|
|
Content by Dennis Littrell
Reviewer Rank: 27
Helpful Votes:
4877
|
|
Learn more about Your Profile.
|
Reviews Written by
Dennis Littrell (SoCal)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Out of a time capsule: a warning from thirty years ago, 4 Nov 2009
This book is unusual in that most of it was written prior to something like 1980 and put aside until its author passed away and then it was edited and published just this year by the author's son, Nick Gretener who is a lawyer.
The author Peter Gretener was a Professor of Geology at the University of Calgary, Canada. The species referred to in the title is human and Gretener's prognosis is a question mark. What I think is interesting is that much of what he worried about is the same today as was thirty years ago: pollution, war, ignorance of the masses, academics in ivory towers, rampant greed (especially corporate), too many people, energy shortages to come, etc.
He was also worried about the disconnect and lack of communication between what C.P. Snow famously called "the two cultures," identified by Gretener as the humanities/social sciences and the natural sciences. Gretener comes down hard on the social sciences, e.g.,
"Contrary to science, social science has been outright destructive and is largely responsible for the decline of the social fabric in all western countries. To expect social scientists to find solutions to basically scientific problems is ludicrous. Science to them is a strange world, and they are not prepared to come up with any viable solutions. Problems that have been created by scientists must be solved by scientists." (p. 216)
I tend to agree that the social sciences have been naïve and arrogant while their academic leaders often lack interdisciplinary knowledge and awareness (one of Gretener's salient points). However I think he has gone too far here, and indeed such statement only furthers the divide between disciplines that Snow and Gretener himself deplore.
The central problem and the reason that we may "vanish" as a species according to Gretener is basically because we are living beyond our means. He saw that back in the 1970s when there were something like four billion people on the planet. Today as we close in on seven billion the situation has only grown more acute. His solution comes in the form of three commandments constituting what he calls "the human revolution." The commandments from pages 229-230 are:
1. Thou Shalt Use Your Head
2. Thou Shalt Give Your Fellow Man a Fair Shake
3. Thou Shalt Not Be a Waste Maker.
I have a problem with numbers 1 and 3. " Thou Shalt Use Your Head" is vague and I think people are using their heads. It's just that we are not looking far enough ahead to see the potential disaster to come, or perhaps we see it but don't really care.
"Thou Shalt Not Be a Waste Maker" is almost humorous in that we cannot help making waste (!). The problem is we need to clean up and recycle our wastes.
Number 2. "Thou Shalt Give Your Fellow Man a Fair Shake" is a variant on the Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and is indeed golden.
More to the point and part of Gretener's farsightedness is his concept of "effective population" by which he means there is an optimum number of people AND their use of resources that the planet can sustain. He sees westerners as consuming too many resources especially of the non-renewable kind. Clearly he anticipated the postmodern concept of "ecological footprint" which is defined as a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems.
Gretener rightly sees this overconsumption and pollution as a threat not to the planet itself but to human survival. He writes: "The planet is doing just fine, and the minor skin cancer it has developed will in no way affect the future existence of this planet. It is not the planet we wish to save but rather our personal and collective existence, which is quite a different matter." (p. 215)
On a deeper level Gretener feels that the imminent failure of our species (unless we change our ways) is not merely material but spiritual. He writes, "If the term Homo sapiens remains the designation of a mechanical genius and a spiritual imbecile, the fate of the species is, indeed, sealed." (p. 84)
Gretener's point of view was influenced as he acknowledges to some extent by the works of George Gaylord Simpson whom Gretener curiously calls "one of the most outstanding minds in the field of geology." (p. 232) I suspect Simpson was indeed (incidentally) a geologist but more significantly one of the authors of the modern evolutionary synthesis in biology and a world class paleontologist.
Gretener was also influenced by Vance Packard, whom I recall as the author the The Hidden Persuaders (1957) and other works of social criticism; Robert Ardrey, famous for African Genesis (1961); and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize winning author of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) and other works. It was nostalgic for me to be reminded of these authors whom I also read and admired many years ago.
