Ineffective Special Effects

Chris Orr, in his review of Body of Lies:

[Ridley Scott's] aesthetic and political purposes are in tension: How upset can we be about a deadly explosion when Scott has labored so mightily to make it look cool? Though evidently intended to straddle the divide between action thriller and geopolitical fable, when pushed, Body of Lies tumbles into the former genre.

I've often felt this director's divide between sticking to the flow & tone of the film and making the most of special effects. I've seen behind-the-scene works on what goes into creating a crash or an explosion. When so much money and time is spent by the stunt team, it only seems natural to justify their efforts by showing the 'action' from various angles, repeat with slow-motions. But if it's not an outright action movie whose target audience are juvenile boys, the multiple-angle-slo-mo shots only dilute the intensity of narration.

UO - 2

Forsyth writes in The Fist of God about why intelligence officers may sell themselves to foreign countries:

The motives for being so recruited to serve another country vary.  The recruit may be in debt, in a bitter marriage, passed over for promotion, revolted by his own regime, or simply lust for a new life and plenty of money.  He may be recruited through his own weaknesses, sexual or homosexual, or simply by sweet talk and flattery.

Two things pricked me from the above passage -- 1) The use of 'he'.  I know how it's a matter of style for a lot of writers to use 'he' or 'him' while they obviously mean both the genders.  Forsyth doesn't particularly strike me as that kind of a writer because of his colossal attention to detail, especially when there were women defectors.  Since thrillers/suspense are primarily aimed at men, it even makes sense for a young man to imagine a woman as a recruit for espionage.  It adds spice.  2) Sexual or homosexual - Is homosexual not sexual?  Such political incorrectness spotlights that he still thinks from a different age.

Intellectual Compartmentalization

A.C.Grayling writes in Edge:

We have a problem at the moment, which is that too few people go on from school to study science at university. The point here is not about making more scientists necessarily, but making more people who are competent to observe what's happening in science, to be interested in reading about it, to keep abreast of developments, to be excited by what is happening in science.

He's concerned that there aren't enough people who are educated and/or interested enough to observe what's going on in our laboratories today. But wait, compare that with ISRO rocket scientists who invoke the blessings of Tirupati god before a space flight. Talk of intellectual compartmentalization; these guys are on top.

Informed Decisions

Rob Lyons of Spiked doesn't think that listing calories next to the menu is a good idea. He writes:

Food should be both sustenance and pleasure. The demand that we constantly check our desires against some government-imposed calorie-related target robs us of this joy, replacing it with guilt and fear instead; such schemes serve no other purpose than to persuade us that we must trust in the advice of the health authorities.

Rather than labeling everything we eat with calorie and fat contents, a far healthier attitude would be to leave us to make up our own minds about what we consume. We should be lickin’ our fingers, not counting calories on them.

Rob states that checking the calorie count robs us of the pleasure of eating and leaves us with guilt and fear. Does he mean that the average man has to eat more than the recommended calories/meal in order to derive pleasure out of eating? Rob's essentially implying that the government's stipulations for calories/meal are much less than what one needs to eat in order to remain healthy. Come on, we're dealing with first world countries and nobody (at least an overwhelming majority) is going to die of malnutrition.

This point rings close to this piece I wrote about a year ago -- how scientific authority is in some circles trying to replace moral & religious authorities. But now, I agree with one of the comments (by Viswanathan) there. He wrote "The shades of fun ( or pain) of owning up responsibilities can still be there, even under the illumination by science. Science can tell us the dangers of excess calories,or excess alcohol or that of tobacco. Knowing fully well the facts, one can still over eat, drink or smoke.The burden of responsibility is only heightened- not lessened- by knowledge."

There's nobody from the local health office sitting next to you watching how many calories you gobble when you stack up your double cheese burgers. You are warned, now it's upto you.

Update: This is an embarassing spelling error to admit.  I wanted to write 'Come on' and instead wrote 'Common'.  I've corrected the error.

What Women Want?

From NYT Magazine, on why a Viagra-equivalent for women won't work:

In men who have trouble getting erect, the genital engorgement aided by Viagra and its rivals is often all that’s needed. The pills target genital capillaries; they don’t aim at the mind. The medications may enhance male desire somewhat by granting men a feeling of power and control, but they don’t, for the most part, manufacture wanting. And for men, they don’t need to. Desire, it seems, is usually in steady supply. In women, though, the main difficulty appears to be in the mind, not the body, so the physiological effects of the drugs have proved irrelevant. The pills can promote blood flow and lubrication, but this doesn’t do much to create a conscious sense of desire.

.........

For women, “being desired is the orgasm,” Meana said somewhat metaphorically — it is, in her vision, at once the thing craved and the spark of craving.

