Saturday and Sundry Things That Made Me Go "Hmmm..." This Week

Things that made me go "hmmm ..." in a good way:






Frequencies, a movie seen on Netflix. It's a very unusual type of sci-fi film. No CGI, just lots of ideas which benefit from mulling over afterwards. As well as an unusual kind of love story examined, Frequencies debates free will versus determinism, as well as investigating the science that might lie behind old superstitions and mysteries. A rather deadpan tone with acting to match has to be accepted - the film was made on a tiny budget, no big names, no special effects. The film's novelty, intelligence and interesting ideas make it easy to overlook any shortcomings.
See HERE and HERE.

The film received a 100% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes!

I had more than a sneaking suspicion that what we call astrology could well have something to do with "frequencies".

This week I received E-mails from two different cousins on my Dad's side of the family. I last met both long ago and far away, when they were still children. They had both, separately, read and appreciated my family history posts regarding our common Scott background. One of the cousins emigrated to the US as long ago as 1989, lives in NJ now. Both had been alerted to my family history material by yet another cousin who had sent me her own e-mail address at Christmas, which I used to send her links to my genealogy posts - and word spread! Ain't the internet grand!

Lovely instrumental rendition of A Change is Gonna Come by saxophonist
Anat Cohen - hadn't heard this version, or this musician, before. Good stuff!

Things that made me go "hmmm..." in a bad way:






Articles about the film American Sniper currently doing the rounds. It was directed by Clint Eastwood. Much as I've enjoyed several Eastwood-directed movies, I will not ever watch this one, reading about it was more than enough to make me cringe.
The Rude Pundit's review of the film is well worth a read.
SNIP

"Through it all, all the people he shoots (and, truly, Bradley Cooper seems like he's acting in a different, much deeper film), all the scenes of him watching fellows soldiers get killed and wounded, all the psychological damage he does to his poor wife when he calls her during firefights, Kyle maintains a pathetic belief in the good of his mission and in the protection of his "brothers." It has an effect on him - he suffers from PTSD - but the film wants us to believe that it was necessary. So, in the end, American Sniper is the story of a dumb man who wrecked himself for a worthless cause and about all the young men (and it is all, mostly white, men in it) who were sacrificed for nothing.

It's not the film that tells us it's nothing. We know it was for nothing. We know that one of the great crimes of the new century is the invasion of Iraq for absolutely no rational, demonstrable reason. We know that all those "savages," as Kyle calls the Iraqis, that we killed were for nothing. We know that all those Americans who died lost their lives for nothing. Our military was protecting us from nothing. Our freedoms weren't at risk from Iraq.

And the lie many soldiers from Iraq cling to and the lie we tell ourselves, and the lie that so many have worked so hard to maintain, is that as long as we don't discuss that it was for nothing, as long as we pretend that the fact that soldiers fought when they were told to fight and, mostly, did so nobly, we don't have to face the truly gut-wrenching reality of our national complicity in the crime.

Another relevant piece is at Common Dreams

English actor Benedict Cumberbatch was hauled over the coals and made to feel it necessary to apologise profusely for using the term "coloured" in a US TV interview. This guy is English, remember. He doesn't have the background experience and in-depth knowledge Americans have of the horrendous segregation practices in the USA, carried on as recently as during the lifetimes of many who are still around. He's likely not aware of those disgusting signs which used to be displayed over drinking fountains or in cafés and entrance-ways: "No Coloreds". A little quiet thought and understanding by those who allegedly took offence at his use of the term would have been as good a thing as Cumberbatch doing a little preparation for an interview, when in the ultra-sensitive (when it suits 'em) USA. I was pleased to see he has gained support from a fellow actor. HERE.

We watched 3 episodes of Terra Nova the TV series via Netflix. Enough was enough of this terrible comic bookish version of sci-fi. No wonder it wasn't renewed after its first season! It's the direct opposite of Frequencies (mentioned at the top of this post), in terms of quality ideas and writing.

