, and the depiction of human history ‘resetting itself’ (after plot related meddling) was done through the use of images from various sources grouped together into thematically recognizable decades. So the 1980s were depicted by images of Ronald Regan, Margaret Thatcher, and Ruhollah Khomeini, the 1990s by images of the Clintons, George H Bush shaking the hand of Mikhail Gorbachev, etc. After the depictions of the first half the present decade (scenes of 9/11, Bush & Blair) it moves on into speculation. (The images from the stream are available here). The future was represented by a car and a robot and from then onto scenes of the show’s 22nd Century, marked by the opening shot of the series, the launch of the Enterprise spaceship, in the year 2151 (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Cpt Archer in the Timestream

The 22nd Century is therefore marked by two cityscapes, one being that of Figure 1 the other being the following. These are meant to be Earth cities given the context of the time stream, but both shots are re-used production art from previous episodes. As I’ve mentioned, the cityscape below is from a Season 1 show (’Dear Doctor’), while the bridge above is from an episode of Star Trek Voyager’s last season (’Workforce Part 1′).

Figure 3. Toronto, 2110 AD

With regard to Figure 3, because it is otherwise unlabeled and supposed to depict an Earth city in the 22nd Century, I thought it might as well be Toronto. We can imagine this stretch of waterfront as being a bit to the East, or a bit to the West, of the CN Tower thus accounting for its absence (or, I could just invite anyone to Photoshop it in). We can imagine the bridges are subway extensions to the island, and we see that a similar subway/covered LRT path runs right along the water.

This being an image originally from s-f, it reflects the current architectural trends of the beginning of the 21st Century, the postmodernist appreciation of angles, glass and concrete.

But I present this image to you thus as a reflection of what kind of city we’ll get if this century is to be one of starchitects. This is what another hundred years of Frank Gehry and Daneil Leibskinds will result in.

Does this city look like a place you’d want to live? We can spy green-space but it seems very sparse. And don’t give me the old, ‘who cares I’ll be dead’ routine, so common from the likes of the Baby Boomers. It’s precisely that type of attitude which has gotten us our present shit world, and I don’t want to encourage more of that. Given the extension of our lifespans over the past century, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that this could be the city of your elder years, so take the question seriously: is this where you want to hobble and feed pigeons? Further, are you so selfish as to be that uncaring about the type of environment our proverbial great-and-beyond-grandchildren will live in?

Figure 4. Caprica City, from the Battlestar Galactica Miniseries (2003)

A much more dramatic depiction of the type of city we could end up with it that from Battlestar Galactica. Filmed in Vancouver, perhaps one could label this ‘Vancouver 2210 AD’ since it seems a bit more harsh than the aesthetic presented above, as if one needed another century to get both the flying cars and the brutal deadness of the civic space:

Figure 5. Caprica City Detail

The real nightmare of urban development is this uniform cityscape of similar buildings, all equally unadorned, apparently utilitarian, with a neglected use of green space.

As spaces designed on computers to provide semiotic scenes meant to convey an advanced technological civilization, these reflect in turn the imagined futures of our own civilization. This is what we could end up with. But, in all likelihood, my guess is that the 22nd Century will not look like any of these images.

When Martin Rees published his book Our Final Hour in 2003, he famously gave our ‘civilization as we know it only a 50-50 chance of surviving the 21st century.’ (quote source) Now there’s some ambiguity there: others predict the potential extinction of humanity, which would certainly ruin our civilization, but it could also anticipate a sort of apocalyptic collapse into another form of Mad Max Dark Ages. But I have to point out the civilization known to the British in 1903 - and globally, that of every other nation and ethnic group on the planet (with the exception of those still living isolated tribal lifestyles) did not survive the 20th Century. The British Empire fell, the reliance on coal was replaced with that of processed crude oil, and the colonial projects of the era came to ignominious ends - the consequences of which we are still processing. Given how squanderous of natural resources our present civilization-as-we-know-it is, there’s no reason to want it to survive the 21st Century.

Which brings me to Prince Charles, who by the times spoken of here will be thought of as King Charles III. In the early 1980s, Charles was mocked by the media for his interest in organic farming, and he’s currently thought of as daft for his architectural interests, including his sponsorship of the community of Poundbury. Poundbury is the result of Charles’ interest in the work of Leon Krier and Christopher Alexander. As the Poundbury website records:

Poundbury is a mixed urban development of Town Houses, Cottages, Shops & Light Industry, designed for the Prince of Wales by Architect Leon Krier on the outskirts of the Dorset County Town of Dorchester. Prince Charles, The Duke of Cornwall, decided it was time to show how Traditional Architecture and Modern Town Planning could be used in making a thriving new community that people could live & work in close proximity. Poundbury has now become World Famous as a model of urban planning, with regular visits from Councillors and MPs. Welcome to the Poundbury Community Website!