The Joys of Senseless Regulations

From a NYT opinion piece:

A man who says he desperately needed to use an airplane bathroom after eating something bad in Honduras faces a felony charge after being accused of twisting a flight attendant’s arm to get to the lavatory, the F.B.I. said.

Joao Correa, 43, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he had a bathroom emergency 30 minutes into a March 28 Delta Air Lines flight from San Pedro Sula to Atlanta but found the single coach aisle on the Boeing 737 blocked by a beverage cart. He said he asked whether he could use the lavatory in business class but was told no.

When the cart wasn’t moved after a few minutes, Mr. Correa said, he ran for the business-class lavatory. He said the flight attendant put up her arm to block him and he grabbed it to keep his balance.

Felony charge? Yes, technically a passenger tried to overpower an airplane crew. But what were the circumstances? I know that the lawyers are quite pumped up on caffeine in the U.S - anybody forget the Korean laundry owner who was sued $54 million over a lost pant? But not many know that the poor guy spent $100000 on fighting the law suit which eventually left him, obviously, poor, and drove him out of business. The law makers in the name of beefing up security can't disengage their common senses. Laws & rules help regulate the society. But their enforcements should be based on practical judgments.

Oddly Enough

From Reuters:

A Russian karate expert has been charged with beating to death a 61-year-old woman and her son, whom he accused of infecting his wife with lice, an investigator said Friday.

The drunk 26-year-old burst into a neighboring room in his hostel Tuesday and used karate moves to kill the pair, state investigator Eduard Abdullin said...

I know it's cruel to lighten up such a sad incident. But I wonder what the wife of the karate 'expert' said to him when he came to his room after killing them.

PS: I have the word expert in quotes because he can't be one. Karate and loads of other martial arts heavily insist on self-control and defense before you begin an assault. In fact, one of my schoolmates said that his karate master asked his students to run fast as they can if they find themselves in a confrontation / unfriendly situation.

Irony

For a self-proclaimed feminist, I wonder how Suhasini okayed the following lyrics in her movie 'Indira' for the song 'Thoda thoda':

Pasithavan amudham parugidathane 17 vasanthangal idhazh valarthen...

Experimental Animals

From USA Today:

Military researchers have dressed live pigs in body armor and strapped them into Humvee simulators that were then blown up with explosives to study the link between roadside bomb blasts and brain injury.

......
U.S. car companies used live animals, including pigs, for crash tests until the early 1990s. They stopped after protests from animal rights groups.

Pigs as crash test dummies? Okay, so a safety assurance team strapped a living pig, pressed the accelerator pedal and let the car dash into a wall? The anatomy of a pig is so different from that of a human being, I wonder how a crash test and the injuries sustained by a pig provided meaningful information as to the relevant safety adjustments to be made for humans. In the other case, the military must have it's reasons. But from a layman's point of view, an armored pig blown away by a bomb will be torn away differently from that of a human being. I'm not sure how one can conclude the effectiveness of the armor from inferences based on pigs' brains.

PS: I'm not against using live animals for such experiments. We've had lab rats, rabbits, cows and pigs getting injected with new formulas before they're tried on human beings. I believe they have contributed to a lot of life-saving drugs in use today. And for most of the world, 'humane treatment' of animals is mostly in regard to cats and dogs not cows or chickens which end up on a lunch menu. (Yes, there are organizations that fight for decent living conditions and 'humane' killing techniques of these animals before they're cooked, but I don't see it far away from being an experimental punch-bag).

Recovery Trend

Respected economist Simon Johnson writes on the current economic crisis:

The most likely outcome is not a V-shaped recovery (which is the current official consensus) or a U-shaped recovery (which is closer to the private sector consensus), but rather an L, in which there is a steep fall and then a struggle to recover. A “lost decade” for the world economy is quite possible. There will be some episodes of incipient recovery, as there were in Japan during the 1990s, but this will prove very hard to sustain.

Please note that there's no recovery in 'L', but only a struggle for recovery.

Dead Body of Knowledge

Christine Montross writes succinctly, beautifully and persuasively on how important it is for medical students to dissect a dead body even though they can see everything inside a body through medical technology:

Someday, they’ll need to keep their cool when a baby is lodged wrong in a mother’s birth canal; when a bone breaks through a patient’s skin; when someone’s face is burned beyond recognition. Doctors do have normal reactions to these situations; the composure that we strive to keep under stressful circumstances is not innate. It has to be learned. The discomfort of taking a blade to a dead man’s skin helps doctors-in-training figure out how to cope, without the risk of intruding on a live patient’s feelings — or worse, his health. We learn to heal the living by first dismantling the dead.

The Chinese Control

The Chinese foreign affairs minister said the following when asked about China banning Youtube:

As for what you can and cannot watch, watch what you can watch, and don't watch what you cannot watch.