The strength of this book is in allowing the reader a perspective on how long ago the present predicament was identified. We are able to reflect on what has been done and not done (mostly the latter) and to see what technological and other developments have altered or not altered the situation. Kudos go to Nick Gretener who did an outstanding job of editing the manuscript and who made a number of illuminating comments.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
How DNA analysis is illuminating the prehistory, 17 Oct 2009
I thought the first part of the book which was actually about the prehistory as newly discovered through DNA analysis was very interesting. I was less thrilled with the chapters on Race, Language and History. The wrap up chapter on Evolution was good, if a bit repetitious.
Wade writes extremely well and does a good job of summarizing the latest (circa 2005) research, much of which has come from analyses of the descent of the Y chromosome (from men) and mitochondrial DNA handed down through the female line. The question of our relationship with the Neanderthal--long a thorny question--is more or less resolved with DNA extracted from Neanderthal fossil bones that has been compared to the sequences of human DNA. The conclusion is that H. neanderthalensis came from H. ergaster through H. heidelbergensis as H. sapiens did, and then broke off on its own. Furthermore there is no genetic evidence that human and Neanderthal produced viable offspring. The earlier idea than the Neanderthal was a modification of the very successful H. erectus has been discredited.
As to the question of our origins, northeast sub-Saharan Africa is further confirmed as the site. Wade has humans becoming behavioral human around 50,000 years ago after becoming anatomically human as early as perhaps 200,000 years ago. The great leap forward occurring 50,000 years ago is attributed to the acquisition of symbolic, syntactic language. This was also the time when humans made the exodus out of Africa and began to colonize the world. They went east across the Red Sea at the Gate of Grief during a glacial period when the sea level was two hundred feet lower than it is today. They followed the coast line of the present Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea to India and eventually to Australia. I had previously though humans had gone north along the Red Sea to the Mediterranean and then east and then north to Europe. However, the evidence indicates that it was only later that humans migrated to Europe from India westward to replace the Neanderthal.
I had also always thought that agriculture came before settled communities, but it now appears that sedentism occurred first and was part of a behavioral and psychological change in humans that led to agriculture and eventually to cities and nation states. Just prior to or at about the same time as the first settlements appeared some 15,000 years ago occurred the domestication of the dog. Wade avers that living in settlements near a plentiful food source (wild grains, a bountiful river, etc.) was partially made possible by people using dogs as sentries against the ancient practice of dawn raids by neighboring tribes. Clearly the transition from the hunter-gatherer way of life to the settled way of life was a momentous one.
Perhaps the reason I wasn't so thrilled with the latter part of the book is that I read some of the studies Wade considers elsewhere. The experience of Brian Sykes in tracing the ancestry of people named "Sykes" and of Thomas Jefferson's second family with the slave Sally Hemings are examples of DNA derived stories that I had read before. Wade's account of the saga of the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe, although also a familiar story, is most interesting. He cites studies showing that Ashkenazi Jews have an average IQ of 115 while Sephardic and Oriental Jews have the usual average of 100. A couple of arguments are presented to account for this difference. The more plausible one is that because the Jews of Europe were forced by the Christian majority into becoming money lenders from about AD 1100 until around 1700. (Christianity at the time forbade usury.) That sort of intellectually demanding way of life, along with having to make a living amid persecution, selected for intelligence. By way of contrast, Sephardic and Oriental Jews during the same period "lived mostly under Muslim rulers who often forced them into menial jobs, not the intellect-demanding ones imposed on Ashkenazim." (p. 256)
More than any other book I have read, "Before the Dawn" insists on cultural change leading rapidly to genetic change. With the experience of the Ashkenazi Jews as a case in point, Wade argues more generally that "for social species the most important feature of the environment [which directs evolutionary change] is their own society." He concludes that "to the extent that people have shaped their own society, they have determined the conditions of their own evolution." (p. 267.
This might be termed "evolution by your own boot straps." I wonder however if it isn't a sort of fallacy. Biological evolution shapes human behavior which in turn leads to cultural change which leads to further biological evolution. I think it is better to speak of cultural evolution as a subset of biological evolution and not imply that somehow we have begun to direct the process. But this may be just a quibbling over semantics. Clearly the environment has changed us and we have changed the environment.
