3-D

Recently, noted film critic Roger Ebert declared his disdain for 3D and I am completely on the same page with him there. We disagree strongly on the point of video games as art--he declared, in an absolutist, Sith, blog post that video games will never be art. (If you want to here the sound of man exploding, ask The Engineer what he thinks about that Ebert essay. I caution you with the knowledge that The Engineer works in the video game industry.) However, I think you O Constant Listenerz/Readerz, will appreciate these 3D adaptations of classic art.

P Zed Myers' "Sunday Sacrilege: Imagine no Heaven"

P Zed Myers is coming to Montréal and we heretics are most excited. I will most definitely be there. Athée Sans Frontières, brilliant!

He has also started a series on his blog called "Sunday Sacrilege" which I have been enjoying. The latest installment is my favourite. Here's why:

Heaven. The funny thing is, for all my inability to imagine a viable vision of Hell, what probably comes closest is most people's version of Heaven. Who would want to even visit Puritan Heaven, with all its smug and judgmental inhabitants praising God non-stop with pursed lips suspicious eyes? What woman would want to live in Mormon heaven, and what man could dwell there for long without developing a smidgen of guilt?

Similarly, what woman would want a Muslim heaven? And what use is a bunch of virgins... you deflower them, yay, no sexual agency, but if that's your fetish doesn't it get old? Please don't tell me that the hymens grow back so you hurt them anew. That shit's high misogyny. What woman could possibly look forward to that?

The pointlessness and meaningless of eternity is nicely touched upon. Boredom and abject destruction of the self must really be appealing to some people, but a rational mind would either cease to be itself, or even the most servile would have doubt after AEONS. Bliss after bliss is nothing remotely appealing; it would indeed become torment of the damned.

So who's in with me? Let's take some tea with PZ.

FIFA in a Galaxy Far Away

Featuring in addition to the standard cast of A New Hope, Daft Punk, Liam Gallagher, Snoop Dogg and some soccer peeps.

An Analysis of the Itsy Bitsy Spider

(Tips hat towards the Barefoot Bum, so glad your retirement was short-lived.)

How is this even possible?

Can someone please tell me what kind of a world we live in where this shit takes decades to sort out?

Indian court convicts 7 in Bhopal gas disaster

Leads to two years in prison. SRSLY. This is abhorrent. Read it about it here.

W o t W: diegetic (S)

The Word for this Week is:

diegetic

I had a long struggle trying to remember this adjective and use it properly in a conversation last night. Diegesis is a fascinating concept in our era where musical soundtracks are standard because we have little to no conception of television or film without music cues. The ubiquity of music cues has left us finding it shocking when they are absent, when there is no audio or musical track. Buffy the Vampire Slayer used this very effectively in "Hush" and "The Body". It was once used well in a Wikipedia article about The Wire--which brilliantly illustrated the narrative style of the programme and the interplay of diegetic /non-diegetic music, but alas in various iterations of the page that bit was cut and I could not find it again.

Tarantino used the diegetic/non-diegetic dichotomy wonderfully in Kill Bill: Vol. I. In the opening scene Elle Driver whistles what then would go on to be soundtrack music.

I am very fond of this succinct definition:

Diegesis
The denotative material of film narrative, it includes, according to Christian Metz, not only the narration itself, but also the fictional space and time dimension implied by the narrative. (I found it here.)

Guess what I'm thinking about

Yes, that's the correct: "The Penis episode."

"The Eleventh Hour" and the return of Doctor Who

As the Good Ones among you O Constant Listenerz no doubt know, DOCTOR WHO has most recently returned with it's new series (numbered 5th, 1st or 31st depending on who is doing the reckoning). Although the first appearance by Matt Smith (the Doctor; specifically the Eleventh Doctor of the title, witty eh?) and Karen Gillan (Amy Pond) was better than we Heretics had hoped, the episode itself was not altogether wonderful. Something was missing. I found what that something was when I read the following review. We thought best to share it, from IMDB poster pstancer in Hong Kong, "In the first episode, the only black face belongs to a Rottweiler!":

The first thing I noticed with the new Doctor Who is that the only black face in the first episode belongs to a Rottweiler. And that the only sexual reference is a heterosexual one.

Is Steven Moffat, the new Producer, trying to make a point here?

While I sometimes tired of the histrionics of Russell T Davies's plots, I could always chuckle at the thought of middle-class parents cowering behind their sofas while their children were entertained with stories of black/white/gay/lesbian/alien love-triangles, and heroes drawn from the Daily Mail's hate list: single mothers on benefit; gay ex-servicemen; chavs and hoodies a.k.a the working class. Even his first timelord came from that little know northern suburb of Gallifrey: Salford, near Manchester.

Contrarily, Mr Moffat's first solo-offering seems to hark back to days of old. All the episode was missing was some understated misogamy [I think pstancer meant misogyny here, but I am not certain], the Brigadier, and morris dancers dancing around a maypole on the village green, and you have a rehash of the 70's classic: The Dæmons.