Flotsam from the Week That Was

Photo:  Sean Gallup/Getty

Has President Obama at last sensed a cold blast heading his way from what he likes to call "his base", where once only balmy (not to mention barmy) breezes blew? It reminds me of some of Bob Dylan's lyrics in To Make You Feel My Love (recently brought up to date by Adele)-

The storms are raging on the rolling sea
And on the highway of regret
The winds of change are blowing wild and free
You ain't seen nothing like me yet...

The President has been talking a good talk on at least four topics since the midterm elections early this month: climate change agreement (in principle) with China; immigration reform (announced on Thursday evening that he will use his executive powers to prevent deportation of certain classes of undocumented immigrants); Keystone XL Pipeline (the Senate voted against it on Tuesday, relieving President of any further action - for now); and net neutrality - pending.

Will President Obama reveal, at this late date, what some die-hard Democrat fans, and a mixed bunch of Republican right wing and Tea Party nut cases still like to believe or hope, is "the real Obama"...a closet leftist with Marxist roots, ready to stand up and fight for what in his heart of hearts he knows to be right or or rather left? I wish I could believe that.

A good piece by John Grant at "This Can't be Happening", also at Counterpunch relates.
Is Lame Duck Obama Ready to fight?

A British actor with a multi-syllabic name, Benedict Cumberbatch (on right in photograph), has been doing the publicity rounds promoting the movie The Imitation Game, in which he plays the lead part of Alan Turing (left in photograph). Turing helped to shorten World War II by cracking the "unbreakable" German Enigma Code. After the war, he was arrested for homosexual activities.
Turing's natal chart with a nutshell size explanation is at astrologer Bob Marks' website HERE.

Interpreting Mona Lisa - by a group of youngsters in a local art class. Husband noticed these on display in the lobby at our local concert hall and snapped 'em. He now wishes he'd stopped to take closer shots of each.

It's not hard, even in this small size (click on it to see a slightly bigger version) to identify seminal rebels among this group of young artists.

Tweet from "God" this week:
It's funny how nearly all the people who believe global warming is a myth also believe I'm not.

 From 9GAG.COM 

We watched the 1960 film version of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine on Turner Classic Movie channel, Thursday evening. I'd seen it more than once before, and read the book long ago, in my youth. I count the tale as one of the best of its genre, especially as it was first published in 1895.

A refreshers from Wikipedia

Social class was a theme in Wells's The Time Machine in which the Time Traveller speaks of the future world, with its two races, as having evolved from the gradual widening of the present (19th century) merely temporary and social difference between the Capitalist and the Labourer ... Even now, does not an East-end (of London) worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth? Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people ... is already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land. About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is shut in against intrusion.

Wells has this very same Time Traveller, reflecting his own socialist leanings, refer in a tongue-in-cheek manner to an imagined world of stark class division as "perfect" and with no social problem unsolved. His Time Traveller thus highlights how strict class division leads to the eventual downfall of the human race:

"Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved."

More from another page of Wikipedia on the two ways H.G. Wells imagined humans had evolved in the far distant future:

By the year 802,701 CE, humanity has evolved into two separate species: the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi are the child-like, frail group, living a banal life of ease on the surface of the earth, while the Morlocks live underground, tending machinery and providing food, clothing and infrastructure for the Eloi. Each class evolved and degenerated from humans. The novel suggests that the separation of species may have been the result of a widening split between different social classes, a theme that reflects Wells' sociopolitical opinions.

The main difference from their earlier ruler-worker state is that, while the Morlocks continue to support the world's infrastructure and serve the Eloi, the Eloi have undergone significant physical and mental deterioration. Having solved all problems that required strength, intelligence, or virtue, they have slowly become dissolute and naive. They are described as being smaller than modern humans, having shoulder-length curly hair, chins that ran to a point, large eyes, small ears, and small mouths with bright red thin lips. They are of sub-human intelligence, though apparently intelligent enough to speak, and they have a primitive language.

While one initially has the impression that the Eloi people live a life of play and toil-less abundance, it is revealed that the Morlocks are attending to the Eloi's needs for the same reason a farmer tends cattle; the Morlocks use the Eloi for food.

More on H.G. Wells and his natal chart at an archived post HERE.