In the final chapter Wade speculates on where we are going. I always like such speculations but only really appreciate those that have us becoming post-human in some way. Wade posits one possibility that I have not thought about in years, that of humans splitting into two or more species. He notes: "Our previous reaction to kindred species was to exterminate them, but we have mellowed a lot in the last 50,000 years." (p. 279)
By the way, this idea that we "have mellowed a lot," and become less aggressive since we have domesticated ourselves is one that appears elsewhere in the book and is an idea that, for better or for worse, appears surprisingly to be true. The actually percentage of humans killed during warfare appears to have been much greater during the prehistory than it is today. The wars today are much bigger but the wars in the pre-history, according to the research presented here, were nearly constant.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Some younger scientists report on what they're doing., 13 Oct 2009
The main difference between this and other science anthologies that I have read is 1) the essays are original, written especially for this volume; and 2) the scientists are relatively young not yet at the pinnacle of their careers.
Max Brockman believes that "it's important to engage with the thinking of the next generation, to better understand not just what is going on in our own time but what issues society will face in the future. This exercise is especially valuable in science, where so many of the important discoveries are made by those in emerging generations." (p. xiii) Consequently he "approached some of today's leading scientists and asked them to name some of the rising stars in their respective disciplines: those who, in their research, are tackling some of science's toughest questions and raising new ones." (pp. xii-xiv) The result is this book with essays from 18 scientists in fields ranging from cosmology to microbiology.
In the first essay UCLA climatologist Laurence C. Smith asks "Will We Decamp for the Northern Rim?" His answer is that he does "not advise buying acreage in Labrador," but "maybe in Michigan." What is clear is that the north is warming up and making "land that is hardly livable [in]to land that is somewhat livable." He sees the US and Canada as the two countries "best positioned for expansion" into what has been known as the lands of the "minus-forty" degrees. Central to his piece is the prediction that north of the 45th parallel "temperatures will rise at nearly double the global average...and precipitation will increase sharply as well."
In the second essay neuroscientist Christian Keysers argues that "mirror neurons" in our brain that enable us mimic and feel what other are doing and feeling merely by watching--something we do automatically--strongly suggests that humans are ethical by nature. He believes that our brain circuits "lay the foundation for an intuitive altruism."
Philosopher Nick Bostrom looks at enhancing human beings so that we might be better acclimated to the modern world instead of the savannahs of Africa on which we evolved.
Physicist Sean Carroll explores entropy and the arrow of time in the cosmos while physicist Stephon H.S. Alexander grapples with dark energy.
There are essays on the social development of the brain in adolescence by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore; on using brain imaging to explore social thought (Jason P. Mitchell); how language shapes the way we think (Lera Broditsky); on memory enhancement (Sam Cooke); and so on to whether specialization in science is making it impossible for scientists in different field to communicate (Gavin Schmidt, who says that the last person able to keep up with all the sciences lived in the eighteenth century).
Of particular interest to me are the essays by David M .Eagleman on "Brain Time," and by Vanessa Woods and Brian Hare on how humans came "down from the trees" and why no one followed. In the former, Eagleman addresses the familiar phenomenon that "time 'slows down' during brief, dangerous events such as car accidents and robberies." (p. 159) I've had that experience myself and have tried to account for it. What Eagleman discovered is that because of the emergency situation we take in much more information about what is happening than we usually do and this "higher density of data" makes the event appear to last longer." (p. 161) This is similar to the sense that for a child the day is long and for the old person the day is short. The day seems longer for the child because so much of what the child is experiencing is new and requires close attention, whereas for a person of senior years much of what happens has been seen before and requires only the most cursory attention.
In the latter essay, Woods and Hare explore the canine-human relationship and show how dogs are better able to read humans than are our closer relatives, chimpanzees. Dogs were able to find hidden objects in an experiment when humans would gaze at or point to the hiding place or even tap on the hiding place. But chimps have not the habit of paying that much attention to humans and would just miss the clues. Woods and Hare ask why this should be and answer: "One idea is that dogs live with us, so over thousands of hours of interacting with us, they learn to read our body language. Another idea is that the pack lifestyle and cooperative hunting of wolves, the canids from which all dogs evolved, made all canids, dogs included, more in tune with social cues." (p. 177)
Woods and Hare also report on an experiment by the Russian scientist Dmitri Belyaev who raised some forty generations of foxes, selecting those most friendly to humans in each generation. The foxes "became incredibly friendly toward humans. Whenever they saw people, they barked, wagged their tails, sniffed the people, and licked their faces. But even stranger were the physical changes...." Their ears "became floppy" and their "tails turned curly." "In short, they looked and behaved remarkably like their close relative the domestic dog." (pp. 178-179)
Incidentally Max Brockman is the son of John Brockman who has edited a number of first class science anthologies. "What's Next" continues that excellent tradition.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Fine collection with a bonus CD, 4 Oct 2009
Most poems should in fact be read aloud. Part of the power of poetry is in the spoken word, the sound that reverberates around the head and through the heart and mind. Poetry is in fact a non-linear expression that engages more than the denotative sense of words. It is a way of achieving through various poetic devices: allusion, alliteration, consonance, rhythm, rhyme, sound and even typography, a depth of meaning and experience not possible from mere prose.