Hopefully I am prejudging, Steven Moffat did create Captain Jack in "The Empty Child" back in Series 1. Already there is the hint of child abandonment for young Amy Pond, and maybe she has a whole Belle-De-Jour back-story from her "kiss-a-gram" days? Doctor Who meets Pretty Women anyone?

So despite what I have just said, sheepishly, I would say the omens are good. Karen Gillan and Matt Smith can certainly act and have a curious chemistry - hopefully more Mulder and Scully than Romeo and Juliet - and with Moffat's fine pedigree of past episodes (Blink/ Silence in the Library) it would appear that we have an exciting journey ahead of us.

*

The immediate next episode-- "The Beast Below" --is both better and less stark white-on-white. We are ever hopeful. Also, linguistically interesting is how very Canadian Ms. Gillan/Ms. Pond's accent is most of the time.

Evolution, Big Bang Polls Omitted From NSF Report - ScienceInsider

Evolution, Big Bang Polls Omitted From NSF Report - ScienceInsider

In an era of diminishing returns, statisticians can be clever knowing (of course) that the number never lie. Don't like the skewing? Omit the factors that cause the skew et voilà ce sera parfait! In order to avoid the problem of religious objections to science and better yet avoid having to address his, the

National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF), says it chose to leave the section out of the 2010 edition of the biennial Science and Engineering Indicators because the survey questions used to measure knowledge of the two topics force respondents to choose between factual knowledge and religious beliefs.

What an unpleasant taste this precedent leaves. I guess if you omit the horrific rate in which the US incarcerates its citizens, executes them and foreign nationals, dumbs down sexual education programmes, it is indeed the best country in the world. Just set some more comprehensive accountancy at toil and it will be perfect. Perhaps re-write history books whilst we're at it: Let Texas lead the way!

(Thanks to the Barefoot Bum for the tip on the story.)

CBC News - Montreal - Niqab gets 2nd Quebec student expelled

CBC News - Montreal - Niqab gets 2nd Quebec student expelled

We like the CBC, we do. We do not, however, like how comments on stories so frequently breakdown as follows:

1. Relevant comment.
2. Tangential comment.
3. Racist screed.
4. Racist screed and with added typos for fibre.
5. Ridiculous leftest counter claims.
6.+ More of the same.

This is an important, significant story for all modern liberal democracies. But there's a snag you see, it is not a simple thing, one minor on/off switch and the problem is solved or dissolved. There are really important issues (plural) here: religious freedom, secularism, women's right, individual choice and autonomy, provincial rights, states/federal rights... Not to mention that the law in question has merely been proposed. Why was this woman expelled? What will come of this?

High Art

Banksy is an artist and provocateur and we love him for it. Not enough perhaps to invite him to mural our Very Special Secret Location, mind, but we love him nonetheless. What is most heretical about Banksy is how he elicits such extremes: those who would decry his work as mere vandalism, low brow, ineffectual, trite, or worst of all insipid. And then there are those who are convinced his is the hand of new art, the most important living artist.

We look forward to this documentary.

Quote of the Week: Sex Geek [on Avatar of all things]

Generally speaking, when it comes to controversy, I don’t believe in the bizarrely prized activist strategies of a) removing yourself from the conversation (symbolic walk-outs, door slamming, etc.) – because then, the only people left having the conversation are the ones who don’t see what the problem is, or b) criticizing (or buying into other people’s criticism) of things without evaluating the evidence for yourself. I’m all for people having strong opinions, but strong uninformed opinions are just not cool, in my books. Plus, I think that as activists, we need to challenge ourselves to see, read, hear and experience things that make us uncomfortable so that we are forced to question and strengthen our opinions and strategies based on our own perceptions rather than those fed to us.

---- Sex Geek, "Keeping an Eye on the Mainstream."

Heretical Outing ce soir / Word of the Week: p, s, e

Mr. The Engineer and I are going to see an art show at Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal this evening.

I've wanted to see it for sometime and this is the last weekend so it is now or never. The artist is John William Waterhouse a favourite of a good friend of mine. I like his work, although not to the level of a gushing fanboy (not to disparage too strongly the aforementioned friend). His favourite piece is Godspeed. Perhaps you are more familiar O Constant Reader, with Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott.

A different friend was here at Our Secret Location for lunch and heated discussion (who would have thought that Christopher Hitchens could possible elicit vitriol?) and mentioned, with high praise, that she had gone to the show on cheap Wednesday.

(Note how the main page has a clock counting down the end of the show. In an otherwise tasteful high end musée, it seems a bit tacky. All that is missing is harsh repetitive voice over SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY the LAST DAY DAY DAY FOR WATERHOUSE WATERHOUSE WATERHOUSE! etc. etc.)

