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21 Jan 2010

The men who stare at goats




I liked the film, but not as much as the documentary series by Jon Ronson. Mostly because of the oppressive acting. Maybe I shouldn't have watched it after the documentary, now the wacky hijinks of the US military seem a lot less fun and a lot more crazy. The one thing the film doesn't address and the documentary barely touches is the fact that the reason these things work so well in the military context. Any army is prone to these kinds of hysteric flights of fancy, it's in their nature. They spend so much time brainwashing people to become soldiers, what does it matter if you tack on a load of other ideas that don't really make any sense in that context? The unquestioning obedience of orders and other great ideas in service of a single goal make it an easy prey for profoundly stupid ideas. It's remarkably similar to religion that way.

20 Jan 2010

Bitter and betrayed: The Cynthia Adler story



Compelling stuff. I always wondered where that slew of awful movies where women face terrible, unbelievable choices to reveal a secret that will tear their families apart, came from. It's a whole channel, with lovely entries like 'Why I wore lipstick to my mastectomy' 'Crimes of Passion: She woke Pregnant' and 'Cyber seduction: His secret life'. It also conveniently explains what happens to actresses that seem to disappear after their TV shows are canceled, they can't all be doing broad way. The film I watched a ten minuet segment of yesterday featured a women finding it difficult convincing her teenage daughter not to have sex with her boyfriend as she was pregnant with the child of a married man while delivering stupid anti-youth culture lectures drenched in hypocrisy her teenage daughter didn't detect! Hollywood magic, people.

19 Jan 2010

Water



Another doctor's visit today and my doctor asked if I'd be interested in a homeopathic cure for gallstones. The sketch above immediately sprang to mind. I asked my doctor why he'd offer me this and apparently it's in my insurance package. I assured him I don't believe in it, and he concluded that that is the only reason he'd prescribe something homeopathic. I just checked, and apparently it is. I always sort of assumed that you had to pay for these things yourself, at least. It's pretty horrifying to realise I've been paying for this. But checking with my sister, whose studying medicine, the official position of doctors is not to say anything bad about homeopathy, unless it's about to kill you. There ought to be law, wasn't there one already?

All of human knowledge is editable



Wikipedia is the only encyclopedia where there are more pages about secondary characters in the uk sonic the hedgehog comic then of main characters in medieval history. But that's the reason it's great. If you thought I was going to go the other way with that first sentence, so did I. But triviality is the spice of life. Too many people, academics mostly, complain about it's unreliability, without acknowledging that it's no more unreliable than a printed encyclopedia, or newspapers, documentaries or any other kind of information really. The only real difference is in a perceived accountability, the idea that at least the publisher of a book or newspaper can be sued for providing false information. But that rather depends, the manipulation of information is becoming incredibly transparent these days, to the point where previously rock solid faith in the printed word is crumbling. A true concensus reality is just around the corner and wikipedia's older pages show what kind of shape that will take, veering wildly between opposing extremes and eventually consolidating as nuance.

17 Jan 2010

There's treasure in them rocks




I haven't posted anything since Thursday, when I thought I'd broken a rib while sitting down. I had an intense pain in my right side that just seemed to get worse and worse. After a doctor's visit I now know that I have a gallstone. I blame the internet. But apparently, if I ever get it removed it'll fetch a good price on the black market as an essential ingredient in Chinese folk medicine, up to 32 US Dollars a gram! I can't tell you how happy this makes me.