Still it is true that some poems sound better read aloud than others, and Robert Pinsky, U.S. Poet Laureate 1997-2000, has come up with a collection of some of the best ever written, designed to please both ear and mind.
The organization is in seven parts. Part I features "Short Lines, Frequent Rhymes," e.g., Gwendolyn Brooks, "We Real Cool"; Robert Frost, "Dust of Snow"; Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Spring and Fall"; Edgar Allan Poe, "Fairy-Land"; five by Emily Dickinson, and twenty-six more. Notice that for the most part the selected poems are not necessary the poet's best or best known. And perhaps the greatest accomplishment in English that might fall under the heading of "Short Lines, Frequent Rhymes," namely Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" doesn't appear perhaps because of its length. I would have liked to have seen included e e cummings's "anyone lived in a pretty how town."
Part II "Long Lines, Strophes, Parallelisms" features the first three chapters of Ecclesiastes; "When You're Lying Awake" from W.S. Gilbert; Allen Ginsberg's inspired musings on Walt Whitman, "A Supermarket in California"; a couple from Walt Whitman and fourteen others. In his introduction to this part, Pinsky presents some thoughts of how stanzas might break down, how lines might be divided and how the energy and sense of a poem might thereby be affected.
Part III is "Ballads, Repetitions, Refrains," an eclectic presentation including Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky'; Julia Ward Howe's "Battle-Hymn of the Republic"; Pinsky's own "Samurai Song"; Edwin Arlington Robinson's "Miniver Cheevy," etc., and this famous anonymous gem:
Western wind, when will thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!
Part IV: "Love Poems" includes Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" with its beautiful turn to open the last stanza: "Ah, love, let us be true/To one another!..."; Robert Herrick's "Upon Julia's Clothes"; Andrew Marvell's famous "To His Coy Mistress"; something from Sappho, three sonnets from Shakespeare, and many more.
Part V gives us "Stories" of which my favorite is "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot which Pinsky rightly sees as more of a story poem than a love poem; Robert Browning's chilling "My Last Duchess"; Shelley's cautionary tale, "Ozymandias"; Wilfred Owen's take on that old lie, "Dulce Et Decorum Est"; Ernest Lawrence Thayer's popular "Casey at the Bat"; and thirty-five more.
Part VI is entitled "Odes, Complaints, and Celebrations" and it features William Blake's "The Tyger"; which is a celebration of sorts; Coleridge's beautiful opium dream "Kubla Khan"; "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode to a Nightingale," and "To Autumn" from Keats; and many others.
In Part VII Pinsky gives us "Parodies, ripostes, Jokes and Insults" including Eliot insulting himself in "How Unpleasant to Meet Mr. Eliot" while parodying Edward Lear's "How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear" (also included); and some thirty-five more. Here's Theodore Roethke's joke on the square entitled "Academic":
The stethoscope tells what everyone fears:
You're likely to go on living for years,
With a nurse-maid waddle and a shop-girl simper,
And the style of your prose growing limper and limper.
Pinksy provides an introduction to each part. There's a CD included with the book in which Pinsky reads twenty-one of the poems including "Ode to a Nightingale," and Milton's "Methought I saw my late espoused saint." I must observe that while Pinsky reads very well and it was a pleasure to hear him, he might want to redo his reading of Emily Dickinson's "The Soul selects her own Society" since he has the wrong meaning of "present" as evidenced by his pronunciation "prez'ent" instead of "pri-zent'" with the accent on the second syllable. The sense in the poem
The Soul selects her own Society--
Then--shuts the Door--
To her divine Majority--
Present no more--
Unmoved--she notes the Chariots--pausing--
At her low Gate--
Unmoved--an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat--
I've known her--from an ample nation--
Choose One--
Then--close the Values of her attention--
Like Stone--
is that it is no use to present to her anymore since she is "unmoved" and has closed the Values of her attention--/Like stone--." (NOT that her divine Majority is no longer present.) The sense is that of the Soul as a kind of exalted royalty that one might present before.