Given how Charles has already displayed some prescience when it came to organic agriculture, anticipating both its sense and its popularity, my expectation is that he’s once again onto something with his interest in such small-scale, community oriented architecture. The end result will be cityscapes of the 22nd Century which will not reflect the imagined exaggerations of the present shown to us through easy digital mock-ups.

I return now to the city of the bridge. When I saw this in the Timestream montage, the lines of it brought to mind the position just stated: that by the 22nd Century, technological advance combined with a rejection of explicit postmodernist, angular, and Leibskind-like egotism will brings us a meld of the tradition and the technological. The bridged city seemed a place inspired by Lord of the Rings, a technological version of Rivendell.

Figure 6. Rivendell,
from The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Figure 7. Rivendell,
from The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Figure 8. A bridge in Rivendell,
from The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Figure 9. Rivendell,
from The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Given a choice between Caprica, or the Toronto of 2110 suggested here, I’d take a Rivendell of any season, of any weather condition. Of course, I expect to be able to continue to use a high speed internet connection, use a cell-phone, browse in an Apple Store, and be able to have sushi. The point here is we can take much more control over our built environment, and expect more from our architects than glass and concrete. Letting current architectural fashion guide the next several generations will only result in a Caprica like monstrosity.- Timothy

Born in 1906, lived through the USSR.

Photo: Sergei Grits/AP
Alexandra Zhaldybina, 101, signs papers Sunday before voting in a village of Markovo, 80 kilometres west of Smolensk, in western Russia.
(source) 
Photo: Laszlo Balogh/Reuters
Competitors warm up Sunday during the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Competition in Budapest.
(source)

John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards (1992), pages: 503-504:

Buddhist societies are horrified by a great deal in the West, but the element which horrifies them most is our obsession with ourselves as a subject of unending interest. By their standards nothing could be unhealthier than a guilt-ridden¹, self-obsessed, proselytizing white male or female, selling God or democracy or liberalism or capitalism with insistent superior modesty. It is clear to the Buddhist that this individual understands neither herself nor his place. He is ill at ease in his role; mal dans sa peau; a hypocrite taking out her frustrations on the world.

As for the contemporary liberated Westerner, who thinks of himself relaxed, friendly, open, in tune with himself and eager to be in tune with others - he comes across as even more revolting. He suffers from the same confused superiority as his guilt-ridden predecessor but has further confused himself by pretending that he doesn’t feel superior. While the Westerner does not see or consciously understand this, the outsider sees it immediately. The Westerner’s inability to mind his own business shows a lack of civilization. Among his most unacceptable characteristics is determination to reveal what he thinks of himself - his marriages, divorces and children; his feelings and loves. [...] Any man or woman produced by the Judeo-Christian tradition is dying to confess - unasked, if necessary. What the Buddhist seeks in the individual is, first, that he understands he is part of a whole and therefore of limited interest as a part and, second, to the extant that he tries to deal with the problem of his personal existence, he does so in a private manner. The individual who appears to sail upon calm waters is a man of quality. Any storms he battles within are his own business.

Of what, then, does Western individualism consist? There was a vision, in the 19th Century, of the individualist as one who acted alone. He had to do so within the constrains of a well-organized society. Even the the most anti-restraint of thinkers - John Stuart Mill - put it that ‘the liberty of the individual must be thus far limited, he must no make himself a nuisance to other people’.²

But if the constraints of 19th Century Western civilization did put him in danger of causing a nuisance, he could simply go, or be sent to the frontiers of North and South America or to Australasia. [...] Rimbaud fled Paris and poetry for an isolated Abyssinian trading post, where his chief business was rifles and slaves. This personal freedom killed him, as it did many others. [...] Even without leaving the West, a man eager for individual action could find room for maneuver within the rough structures which stretched beyond the 19C middle-class society. In the slums, hospitals and factories, men from suffocating backgrounds could struggle against evil or good as if they were at war. By the 1920s, the worst of these rough patches were gone and the individual’s scope of action was seriously limited. In a stable, middle-class society, restraint was highly prized. Curiously enough, this meant that, with even the smallest unrestrained act, a man could make a nuisance of himself and thus appear to be an individual. ³

This is one explanation for the rise of artistic individualism - a form of existentialism which did not necessarily mean leaving your country, although it often did involve moving to the margins of society. The prototypes were Byron and Shelley, who fled in marital disorder across Europe, calling for political revolution along the way. Lermontov was another early model - exiled to the Caucasus, where he fought frontier wars, wrote against the central powers he hated and engaged in private duels. Victor Hugo was a later and grander example …⁴

Footnotes

1. In Greg Bear’s Queen of Angels the A.I. Jill’s analysis of punishment incorporates the thought that guilt is a result of our self-aware modeling, our recognition that we have failed somehow in the mind’s of Others. Jill thinks (p.417): ‘The self-aware individual in a judgment-society experiences guilt as a matter of course; to lack guilt, the individual must be poor at modeling and therefore inefficient in society, perhaps even criminal’. This line of argument is introduced on page 211, with the pseudo-author Bhuwani quote: ‘With self-awareness comes a sharper awareness of one’s place in society, and an awareness of transgression - that is, guilt.’