China has traded its citizens' freedom by promising steady growth. After all, the communist government executed the greatest transformation from poverty to middle-class in recorded history, all in less than 30 years. As it happens during every recession, the segment that was recently inducted into the middle-class will slide back and suffer most. It won't be just the loss of material things, but also a social identity - being able to send the kids to a better school, buy better dresses, live in a better house, drive a better bike - all of these will now undergo a downgrade.

Massive unemployment has many moving back from cities to the rural areas and they're not going to be happy to see their new found luxury disappear while their freedom remains stifled. Above mentioned quote reflects the attitude of the Chinese authorities. People put up with it as long as they kept pacing up the social/financial ladder. Now that the economy is taking them for a ride, I wonder how long will it be before a social unrest erupts. I've read news items reporting pockets of violence. If the government keeps crushing valid protests and overpowering the common man in all walks of life and also has the temerity to not responsibly address their actions, it will only be a matter of time before the next mass movement announces itself.

The Big Takeover

Here's an article, that's explains the greed, recklessness and failings of AIG, Fed, Treasury, major banks, regulatory authorities and the administration. A bit lengthy, but a good one. The writer concludes:

The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes have left them in possession of. When challenged, they talk about how hard they work, the 90-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit 40.

"But wait a minute," you say to them. "No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?"

But before you even finish saying that, they're rolling their eyes, because You Don't Get It. These people were never about anything except turning money into money, in order to get more money; valueswise they're on par with crack addicts, or obsessive sexual deviants who burgle homes to steal panties. Yet these are the people in whose hands our entire political future now rests.

It Isn't Your Day Dear

Sometime in 2001, in LA, a couple of muggers tried to stick a gun into a touring van and asked them to get out so that they could drive it away. The van had a bunch of guys who were in town for a Judo convention. Very promptly, the muggers' arms were broken and handed over to the police. Well, at least these guys had a plan and it made an interesting story. Now, read this story about a guy trying to rob a bank:

But as terrified cashiers prepared to hand over a bundle of notes, Mr Stewart calmly walked up to the robber and said: "It's April the 1st isn't it mate? It's April Fool's Day".

When Davidson said to him "I've got a gun I will shoot you", Andrew replied "go on then shoot me" and grabbed the bag from his hands.

He opened it in front of staff and after seeing it was empty sat down and carried on reading his paper, Exeter Crown Court heard.

Davison fled the scene but was later arrested and has now pleaded guilty to affray.

Elegy

There's this brilliantly executed scene from Elegy.  The protagonist, fiftyish, a professor of culture, expert on art, a public intellectual, is having an affair.  Well, he isn't married, but he sleeps with two women and both of them think that he's non-comitally comitted to them.  So they would be enraged if they found out the existence of another woman.  And one night comes the estranged son of the protagonist.  He says that he's having an affair and wants to have a man-to-man conversation with his father.  

Now, I don't want to give away anything.  I've seen directors employ such techniques before where they use an extra to tell his/her story and suddenly that relates to our hero strongly.  It's a frequently used tool to explore the moral depths of the protagonist.  This scene just nailed it.  In fact, I recommed this movie for this piece of writing alone. (And Ben Kingsley's performance.)  

PS: I'm half-way through the movie and being blown away, I paused and decided to post about it.

UO

Stewie is highly literate and sophisticated whereas Goundamani is nowhere like that.  But Stewie's realization comes close to that of Goundamani's where the character says something irreverant and crude but those around carry on as if they didn't hear.

Bharath Bhavan

This is somewhere between stupidity and craziness. I was supposed to meet my friend at this Indian restaurant for lunch. Just before I leave, I check out their website which says that their main access road is being worked on and patrons need to take a detour. (The detour isn't straight forward, where you take the next exit and try to find your way back.. It's a bit long & wound). I make a note of the new directions thinking that I'll call my friend from my mobile on the way and let him know about the alternate route. My cell is out of charge. And I think that I'll call him from the restaurant. After reaching the place I ask the manager if I can use their phone. He politely nods 'no'. And then I explain to him that I'm expecting my friend and he's probably lost. He must have thought that I'm narrating a story that's in no way connected to the current situation. He doesn't react.

I wait in their lounge for 15 minutes. I step out of the restaurant a couple of times just convey the management that I'm expecting someone and if only they would let me use their phone they could get my business. No, they're unmoved. After 40 minutes I tell one of the servers again that may be he's desperately trying to get to the restaurant and he needs directions - no, it's as if somebody's trying to get somewhere, not their place. After 50 minutes of sitting, standing, walking and flipping through junk magazines when I said that I'll have to leave, the guy at the counter said 'Okay'. This was immensely infuriating. It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that if they had let me call, I would have guided my friend and they would have earned our business, not only this time, but subsequent visits too.