This quibbling aside, Pinsky has put together a most interesting and entertaining poetry experience, one that I highly recommend.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
How germs can hide in your body waiting to cause disease, 2 Oct 2009
This is an easy to read, rather thorough look at how some ailments are caused or triggered by microbes that reside hidden in our bodies, sometimes dormant for years. Dr. Daniel gives the symptoms, the causes, the possible treatments for dozens of infections. He emphasizes thorough diagnostic techniques combining the expertise of physicians with the most modern equipment. He tells the reader what can be discovered with body scans and what cannot; and part of what cannot are what he calls "stealth germs."
Stealth germs such as the various herpes viruses once acquired stay within our bodies for decades, something erupting to cause disease, and sometimes lying dormant waiting for a compromise in our immune system caused by stress or the invasion of other pathogens before becoming active. Daniel devotes over a hundred pages in Chapter 4: "Stealth Infections of Body Regions" detailing the symptoms, the diagnoses, the infective agents, tests to consider taking, and potential treatments for various ailments. He gives a descriptive analysis of each ailment under the heading "Case in point."
Perhaps the hallmark experience that taught physicians that undetected germs can be present in the body causing disease or waiting to cause disease involves the case of Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that causes stomach ulcers and gastritis. Prior to the discovery of H. pylori it was thought that stress caused stomach ulcers mainly because it was not realized that bacteria could live continuously in the digestive juices of the stomach. Subsequently, Daniel reports, we have discovered that such stealth germs as H. pylori may cause other complaints as well. In this case H. pylori may be indicated in non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and as a trigger for cancer of the stomach.
I knew that viruses can cause or trigger cancer, especially cervical cancer caused by the human papillomavirus. But I was surprised to learn that schizophrenia or at least schizophrenic symptoms can be caused by the human endogenous retrovirus or the herpes simplex virus type 2 or cytomegalovirus (see p. 114). It may well be that other forms of cancer are caused or triggered by viruses and perhaps some chronic conditions as well. Daniel reports on a link between human adenoviruses and obesity on pages 174-175. He adds that "there is also some evidence that an imbalance of certain bacteria in the gut may be associated with weight gain."
Daniel notes that many microbes such as staph and Candida are resident in and on our bodies and usually cause no harm. However should our immune systems become compromised or should these germs somehow migrate to other regions of the body they can cause disease. He also points out that using antibiotics can kill not only the disease-causing bacteria but upset the usual balance of microbes in the body and allow dangerous microbes to proliferate. A possible treatment is with the use of probiotics which can be administered along with prebiotics (food ingredients that pass undigested to the colon "where they produce a beneficial effect by providing nutrients which promote the growth of some of the...resident 'beneficent' bowel bacteria..."). (p. 42)
The emphasis in the book is on accurate diagnosis and on working with your physician in order to get the best treatment. This is a patient-friendly book aimed at the general public. Daniel shows how patients can help their physicians and how physicians can be better doctors by listening to their patients and by careful diagnosis. The point of writing a book on stealth germs is to emphasize that the first impression diagnosis may be incorrect and to consider in difficult cases possibilities other than the obvious or the most common cause. For the patient this is also the point of reading such a book.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Argues that atheists and agnostics are just as moral as theists, 2 Oct 2009
It has been assumed in most societies since the dawn of history that humans cannot be moral without God and religion. Sinnott-Armstrong, who is a Professor of Philosophy and Legal Studies at Dartmouth College, presents in this extended essay the modern view to the contrary.
More specifically he argues that a belief in God is not necessary for people to be good or for humans to realize that some acts are morally wrong. We do not need the fear of eternal damnation to behave in morally acceptable ways. This is then a treatise in moral philosophy in which Sinnott-Armstrong takes the side of atheists and agnostics against theists who think that being atheist or agnostic means per force that you are immoral.