2. Consider how we live in a culture that makes a currency out of misery and problems, so that you end up talking about them in some social situation or another. How with someone you are likely to start gossiping about another person, their relationships and such, even though it’s none of your business. But, if you catch yourself doing this and want to take the high road and refuse to discuss what’s none of your business, you are more likely to hurt your conversant’s feelings. One needs to trade social information to maintain good relations. Similarly, one gets into discussing one’s problems for similar reasons. Trade your stories of misery so that we know you’re a member of the group, so that the others can feel good trying to help you and live with the illusion that they are either compassionate or not as bad off, and thus a little superior.

But, as above, becoming a nuisance to others by volunteering too much information about oneself is such a frequent occurrence nowadays. As Theodore Dalrymple as written, in this example describing an encounter with a dying man:

There had been no protest, no self-pity, no demand for special attention. He understood that I commiserated with him, though I said nothing except that I was sorry to see that he was unwell, but he understood also that my commiseration was of a degree commensurate with the degree of our acquaintance, and that demanded no extravagant and therefore dishonest expression. By controlling his emotion, and his grief at his own imminent death, so that he should not embarrass me, he maintained his dignity, and self-respect. He retained a sense of social obligation, a vital component of what used to be called character, until the very end of his life. I mention these people not because they were in any way extraordinary – a claim they would never have made for themselves – but because they were so ordinary. They were living up to a cultural ideal that, if not universal, was certainly very widespread (as my [foreign] wife would confirm). It is an ideal that I find admirable, because it entails a quasi-religious awareness of the metaphysical equality of mankind: that I am no more important than you. This was no mere intellectual or theoretical construct; it was an ideal that was lived. Unlike the claim to rights, which is often shrill and is almost so self-regarding that it makes the claimant the center of his own moral universe, the old cultural ideal was other-regarding and social in nature. It imposed demands upon the self, not upon others; it was a discipline rather than a benefit. Oddly enough, it led to a greater and deeper contentment, capacity for genuine personal achievement, and tolerance of eccentricity and nonconformity than our present, more egotistical ideals.

Dalrymple has said [in the CBC Ideas podcast, 'The Ideas of Theodore Dalrymple'] that we treat emotion as type of pus that we feel must be released or else harm occurs. One ‘has to let one’s hair down’ etc; the abandonment of civilized restraint is popularly believed to be psychologically healthy.

3. Curiously enough, this meant that, with even the smallest unrestrained act, a man could make a nuisance of himself and thus appear to be an individual. Consider how at the 15th minute of Martin Scorsese’s Bob Dylan bio-documentary, No Direction Home (Part I) we get the interviews with Manchester’s 1966 youth, who are critical of Dylan’s turn to electric guitars and the apparent abandonment of his previous acoustic folk singing. The young men are thoughtful in their answers, but one says he thinks Dylan’s gone commercial, that he thinks ‘he’s prostituting himself’. ‘Prostituting himself’ is said as it comes to mind, said strongly into the camera’s lens, and when finished this boy smiles slightly, proud of his act of strong words. This is soon followed by a young man whose thoughts on it are equally considered but at 15:41 he says, ‘this I just can’t stick,’ and then catches himself with sudden upraised eyebrows and a muttered ‘excuse [me]‘, as if we was expecting a whack upside the head from a schoolmaster for his indiscretion.

Of course, in today’s world, such young men (and women) would be inarticulate and full of (probably drunken) swagger, wearing some fucking t-shirt with a message printed across it and saying whatever came to mind, and if it needed bleeping, so be it.

4. Of the likes of Byron: the so called romantic figure, the romantic genius. Richard Rorty, (an excerpt from an audio interview, played on Australian ABC’s Philosopher’s Zone in their tribute program after his death) said:

I think individual romantic figures like Coleridge, Emerson, Whitman, Nietzsche, Derrida, are people who are engaged in romantic projects of self-creation, and this means, in the case of thinkers and poets, finding words that have never been spoken before, words that have no public currency, no public resonance, though they may become the literal meanings, the common coin of future generations.

And in an interview conducted for the RU Sirius program in August 2005, Rorty said,

Novels certainly suggest new ways of doing things. Revolutionary political manifestos, poems, religious prophecies, they all stimulate the youth to make themselves different from their parents and thus produce a human future different from the human past.

He had made similar points before, and this can be found in his 1989 book, Contigency, Irony, and Solidarity (on page 7):

What the Romantics expressed as the claim that imagination, rather than reason, is the central human faculty was the realization that a talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well, is the chief instrument of cultural change. What the political utopians since the French Revolution have sensed is not that an enduring, substratal human nature has been suppressed or repressed by ‘unnatural’ or ‘irrational’ social institutions but rather that changing languages and other social practices may produce beings of a sort that had never before existed.