I've had bad experiences at many Indian restaurants in America. The most common complaint being the cleanliness of toilets - you're greeted with a smell that takes you back to some of the train stations in India. There's a marked difference in the way the servers treat Indians and Americans - smirk vs smile. They can't handle crowds - as the restaurant gets loaded, the wait time increases and the server snaps at your questions on how long it will be before you get your food. Sometimes I've had to ask multiple times for my water glass to be refilled. I've gotten my bill when I'm only half-way through my food. There have been cases where I was overcharged or given another party's bill. Of course there have been upset stomachs, loud TV, slippery floors without the 'Caution Wet' sign, buffet boxes that are empty... If only they could amend some of these complaints, the experience offered by an Indian restaurant would be richer.

Double-Game Players

I believe the contents of this piece would have infuriated CIA: ISI is in constant contact with Taliban and helps them with money, military power and strategic planning. And when Taliban runs out of man power, ISI agents hunt madrasas to fill their ranks. Everyone knew that ISI is a spoiled uncontrollable brat. But this revelation has the potential to jeopardize the political equations between Pakistan and America.

Pakistan is sinking. Sunnis & Shiites don't get along well. The past decade has numerous cases of deadly attacks by these two sects that go back to the death of the prophet. Baluchis in the north want autonomy. The west is controlled by the Taliban. Jihadis in the east in the name of freedom have at best plundered the resources. There is a yawning gap between the rich & the poor. The economy is in tatters. President Zardari recently went begging around the gulf region to feed the starving economy and came back empty handed. There is a monstrous gap between the rights enjoyed by the men and the women. CII, a constitutional body, denounced the country's women commission's call for 'gender equality'. CII blatantly called it un-Islamic and impractical thinking. Scientific temperament among students is alarmingly declining. Madrassas are better funded than state-run schools. Add to this a sky-rocketing inflation and unhealthy unemployment rates.

Even when a democratic government ruled, military spending ranked one in their budget. Military officers have political clout and good houses. Economic development at the grassroot level has been treated as a nice-to-have feature, never a priority for them. America by this time will have realized that they can't bribe Pakistani presidents to do them favors. ISI is almost an autonomous body, unquestionable by the government, unquestionable by anybody. And since the foreign aid never reaches the man at the bottom of the pyramid, America will never earn his/her good will.

Ever since Obama took over, the strikes inside Pakistan have intensified. I have wondered if that's in part to appeal to the war-mongering right wingers who've looked down on Obama as the commander-in-chief without any military experience. But no, I believe he's a supreme pragmatist who weighs the pros and cons of his military decisions. (Though his financial and fiscal policies, which are to the left, I'm afraid are going to drive down the value of the dollar). Now that the evidence of Pakistani intelligence's official involvement with Taliban had gathered strength and with the toothless civilian government lost in its own cocoon of petty political turmoil standing aside helplessly, Obama will be forced to step up his military actions in the region.

So, a fraction of American tax-payers' money goes towards Pakistan's military establishment in the form of financial assistance and a part of that goes to Taliban and they launch missiles at American troops. A different kind of vicious circle, huh? There's a funny and sad paragraph in that NYT article linked above. British government officers are openly asking the ISI to request their Taliban friends to scale down their militant activities until the Afghan presidential elections due in August. Imagine what they might have conversed:

"We really have no long-term interests in the region. Really, believe me. Okay. We just want to score some political points. Okay. If the elections are free of violence, we can trumpet to the world that as an achievement of our intervention. That's all. And we will be gone in no time. What do you say?"

"Insha Allah."

I'm waiting for Nitin's response.

Fetal Foreclosures

This is tragic.

Life & Times of Common Man - Now Available in Hardcover

James Bridle, a twitterer, has published two years worth of his tweets into a book. He writes:

When Twitter is inevitably replaced by something else, I don’t want to lose all those incidentals, the casual asides, the remarks and responses. That’s all really. This seems like a nice way to do it..

One of the comments:

This is a brilliant idea. I have some old family diaries and love reading them - the loss of ephemeral daily information about life passing, not for me (or even my children) but for grandchildren is one of the things that worry me about the way I use sites like this..

Clive Thompson, a blogger observes:

Every tiny piece seems daft or meaningless, but -- when you add them all up you get a curiously rich sense of someone's existence.

This reminds me of the Up series:

The 'Up' is a series of documentaries that have been following a group of children who were seven years old (in 1964) for every seven years. It seems like wishful thinking for an average film enthusiast to be able to voyeur a handful of lives at periodic intervals.

I'm not lamenting that the volume of our private spheres has shrunk and spilled into the public spheres. Of course, by blogging I'm opening up myself - I'm telling you all what I think of this and that. Twitter is the next level in exposure - what I'm eating now, where I went last night, etc. There's a strange sense of heaviness I feel.