He begins with the provocative question in Chapter One "Would You Marry an Atheist?" The answer is most people wouldn't. Furthermore, the prejudice against atheists and other non-believers is so great that an avowed atheist has no chance of being elected to high office in the United States. He notes that people in general fear atheists and discriminate against them simply because they are atheists, and that fear stems from the mistaken idea that atheists can't be moral. In the chapters that follow Sinnott-Armstrong argues with some force that religious people and theists in general may be more morally compromised than atheists. He cites studies that suggest as much.
Personally my experience with fundamentalist Christians and others who take the Bible literally is that their mental states are so compromised by the conflicting morality of the Bible that they practice a similar duplicity in their daily lives. If you've ever argued with a creationist you know what I mean. But Christians are not alone in their prejudices against non-believers. One finds the same antagonism in other religions, especially in Islam and indeed in the conservative expressions of most religions.
What Sinnot-Armstrong does not present here is the argument from psychology in which we see that people have neurological structures called "mirror neurons" that ape not just the behaviors of others but their mental states as well. Thus empathy and an identification with the plight of others is automatic and built into our nature in such a way that we are naturally moral animals who instinctively follow (most of us any way, for the most part) the edict of the Golden Rule which is to do unto others as you would have done unto you. We cannot help but feel that way unless of course we demonize others or make them our enemies or otherwise fear them.
Others have argued that our social nature as formed over the ages has molded us into moral beings who are capable of behaving in ways that reflect our understanding of what is right and wrong and guide us to behave in accordance with what is right. This surprisingly is a modern revelation and contrary to the spirit of the Bible in which humans are seen as fallen creatures who need God and the fear of punishment in order to behave morally. Supporting this belief in the news we constantly hear about people committing horrendous acts of hatred and violence, and of course nation states including our own have brought death and destruction on untold numbers of innocent people.
But these exceptions merely test the rule. Humans for the most part act morally because such behavior not only benefits them but other people as well, and is one of the reasons for the evolutionary success of the human race. For humans cooperation is what tames the jungle and molds the environment to our benefit, not blood thirsty competition.
Sinnott-Armstrong's tone is reasonable and reasoned and his argument thorough to the point of something like near exhaustion. He bends over backwards to be fair to both theists and atheists while insisting that these former antagonists can live in peace and harmony. I would say he is entirely convincing but I am part of the choir here, and so it would be better to hear what those skeptical of his thesis might think.
For those of you who are moderate in your religious views but not sure that you can trust non-believers this book might be an eye-opener.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sharp, engaging take on a journalist protecting her sources, 2 Oct 2009
The men are real scum in this one. David Schwimmer gets to play a guy who basically gives up on his heroic wife while Matt Dillon gets to play a blood-thirsty prosecutor bent on furthering his career whatever the human cost. Even Alan Alda (minus a fine little speech before the Supreme Court) gets to basically fail in defending his client.
His client is Rachel Armstrong (Kate Beckinsale) a journalist who finds herself in contempt of court for not revealing her source for a story on the outing of a CIA agent. (Shades of the Judith Miller/Valerie Plame Wilson case.) Here instead of the Iraq war we have an assignation attempt on the President supposedly by somebody in Venezuela after which the US takes some military action. Rachel ends up in jail and we get to see her suffer all the deprivations of being jail, getting beaten up, estranged from her son and her husband, who betrays her. She is doing all this to protect a source, and a kind of journalistic honor code. David Swimmer's character isn't interested in journalist honor codes. He is displeased that she cares more about protecting her source than in being with him and her son.
Clearly this is a Belt Way story told as a woman's POV flick. It is engaging and it moves right along. It is sharp, just a tad short of slick. We cannot help but identify with Kate Beckinsale's character. And when we find out at the very, very end whom she is protecting we understand. It is a nice twist, one of the cleverest I've seen in movies in quite a while. The end is just perfect.
I was about to write that "every soccer mom and indeed every mom will identify with Kate Beckinsale's character" but actually not all of them will. But when they see the ending they might change their mind.
See this for the clever twist, for the sharp direction and editing and for a fine performance by Kate Beckinsale.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Noir A-Z
|
by Julian Hibbard
Edition: Hardcover |
| Price: £12.71 |
|
| Availability: In stock |
|
|
|
|
|
"Cinematic and cryptic...moments" for "the watcher and the watched.", 30 Sep 2009
I don't know what to make of this as a book. The size (approx. 6.5 x 5 x 1.75 inches) suggests a photo album; moreover the pages are thick and stiff like a photo album as though to hold pasted-on snapshots. And of course this IS a photo album. There are in fact 26 photos, one for each letter of the alphabet. The photos are provocative and a bit bizarre, attractive and not attractive at the same time. Cartoon figures co-exist with scantily-clad models. Danger merges with the erotic. People are caught in private moments literally with their pants down, and we are invited to be voyeurs.
The photographer, Julian Hibbard writes that he likes to "examine the boundaries between play...what is real, what is not...." He wants to delve beneath the surface where lie "mystery, twists, encounters with the unexpected, the surreal."
On the facing page of each color photo is a page giving the letter of the alphabet and a tag line, e.g., "A is for 'Abandoned'" with a photo of an old car decaying in the woods. My favorite is "J is for Jeopardy" which shows a young, attractive, lanky woman in a blue/purple dress on a narrow ledge of a brick building high above the ground. Unaccountably she has pulled up part of her dress to show a silk stocking leg as though posing for a publicity shot for a thriller movie.
Stephen Mayes's short commentary identifies the photos as "graphic incidents" which gets to the story quality of the photos. Each photo suggests a text and a subtext. The man in a black suit on a rock wall is "Pursued," but by whom and why, and how did he get there? The woman seen through the windshield of her car is "Transfixed," but why is she wearing white gloves and why the white wig and what is she staring at that has transfixed her?
Meyers finishes with "This is a child's book for adults, a story of darkness told lightly and confused emotions made linear, stories of innocence that can only be understood by the experienced."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
OMFG! This is sooo freaking funny!, 29 Sep 2009
I've only read 25 pages but I had to get this out because...well, I just know that John Forster and Marc Segan can't keep this hilarity up (or anything else up) for 256 pages. (Notice FWIW that the number of pages in the book is a binomial expansion of the powers of two: 2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256! I do NOT think this an accident. It is instead a clear sign that these guys are serious about helping you ace the SAT.)
Okay first I guess I should describe this book. It is approximately the size and shape of a "real" SAT study guide (8.5 x 11 x 0.75 inches). It contains practice tests and answer sheets in the SAT format including such authentic touches as blank pages with the words "NO TEST MATERIALS ON THIS PAGE" on them. The questions are of course parodies of real SAT questions, and the entire book is a running satire on not only SAT study guides but more specifically on the SAT test (and industry) itself.
The authors claim tongue in cheek that this "guide" will help you prepare for the real SAT. Obviously the first question on page 15:
1. The psychotic seven-year-old subjected his
puppy to repeated acts of ---------.
A) Hamlet
B) bravery
C) sadism
D) coprolalia
E) Congress
will do no such thing. However my guess is that a lot of students facing their showdown with the SAT could use a few laughs, and in fact such laughter may help them relax. And if this helps make the SAT less forbidding then this book can actually help. Moreover, some of the questions on the BSAT (that's an SAT focused on the what comes out of the south end of a cow heading north) are curiously so much like actual SAT questions that some real practice and learning might take place. Consider this question from page 22 ("...the underlined portion may contain errors..."):
1. Having been fixed that morning, Natalie drove the car to the Planned Parenthood meeting.
(Personally I think "Fluffy" would have been even better than "Natalie" or maybe "Mrs. Fluffy," but never mind.) The point is the sentence is an example of a "dangling participle" which I promise (having taught a verbal SAT prep class some years ago) you will meet up with when you take the SAT.
The study guide itself runs for 106 pages, then there are four BSAT practice tests, and then two appendices, one on "Advanced Test-Taking Strategies" including "Cheating" (Do it!) and the other on words you might confuse, e.g.,
Word: diphthong. Pronunciation: DIFF-thong. What you think it means: a skimpy two-piece bathing suit. What it actually means: a speech sound that glides from one vowel sound to another.
Here's a sentence completion question from BSAT Test 1:
1. Tommy was obsessed with his music teacher,
Ms. Da Silva, not because of her -------- but
because she seemed so -------.
A) subtle beauty..Portuguese
B) ginormous boobs..cryogenic
C) piano technique..desperate for sex
D) clubfoot..ready to snap
E) any of the above
In the "Answers Explanations" the authors note that "The only logical answer is C) desperate for sex. Especially when he thinks about her great finger technique."