The previous pages had this:

Europe did not decide to accept the idiom of Romantic poetry, or of socialist politics, or of Galilean mechanics. That sort of shift was no more an act of will than it was a result of argument. Rather, Europe lost the habit of using certain words and gradually acquired the habit of using others. As Kuhn argues in The Copernican Revolution, we did not decide on the basis of some telescopic observations … that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, that macroscopic behavior could be explained on the basis of microstructural motion, and that prediction and control should be the principal aim of scientific theorizing. Rather, after a hundred years of inconclusive muddle, the Europeans found themselves speaking in a way which took these interlocked theses for granted.

In other words, the contributions made by the 19th Century ‘romantic figures of self-creation’ was to add new, inspirational language to the discussion, through their novels, plays, and poems. In the case of Rimbaud, the package of consists in adding to the language and then the example of abandonment.

To be engaged in such a project, of discovering for oneself both a language and life, required defiance, and it created the contemporary social condition that John Ralston Saul describes in the chapter from which I took the excerpt above. JRS’ point is to say that the conditions of defiance in the 19th Century is far different from that of the late 20th and early 21st. This is because, as Rorty says on page 55 of the Contingency book:

The creation of a new form of cultural life, a new vocabulary, will have its utility explained only retrospectively. We cannot see Christianity or Newtonianism or the Romantic movement or political liberalism as a tool while we are still in the course of figuring out how to use it. For there are as yet no clearly formulatable ends to which it is a means. But once we figure out how to use the vocabularies of these movements, we can tell a story of progress, showing how the literalization of certain metaphors served the purpose of making possible all the good things that have recently happened. Further, we can now view all these good things as particular instances of some more general good, the overall end which the movement served. [...] Christianity did not know that its purpose was the alleviation of cruelty, Newton did not know that his purpose was modern technology, the Romantic poets did not know that their purpose was to contribute to the development of an ethical consciousness suitable for the culture of political liberalism. But we now know these things, for we latecomers can tell the kind of story of progress which those who are actually making progress cannot. We can view these people as toolmakers rather than discoverers because we have a clear sense of the product which the use of those tools produced. The product is us - our conscience, our culture, our form of life. Those who made us possible could not have envisaged what they were making possible, and so could not have described the ends to which their work was a means. But we can.

JRS’ point in this chapter is to critique how our culture which supposedly privileges romantic rebellion, is in fact conformist. As he says, closing the section from which the excerpt is taken: ‘Today’s individualism can’t really be compared to all this existential activity. Is there a relationship between frontiersman and the self-pampering modern dentist? Between the French Legionnaire and the downhill-skiing Porsche driver? Between the responsible citizen of a secular democracy and the executive cocaine sniffer? All these people were and are engaged in a form of defiance. But there does not appear to be much room for comparison. The phenomena belong to separate worlds.’

The world that we belong to has been created by the example of the 19th Century Romantics, but we do not carry on their legacy. Rather (as a society) we’ve found new ways to conform, ways which we aren’t fully conscious, or understanding of. In the process, we have now generally become more obnoxious, since our defiance has become normalized. We’ve become nuisances to one another, without having experienced the peace of mind that comes from minding our own business. Within this circumstance their is still a need for individuals-who-wish-to-do-so to act out in ‘romantic projects of self-creation’ yet one hopes that they strive to create a new language, rather than learn to speak an already established one.

Therefore hipsters, shave your mustaches.

Margaret Atwood’s high school year book, 1957.
(From Torontoist)

I’m still at the point where I can’t even imagine fifty-years. My equivalent of this photo (fifty years after graduating from high school) is the year 2043, by which time I hope the world will be unbelievably different in a good way. Bush and Co will long be dead, there will be peace in the mid east, the most of the Boomers will be cremated ash, except for those few trillionaires who insist on injecting themselves with all sorts of weird shit to stay alive for-ever (and they will probably have a whole television station devoted to the 1960s, Woodstock, Bob Dylan, fast machines, and the emotional aftermath of the Vietnam War, and the fact that they’re all still alive and how they’re ‘revolutionizing the centenarian years’).

Rebbecca Young had this in her Facebook, and I’ve decided to fill it out too:

Single or Taken: single
Happy about that: not really
Siblings: a sister
Eye color: brown
Height: 5′11
Can you make a dollar in change right now?: yes considering I’m at my desk and my change jar is to my right.

FAVORITES
Kind of pants: I don’t even know how to describe pants
Number: 15 comes to mind
Animal: nothing comes to mind. Oh wait, maybe bears. Also I currently have a thing for eagles but that’s only because of a recent read novel.
Drink (non alcoholic): water
Sports: none
Month: October
Juice: Orange
Favorite cartoon character: Bugs Bunny maybe. Cartman from South Park comes to mind too.