*

The Word for this Week is inspired by the exhibit.

Sortilège

Which is French for magic spell or spellbinding. Obviously derived from sor- roots in Latin. It is also an archaic English word (borrowed directly from French) for magical drawing of lots. Also a Canadian Whiskey. How cool is that?

Peut-être

So I posted the following video elsewhere--You know for the LOLz-- after having been introduced to the English version and feeling Canadian, Québécois enough to warrant posting la version française. Comme ça:



Which elicited the comment from an American poster: La version [sic] Quebecoise [sic], peut-etre? Which seems thematic of my experience with Americans regarding Québec French: there always seems to be the implication that Québec French is somehow inauthentic. Flawed. Less correct. Now language legitimacy, purity and correctness are complex, spiky, issues particularly among the French (there are two formal language academies, which frequently disagree). Which leads me to the following question:

Mes chers amis américains, s'il vous plaît quelqu'un pourrait expliquer le problème que vous avez avec le Québec français? SRSLY. Quel est l'intérêt? What's up with that, yo?

It seems to me, whenever I am in the US or speaking French with my American colleagues, friends and acquaintances, this issue is brought up. Sometimes in jest. Sometimes sincerely. One even argued for the position because "they don't even use the liason phonetique in Québec." I of course objected strenuously because that is demonstrably untrue.

Is this just the vanity of American intellectuals, aping Parisienne arrogance?

With regards to the video itself, it purports to be from "The Republic of Bacon" ("La République du Bacon"), which apparently has two official languages, neither of which makes sense to have a regional designation, other than the already present ambiguity of French and English being both adjectives for ethnicity/nationality and language.

W o t W: Lugubrious (P, S)

The Word for this Week is

Lugubrious

...Is an excellent word because it sounds like it means. It is like emotional onomatopoeia; especially if you draw out the vowels. I came across it in Richard Dawkins' newest book, The Greatest Show on Earth (p190) in the following quote describing a colleague W. D. Hamilton:

"he had a lugubrious manner reminiscent of A. A. Milne's Eeyore (not the deplorable Walt Disney version, of course)." When stung by a wasp "knowing what a great entomologist he was, his companion said, 'Bill, do you know the name of that wasp?' 'Yes,' Bill murmured gloomily in his most Eeyoreish voice. 'As a matter of fact it's named after me.'"

Lugubrious is meaningful and phonetically pleasing. Use it sparingly to avoid sounding pretentious like me, but oh do use it.

DOCTOR WHO

We at HERESY love DOCTOR WHO. Not in a sick way, but definitely in an ALMOST you-are-a-creepy-fanboy way. SRSLY. You should see my scarf: it's 30' long.

So in the honour of the dearly departed 10th and the soon to be reigning 11th, I refer you to the following blogs and links.

Start here with a great retrospective of the series' many, many logos. I spent an hour plus refinding this link so you can bet I'm gunna post it everyfuckingwhere! "Doctor Who logos retrospective" nice analysis too.

Here's a simpler one from The Guardian without the witty commentary.

And this one, in the Wikipedian style box featuring the current incarnation in the centre.

For the record the 1974 variant immediately below, from the 4th Doctor's era, is our favourite and the official favourite of HERESY.



From the commentary: "Making it blue binds it definitively with the TARDIS. That TARDIS won't be part of the design again until the latest effort."

And with sounds, there is of course Youtube wankery. We like the following video homage though it comes short (2009), I like the blending of the various theme music.

Q:"What sort of spending would you like cut?" A:"All of it. ALL of it."

And let's be clear here it is more than just the average stupidity of people, indeed it is the tu quoque fallacy to merely to argue, "Oh well, you'd see stupid liberals/Obama supporters/left-wingers too" yet not address the underlying problem: Sarah Palin is anti-intellectual, anti-science and cultivates the ignorance seen above. Even John McCain countered such blatant xenophobia during his campaign.

Citing from the poster's sidebar on YouTube: "no politician has emerged on the national stage as undefined and unqualified as Sarah Palin, and her public persona--which is anti-intellectual by definition--discourages substance. Instead, we get winking. One could hardly imagine her giving a complex speech about race in America, or speaking eloquently about our country's relations with Islam. Not just because she couldn't write such a speech (Obama has speech-writers, of course) but because she wouldn't--such necessarily academic discussion is antithetical to the persona she's created for herself and that her supporters have come to love."

And to save y'all from having to read the damn thing read Neil Macdonald's review of Going Rogue on CBC instead.

I think it is interesting that the gentleman in the camo/hunting clothes is lamenting the end of American Exceptionalism. Perhaps I am far too left-wing to understand, but when one nation dominates another, or all others, that's a hegemony and tends not to benefit the world but that nation all but exclusively. Why would that ending be a bad thing? Oh yeah. Americans.

(I love how my spell checker finds both "Palin" and "Obama", yet not McCain, to be incorrect.)