Apropos this last question, I must issue a word of caution for the sensitive reader: some of the humor in this book is obscene, indecent, risqué, immoral, salacious, prurient, ribald, coarse, vulgar, bawdy, rude, lewd, crude and not especially refined.
Finally, after reading this book it may happen that the student while taking the real SAT may read some fairly innocent questions in the spirit of the BSAT and find him or herself lol during the test, much to the annoyance of fellow test takers. That is okay since while they may get more uptight, YOU will be relaxed and your relative score may rise.
For those of you interested in an early critical critique of the SAT industry (with not so many laughs) search in the deep reaches of your college library for a book entitled None of the Above: The Myth of Scholastic Aptitude (1985) by David Owen which was apparently updated in 1999 and given a new subtitle.
Bottom line here: very funny. Don't miss this gem.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Much better than I had been led to believe, 24 Sep 2009
Although "The Night of the Iguana" is not considered one of Tennessee Williams's best plays it is nonetheless an interesting piece of work. John Huston's interpretation, starring Richard Burton as the Rev. Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon, Williams's defrocked, alcoholic clergyman, is also not considered one of Huston's best films, but is nonetheless an interesting venture.
Burton gives a steady performance while Ava Gardner is excellent in a limited role as Maxine Faulk, a woman of a certain age: too old for boy toys and too young to toss in the towel. What she would like now that her old hubby is dead is for Shannon to fall in love with her. Shannon has come to her Mexican hotel and restaurant with a busload of unhappy Baptist College faculty tourists. He has failed as a clergyman and is now failing as a tour guide. Sue Lyon, not far removed from the title role in Kubrick's Lolita (1962) plays Charlotte Goodall, a teenaged tease trying to further debauch the compromised Rev. Shannon. Deborah Kerr has an interesting part as the chaste daughter of a free-spirit traveling grandfather/granddaughter team of street artists who happens to arrive at the hotel as her elderly grandfather is near collapse. Grayson Hall plays Judith Fellowes, a hardnosed Baptist lady about whom Shannon says: "Miss Fellowes is a highly moral person. If she ever recognized the truth about herself it would destroy her"--that truth being...well, let's just say she likes Charlotte more than she knows.
The film was shot on locale in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico before the tourist build-up during an era in which Mexico was Hollywood's safe and idyllic playground. A sense of the laidback attitude prevailing then can be recalled in the popular song from the forties "Manana, Manana is good enough for me." It was a playground in which anything could be had for pennies on the peso including things immoral, illegal and even downright unhealthy--come to think of it, pretty much as now, except the price has gone up quite a bit and it's not so safe anymore.
The Night of the Iguana comes in the middle of John Huston's long career as one of filmland's greatest directors, 23 years after The Maltese Falcon (1941) and 23 years before The Dead (1987). It is a film characterized by an authentic locale, atmospheric shots and the sharp, witty dialogue of one of America's pre-eminent playwrights in Tennessee Williams. It is a film at once satirical with clearly etched characters, deeply understood as only Williams, Chekov, Shakespeare and a few other playwrights are capable of creating. Huston stays faithful to Williams's underlying critique of human sexuality and the hypocrisy surrounding it while getting the best out of a very good cast.
The only disappointment is Miss Lyon who played her part without finesse. She complained at some point in her career that she had been typecast out of good parts because she had played Lolita. However one can see here that Lyon, as pretty as she was, was not talented or charismatic enough to become a star.
Ava Gardner on the other hand had already been a star and was in fine form, relishing playing Maxine Faulk, the in-charge, earthy woman of the world. She gets to take a shot at the prissy but slightly butch Judith Fellowes when Fellowes allows that she teaches "voice" at the college. Maxine counters with, "Well, geography is my specialty. Did you know that if it wasn't for the dikes, the plains of Texas would be engulfed by the gulf?"
Burton seemed entirely at home playing a character who was not far removed from his own persona, as was the case with Deborah Kerr whose character here was not too far removed from that of Anna Leonowens whom she played so beautifully in The King and I (1956).
See this for John Huston, one of cinema's greatest directors.
|
|
|
|
![Nothing But the Truth [DVD] [2008] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51pKLFyM6sL._SL110_.jpg)
![The Night of the Iguana [DVD] [1964] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/518YCXJVZGL._SL110_.jpg)