HAVE YOU EVER…..?
Given anyone a bath?: No
Bungee Jumped? : No
Made yourself throw-up?: No
Eaten a dog: Only hot dogs
Loved someone so much it made you cry?: yes if you mean from heartbreak
Played truth or dare?: yes
Been on a plane?: yes
Came close to dying?: not really
Been in a sauna?: I don’t think the ones at the community pool counts, so no, but yes if they do.
Been in a hotub?: yes
Swam in the ocean?: yes
Fallen asleep in school?: yes
Ran away?: no
Broken someone’s heart?: I really don’t think so. But maybe. I wouldn’t know.
Cried when someone died?: yes
Cried in school?: Yes. Elementary school sucked that fucking much.
Fell off your chair?: yes
Sat by the phone all night waiting for someone to call?: Maybe back in the mid-90s, but certainly not recently.
Saved MSN conversations?: Yes
Saved e-mails?: All the time
Used someone?: I would have to say yes.
Been cheated on?: I don’t think so.

WHAT IS…
your good luck charm?: I don’t have one.
your new favorite song?: ‘Music is my hot hot sex’ by Cansei de ser sexy
beside you?: tape dispenser, swiss army knife, desktop clutter to right. book shelves, printer, window to my left
last thing you ate?: apple muffins
What kind of shampoo/conditioner do you use?: anti-dandruff stuff

EVER HAD…
Chicken pox: yes
Sore Throat: yes
Stitches: yes
Broken a bone: no

DO YOU…
Believe in love at first sight?: yes
Have a Long distance relationship?: no
Like school?: no
Who was the last person that called you?: the girl from the agency
Who was the last person you slow danced with?: It’s been too many years for me to remember that.
Who makes you smile the most?: Danielle Williams
Who knows you the best?: Maybe Danielle? But I don’t feel well known by anyone at all.
Do you like filling these out: I’m doing it aren’t I?
Do you wear contact lenses or glasses?: both
Do you like yourself: yes
Do you get along with your family?: yes

ARE YOU…
Suicidal? : no
What did you do yesterday: not much. today was more productive
Gotten any awards?: yes
What car/truck do you wish to have?: none
Where do you want to get married?: I don’t really go for marriage stuff.
Good driver?: yes
Good Singer?: no

THIS OR THAT..
Scary or Funny Movies?: hate scary, funny: Big Leibowski comes to mind. There are others of course, but this is my favorite.
Chocolate or Vanilla? : chocolate
Root beer or Dr.Pepper? : root beer
Skiing or Boarding?: neither
Summer or Winter?: this year it’s winter
Silver or Gold? : sometimes silver, gold’s got something going on to, but for the most part I find the whole affection for such metals absurd.
Diamond or Pearl?: neither
Sprite or 7up? : they’re the fucking same
Coffee or Sweet tea? : coffee
Are you oldest, middle or youngest? : oldest

TODAY DID YOU…
Talk to someone you liked: no
Buy something: no
Get sick?: no
Talked to an ex? : no
miss someone?: no

LAST PERSON WHO…
Slept in your bed?: me
Saw/heard you cry?: no one
Made you cry? : i don’t really remember crying stuff. My Dad though comes to mind
Went to the movies with?: I think that must have been Ed, back in February.

Ever been in a fight with your pet?: no pets
Been to Mexico?: no
Been to Canada?: live there
Been to Florida? : no

RANDOM…
do you own a lava lamp?: no
How many remote controls are in your house?: More than I can think of
What was your last dream about?: Not sure about last night, but a couple of nights ago I dreamt I was getting arrested at a Guantanmo Bay conference.
What book are you reading now?: more than I want to list here
Best feeling in the world?: orgasm
Future KIDS names?: Coco if it’s a girl, boy undecided
Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?: no
What’s under your bed?: papers
Favorite sports to watch?: none
Favorite Locations?: nothing comes to mind, ‘cept maybe some parks
Piercing/Tattoos?: no
Who do you really hate?: Members of the Bush Administration but upon them I wish peace (props to the metta meditation training).
Do you have a job?: not presently
Have you ever liked someone you didn’t have a chance with?: all the time
Are you lonely right now?: yes
Song that’s stuck in your head right now?: maybe the Hot Hot Sex one above

Have you ever played strip poker? no
Have you ever been on radio/TV?: yes
Ever liked someone, but thought they’d never notice you?: all the fucking time. in fact, related to your last question, I like someone right now who was on tv today.
Whats the first things you notice about the opposite sex (visual)?: if I’m behind them its the ass, from the front face
Are you too shy to ask someone out?: not if I’ve been drinking
Butter, Plain or Salted popcorn?: butter and salted, but only when I indulge
Dogs or cats?: dogs
Favorite Flower?: hibiscus maybe?
Do you like to travel by plane as opposed to car?: no
How many pillows do you sleep with?: three
How long did it take you to do this survey?: I didn’t keep count

Brian Grazer in his Malibu Home (New York Times)

07w46:6 : Movie Review: Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982; 2007)

1982: The first edition of Blade Runner is released on 25 June.

1992: The second edition ‘Director’s Cut‘ is released on 11 July. At the time I’m a student of history and as a pet project I’m trying to write a history of Earth from the vantage point of the year 2400. In order to conceptualize the 22nd Century, I look to Blade Runner, and the images found in magazines, which are promoting the release of the Director’s Cut. But I live in rural Nova Scotia and I only know one person in my class who’s even heard of Blade Runner.

1993: I’m in Toronto that March, and look for a copy of the movie to buy. It’s not in stores anywhere.

Which is to say, it took me a few years before I got to see it for the first time. And once I did, it wasn’t the story-line that mattered so much as the sets; for years I’ve watched this movie as a series of montages in fantastic settings, the story-line connecting the scenes seemingly incidental and not even that interesting.

1999: I watch the Director’s Cut for the first time, and I find the extreme letter-boxing distracting to the extant that makes it almost unwatchable. I had the chance to see it on the big screen that spring but decided a now forgotten ’round-table’ conversation on art-something at the Khyber was more important.

So I can’t remember when I first saw Blade Runner, but it was probably one of the CityTv broadcasts that they ran on New Year’s Eve/Day at midnight through the 1990s. Ten years ago, January 1 1998 at 12am I recorded this broadcast and brought the VHS tape back to Halifax with me, where it quickly became wall-paper. Whenever it rained that year I would on returning to my small one bedroom basement apartment at the end of the day put in this copy and let in play in the background as I went about my work.

Later I found the Director’s Cut in the video store and rented it. I think that was the last time I watched the film straight through, sometime after its release in February 1999, and with memories of the voice over in mind, I had an its interpretive slant on the images. I found the Director’s Cut version was superior in its subtlety. This film, without Harrison Ford telling you what to think, invited you to consider it on your own terms.

At the time, Blade Runner was part of my extra curricular studies which also included the novels of William Gibson. For a time I was confused and thought I’d read somewhere that Blade Runner had influenced the writing of Neuromancer, (and later read that Gibson had actually been far more influenced by Alien, and imagined Neuromancer as a bit of background to that world). Given that the 21st Century was looming on us all in the late 90s, and my excitement at seeing that s-f time become real, Blade Runner and Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy were part of a process of understanding what kind of world I’d spend the rest of my life in.

Walking up Spring Garden Road in 1999, and seeing the recently installed refurbished pay phones, I recognized their design as something ‘futuristic’ (a term that I hear less and less often these days) and something that would have looked fine in Blade Runner. There seemed to be an attempt to update our world to match the set design of 1980s s-f films, and given how such films then as now use the experimental work of industrial designers, this all made perfect sense. In that way, s-f films function as marketing for new designs. It seems to me that things like Blackberries and iPods are so successful since they were preceded by lengthy marketing campaigns in the form of s-f novels and films, so that when they arrived, we knew what they were, and had a good idea of what we could do with them.

Watching Blade Runner and reading Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy was a way of prepping myself for the life I expected in Toronto, where I knew I’d end up. In fact, Gibson’s descriptions of the Sprawl always reminded me of Scarborough, so at first, experiencing mini-mall urban decay and franchise restaurants had the excitement of visiting a film-set from the future.

(I had the same experience when I visited Ottawa in early October 2000, just after Trudeau’s funeral, and the city reminded me of San Fransisco as seen in the Star Trek Voyager episode ‘Non Sequitur‘. Ottawa had not only cleaned itself up for the new century, but it was also a giant film set, constantly on our television screens hosting those actors of Parliamentary debate. Meeting someone by the Peace Flame, I looked down at the roses laid in honour of Trudeau’s memory, the flag above the Peace Tower at half-mast, as I’d seen in on television in the days before).

So to see Deckard eating noodles in 2007 is a different experience than seeing the same in Halifax in 1998, where chopstick joints were few and far between as they say. There was a Japanese restaurant on Argyle St but I was still too much of hick to understand the menu. Of course, after these years in the Toronto, Blade Runner just seems like a rainy night on Spadina, only more congested with archaic neon logos. Our bars aren’t filled with smoke and clay pipes, and while it probably will cost $1.25 to use a pay-phone in twelve years, the real Deckards by then are much more likely to use an old fourth generation iPhone.

As Gibson was saying over this past summer’s book-tour, even imagining a future in the first half of the 1980s was an act of optimism. I’m old enough to remember television stories about the Cold War and talk of Nuclear Winter. Blade Runner too offered a vision of the future, not quite post-apocalyptic but close, based loosely on Dick’s novel, which had projected a post-nuclear envirocide where ‘real’ animals were all but extinct. The novel’s Deckard dreamed of buying a ‘real’ goat as that society’s status symbol (as I recall, but I read the novel fifteen years ago). Now the movie has eclipsed the novel and the focus on artificial animals seems out of context, and we have a different understanding of artificiality. There’s enough GMO stuff around already that doesn’t seem any less ‘real’ to us, and the idea behind the Replicants is equally strange. Today it’s comprehensible as ‘Oh, there just genetically engineered humans with a four year life-span,’ which is a different play on 1982’s confusing ‘are they robots or something? How are they fake?’ And as we approach November 2019, it’s one time cyberpunk has become steampunk. Maybe our computers will accept voice commands by then, but we won’t have CRT-television set-top scanners at work printing out Polaroids of our 600+dpi zoom.

And it’s such scanning tech which has enabled this final cut version to come out. The original print was scanned at such an extremely high resolution that watching this version of Blade Runner is a new enough experience in itself - such clarity of image and level of detail was never seen before. This ‘restoration’ reminded me of that done on Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling - we live in an era of restoration, the grand updating to reflect cinema’s recorded vision, our imaginations inhabited by visions focused through Carl Zeiss lenses. Some critics then complained that the ‘brightening’ that occurred with the Michelangelo restoration destroyed the experience, while others welcomed the return to the ‘original’ condition.

Michelangelo’s Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut, circa 1970

Michelangelo’s Blade Runner: The Final Cut, circa 2000

Which is to say that the 21st Century experience of Michelangelo’s ceiling is different from that of the 19th, when the paintings were obscured by three centuries of candle-smoke and the like. And so with Blade Runner: in twelve years time, when it’s actually November 2019. undoubtedly this version of the film will be playing in theatres, and I most likely will find myself in front of the big screen once again, remembering both the time in 2007 when I saw it and the Halifax of twenty one years before. And if the film then still has any currency with the twenty-somethings of that world, what will their experience be of a quaint steam-punk movie depicting questionable dating practices (a forty something throwing a 20 year old girl up against the wall and telling her to say ‘kiss me’, followed the next day with a ‘do you love me?’ question), congested public spaces filled with cigarette smoke, and a level of visual detail lost on the earliest versions of the movie? Will copies of the original voice-over narrated film still be watched, or as ignored as the as murky as the reproductions of the Sistine Ceiling made in the 1960s? Treated, if anything, as historical curiosities, but not invitations to historical experience.

My sense is that Blade Runner is one of those rare works of art which is a master piece despite everything. One feels watching this that no one involved in the actual production had any idea they were making a masterpiece, and watching in straight through as I did, with the scenes visually clarified to highlight how they work together gives one the sense that the plot is kind of weak, in some places (as mentioned above with the romantic scenes) nonsensical, and that this film continues to work for the special effects alone. (It’s a silent movie originally provided with two voice-overs and now only one remains. Blade Runner is probably worth watching with Vangelis’ soundtrack alone). As a masterpiece it gets away from all intentions of its creators and that is one of the reasons it rewards viewing. No one knew what the fuck was going on with it or why, but it just works.

I’m reminded here of Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘story telling problem‘: that when we are confronted with something new we may not have ready-at-hand language to describe how we think about it or how it makes us feel. This in turn can cause us to make simplistic decisions rather than go with more ambiguous and complicated ones. This is how I understand the motivation for the first version’s voice-over narration. It was felt that the film needed some language to orient the viewer. But because this movie is so much about it’s visuals, it should be thought of as a form of animated narrative painting, for which language is not necessary.

So why then record my thoughts on it as I have? Because when I come home from seeing it on the big screen again in November 2019, I’ll want to read this record of what I thought of seeing it in 2007. And for that matter, I might as well share.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut will be released on DVD (in a 2-disc or 5 disc set) on December 18th.

 

Goodreads | 2007 week 46 number 5 (Classic Academic Bullshit)

Worth quoting in full (after all, it is a press release) with emph mine:

What’s in a name? Initials linked to success, study shows (Link)

Do you like your name and initials? Most people do and, as past research has shown, sometimes we like them enough to influence other important behaviors. For example, Jack is more likely to move to Jacksonville and marry Jackie than is Philip who is more likely to move to Philadelphia and marry Phyllis. Scientists call this phenomenon the “name-letter effect” and argue that it is influential enough to encourage the pursuit of name-resembling life outcomes and partners.

However, if you like your name too much, you might be in trouble. Leif Nelson at the University of California, San Diego and colleague Joseph Simmons from Yale University, found that liking your own name sabotages success for people whose initials match negative performance labels.

In their first study, Nelson and Simmons investigated the effect of name resemblance on batters’ strikeouts. In baseball, strikeouts are recorded using the letter ‘K.’ After analyzing Major League Baseball players’ performance spanning 93 years, the researchers found that batters whose names began with ‘K’ struck out at a higher rate than the remaining batters. “Even Karl ‘Koley’ Kolseth would find a strikeout aversive, but he might find it a little less aversive than players who do not share his initials, and therefore he might avoid striking out less enthusiastically,” write the authors.

