| Kritikon | ||||||
|
News Would you like to receive updates regarding changes to this page and to other parts of the website? Subscribe to our newsletter.
|
12-28-2004 Pages "The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth" and others here Specific Films (including Dr. Strangelove and Seventh Seal) Articles of Interest "At one point last year, Edgebrook Principal Diane Maciejewski thought a new arts push might cause Edgebrook's test scores to tumble. "Weaving art, music, dance and drama into meat-and-potatoes subjects like reading and social studies was time-consuming stuff. "'We were concerned we might see a negative impact on test scores,'' Maciejewski said. "But actually, just the opposite happened.'" Go to story "A recent, important turn in my life occurred when I realized that something that I have long been stating in footnotes should be put on the marquee. I have engaged myself, without realizing it, in undertaking a theory of roughness. Think of color, pitch, loudness, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics. Chemistry is filled with acids, sugars, and alcohols — all are concepts derived from sensory perceptions. Roughness is just as important as all those other raw sensations, but was not studied for its own sake." Go to story "Museums always make use of the past for the sake of the present. They collect it, shape it, insist on its significance. When that past is also prehistoric, when its objects come to the present without written history and with jumbled oral traditions, a museum can even become the past's primary voice. "But what if that prehistoric past is also claimed by some as a living heritage? Then disagreements about interpretation develop into battles over the museum's very function." Go to story "What is inside the gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn? While one might expect that astronomers would know the answer to this question, the field remains an active area for speculation. A new theory claims the core of Jupiter may be made of carbon-rich tar." Go to story "After decimating sub-Saharan Africa, the HIV/AIDS epidemic is now reaching alarming proportions in Eurasia. Earlier this month, the UN's top HIV/AIDS official said the epidemic was 'perilously close to a tipping point' in China, India, and Russia, where, although it is still confined to high-risk populations and geographically contained, it is on the verge of an exponential outbreak. That somber warning echoes the prognosis of Nicholas Eberstadt in a Foreign Affairs article two years ago, in which he argued that, by spreading to these huge economies, the disease could soon threaten world prosperity and the global balance of power." Go to story "The brilliant films you won't see on the critics' top-ten lists this year." Go to story "The European Mars Express orbiter continues to take overhead and perspective shots of landmarks on the red planet. The remarkable clarity at first glance appears to be a simulation. Scientists have pursued their mapping tour around Olympus Mons, the solar system's largest volcano, as one of the mission's goals. This week's announcement of relatively recent volcanic activity on Mars is likely to heat up the debate on habitability." Go to story "A Pennsylvania school district is being sued for allegedly teaching Christianity as a science under the guise of 'intelligent design'. Why not teach all religions at school? To help out with this dilemma, we present a list of those Creation Myths that helped define civilizations both past and present." Go to story "Many religious leaders find themselves at odds with science, but the head of Tibetan Buddhism is a notable exception." Go to story "Picture a crowd, excited and demonstrative to the point of ecstasy. The source of their enthusiasm is not mystical but worldly: they are about to receive a lot of free products. In a post-election poll that aimed to put a different spin on the 'values' debate, a plurality of voters named 'greed and materialism' as America's most pressing moral issue, but it is hard to imagine any politician having the courage to challenge the idol presiding over this ceremony, because her name is Oprah Winfrey, and the blissed-out crowd is her studio audience." Go to story "An international team of scientists has launched a high-altitude, balloon-borne instrument from Antarctica to search for antimatter, which is among the rarest and most elusive types of particles in the Universe." Go to story "When we were children, we played cowboys and Indians sometimes. We rather liked being cowboys; we instructed ourselves that the Indians were ‘Red’ Indians—the term ‘American Indian’ was still not in currency—not remotely like us, who enacted our make-believe in the large basement garages of a building on Malabar Hill in South Bombay. It was while looking for us, we noted, that Columbus had lighted upon America. The enormity of the accident—and the relatively unacknowledged but not inconsiderable part we had played in it!" Go to story "Why do end-of-time beliefs endure?" Go to story "Glowing with victory the afternoon after Election Day, President Bush appeared before the Washington press corps and declared, ''America has spoken, and I'm humbled by the trust and the confidence of my fellow citizens.' Humbled? What could the word 'humbled' possibly mean to a man who had just received more votes for president than anyone in American history? Yet no one chalked the remark up to a lack of sleep or added it to any list of 'Bushisms.' Indeed, when the president chose Condoleezza Rice two weeks later to replace Colin Powell as secretary of state -- and thus to direct a globe-girdling diplomatic operation that touches the life of every person on the planet -- she described the moment as 'humbling.'" Go to story "What does the fashion for books about the state of the English language tell us? People care about their language because it forms part of their identity, and part of the resistance to changes in English is a resistance to change itself. But correct usage is not an elite affectation; it is a badge of competence." Go to story "Evangelicals reject the idea that faith might be reduced to chemical reactions in the brain. Humanists refuse to accept that religion is inherent in people's makeup. And some scientists have criticized Hamer's methodology and what they believe is a futile effort to find empirical proof of religious experience. "But Hamer, a behavioral geneticist at the National Cancer Institute, stands by research he says shows that spirituality — the feeling of transcendence — is part of our nature. And he believes that a universal penchant for spiritual fulfillment explains the growing popularity of nontraditional religion in this country and the presence of hundreds of religions worldwide." Go to story "The revival of fantasy seems an unlikely turn of events. