The Fog of War

I happily do not have cable (or any television reception for that matter) so I was unable to watch the Academy Awards tonight. However, I did watch what I believe to be the best documentary of the year, or even decade, The Fog of War. After watching this enthralling film, it dawned on me that it was not even nominated for "Best Documentary." Not that it really matters, but I would like to know why. Does anyone know? I believe it should have been in the running, but could be mistaken. Errol Morris directing, Philip Glass on score, and Robert S. McNamara as conductor (in a non-musical sense of course). Politics aside, this movie is great. I just wonder if anyone agrees with me?

Ah ha... Google to the recue! Logically, it didn't win this year... because it won last year. I would erase the previous paragraph, but I would like to maintain my emphasis on the quality that is last year's best documentary film.

Taking in account this new mental cinematic paradigm, I would like to congratulate this year's winner, which I unfortunately did not see. Super-size Me was, however, also a spectacular film, which I did see.

So, in conclusion, watch The Fog of War, because it's good, and good people like good things... I think Socra-Plato said that. So do it!

Flicker Film Festival

Flicker is a rolling film festival, begun in 1994, to showcase movies shot on film. Bi-monthly screenings are held at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, North Carolina. And... it's free.

Not only is this a great venue to see films, but it is also a place where aspiring film-makers can have their own stuff shown. So get up, get out, and film something!

Random Activity

1.Grab the nearest book.
2.Open the book to page 123.
3.Find the fifth sentence.
4.Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5.Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

Page 123 for me actually turns out to be a bibliographical reference, but here it is anyway...

[68] Rousseau, Discourse sur l'origine d'inegalite (cf. Condillac, Grammaire, p.27 note 1).

from The Order of Things, by Michel Foucault

idea via http://scrutinyhooligans.blogspot.com/

Away with biographies and histories, and libraries and museums! Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater, a last expiring dance. But a dance!

Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Artist Censored for "Love"

"It's a sad day in America when an artist goes to jail for reproducing a Michelangelo painting on the side of his art studio," - ACLU Legal Director Michael J. Steinberg

Local Detroit artist, Ed (Gonzo) Stross, has been arrested for painting a depiction of Michaelangelo's "Creation of Man" on the side wall of his own studio. In it is illustrated a bare-chested Eve and the word "Love." Stross was given permission to create the work with the stipulations that he not depict genitalia or letters. Last I recall, breasts were not considered genitalia. So what does that leave?

Philosophy Talk

The program that questions everything......except your intelligence.

http://www.philosophytalk.org/

Past Episodes include discussions on topics such as:
Who Owns Ideas?
Markets and Morality
Patriotism versus Cosmopolitanism
Drug Legalization
Marriage and the State
Has Science Replaced Religion?
Bush's doctrine of preemptive self-defense

Farewell to Dr. Gonzo: Hunter S. Thompson has left the Building

"America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable."

-Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)

A new word is like a fresh seed sewn on the ground of the discussion.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein in Culture and Value

Charlotte: Creative Class Capital of the South

Creative Loafing's Sam Boykin has hit the nail on the head. Charlotte has great potential, if it only refuses to bow to those forces that are destroying cities across the nation. It's about time we starting pushing the envelope on this McWorld of ours.

In the House of My Fear

Written from the shore of sanity, the book dives fearlessly back into the Rimbaudian hells and the Blakean ecstasies and brings back what is almost the account of the '60s we so long bemoaned the lack of. I say "almost" because the '60s were as unique as fingerprints when you fail to describe them, but as communal as a sauna when you recall. Joel Agee writes uniquely, succeeds communally, and leaves the mystery still calling.

- Andrei Codrescu

It's still Winter

Yesterday winter seemed far off, but today... today sleet pellets ricochet!

Gracias Anonymoses

Thanks to Anonymoses for enlightening me on the finer points of blogging. It's slow going, but I'm starting to make fascinating discoveries (fascinating to me, old hat to most). Anyhow... things are coming along.

MIT for Everyone

Lovers of knowledge everywhere should check out MIT's Open Course Work site. Now the masses can access years worth of the university's academic information: syllabi, assignments, lecture notes, etc. One can learn, for free, from this beacon of academia. You don't get credit, but that's not really the point. This is a resource not to be neglected... www.ocw.mit.edu

Bloggers are Good People

Who would have thought? Well, everyone I guess. Laudit! I applaud citizens of the blogosphere for their revolutionary spirit and their intellectual tenacity. After years of battling the malaise of "mainstream cyberspace," it is great to witness the rebirth of discourse.

"Think, Wait, and Fast,"... Not in America

Days and nights blur on this wild rollercoaster of life. Fast food, fast times. America is ailing from a brain-drain... and not just of engineers and mathematicians! If citizens would step back and realize the uncontrollable voracity of the human appetite (polyvocally), the balance of power in this country would shift. Right and Left-brains United! Should people reflect on the virtues of patience and thought, as told by Hesse's Siddhartha, the chaos might possibly recede into sanity.

Thus Spake Siddhartha

Most people, so I have been told, read Hesse's classic Siddhartha in high school. I, however, did not and am very glad that I did not. Not that it is not good. In fact, it is nothing short of revolutionary in my opinion. The finer points of this culture-blending ouvre would have gone without notice in my adolescence, but having been shat upon quite a number of times by now, Hesse speaks loud and clear to me.

The Desire to Create

What is it that drives a person to create? Where does the desire for originality, and beauty, arise from? Is it out of vanity or selfishness, or, is it out a deeper humanism?

"Creation" - an emblematic word describing both science and art, poetry and religion. It is here that seems the most logical place to begin. How is it that civilization has accrued such a trove of knowledge? Theories, facts, opinions, systems, novels, and, yes, blogs. In this coagulate of stuff, there is beauty, and even wisdom.