In a second study, the researchers investigated the phenomenon in academia. Letter grades are commonly used to measure students’ performance, with the letters ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C’ and ‘D’ denoting different levels of performance. Nelson and Simmons reviewed 15 years of grade point averages (GPAs) for M.B.A. students graduating from a large private American university.

Students whose names began with ‘C’ or ‘D’ earned lower GPAs than students whose names began with ‘A’ or ‘B.’ Students with the initial ‘C’ or ‘D,’ presumably because of an unconscious fondness for these letters, were slightly less successful at achieving their conscious academic goals.

Interestingly, students with the initial ‘A’ or ‘B’ did not perform better than students whose initials were grade irrelevant. Therefore, having initials that match hard-to-achieve positive outcomes, like acing a test, may not necessarily cause an increase in performance. However, after analyzing law schools, the researchers found that as the quality of schools declined, so did the proportion of lawyers with name initials ‘A’ and ‘B.’

The researchers confirmed these findings in the laboratory with an anagram test. The result of the test confirmed that when people’s initials match negative performance outcomes, performance suffers. These results, appearing in the December issue of Psychological Science, provide striking evidence that unconscious wants can insidiously undermine conscious pursuits.

###

Author Contact: Leif Nelson ldnelson@ucsd.edu

Psychological Science is ranked among the top 10 general psychology journals for impact by the Institute for Scientific Information. For a copy of the article “Moniker Maladies: When Names Sabotage Success” and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Catherine West at (202) 783-2077 or cwest@psychologicalscience.org.

The Rady School of Management at UC San Diego educates global leaders for innovation-driven organizations. A professional school within one of the top-ranked institutions in the U.S. for higher education and research, the Rady School offers a Full-Time MBA program, a FlexMBA program for working professionals, undergraduate and executive education courses. Our lineage includes 16 Nobel Laureates (former and current faculty) and eight MacArthur Foundation award recipients. The Rady School at UC San Diego transforms innovators into business leaders.

Comments: I’m thankful that the author of this press-release took the time to explain letter grades to me, and thought it was interesting that students with initials ‘a’ and ‘b’ did not perform better than students with grade-irrelevant initials, which is only the entire rest of the alphabet. This alone seems to make such a correlation absurd.

The only reason I’d understand having the scale explained is to account for the international audience, but then again, this is written in English, so it’s not like there are a ton of Chinese out there who suddenly know about how North American grading works. For the Europeans, I imagine they’ve watched enough American movies and television to already be familiar with the system.

Is the argument then that the increased ’slightly less’ performance of the world’s Cynthia Donaldsons, Charles Davies’, Duncan Camerons is based partially on their names? So you’re saying that the reason Albert Burns got an 80, whereas David Connors got a 78 is because of their names?! Is this is why Cory Doctorow believes in ‘anti-copyright policies’!?

And this from a school that considers itself an educator of global leaders! No wonder the world is so fucked up. For one thing, such a study takes for granted a measurement of success which is itself a social construction dating back a century and out-of-step with the needs of present society. For example I imagine that to graduate with top marks from an MBA school you’d need to do rather poorly in the ethics department, especially environmental ethics. Failing the Humanities would also help, since at no point should you consider your employees as human beings desiring to live full lives. They must be refered to as ‘human resources’ (which would have served as a perfectly adequate term for slavery). Their natural desire to be as richly compensated as your gang at the top of the hierarchy must be kept in check and exploited for ’superior job performance’.

The fact that they felt the need to explain to us the letter-grade system seems to be evidence of an inability to imagine another, from which the ethical disasters of capitalism naturally follow. Further, the awarding of the marks leading to grades is mostly arbitrary, and dependent on many factors, including the fact that teachers are as biased as any other human being. So Connor gets 77 while James gets 80 because the teacher likes James more and gave a slightly higher mark to his answers over Connor, who doesn’t say a lot in class.

This study is trying to suggest that Connor, Cory, Charles, Cynthia, Duncan, David, etc, have an ‘unconscious attachment’ to their initials and are thus sabotaging their ’success’ in order to see it written on their tests as a reward counterbalancing the anguish of feeling like a failure. Not to mention the subsequent mockery from the class’ ’successful’ students (a mockery which is ‘unconsciously’ endorsed by the teacher since schools are supposed to help establish the pecking order, so that the authors of this press-release and study get sorted by high grades into university; then onto Masters and PHD programs and are then able to conduct such stupid studies open to such easy mockery).

As for the quoted baseball example, it is equally absurd and subject to the same critique offered above.

In my arbitrary grading system, based on my measurements of success, this study gets an F. Or, no, no, I’ll make the system so that L and N are the lowest grades, and J isn’t much higher, to make it fit with Leif Nelson’s and Joseph Simmons’ thesis.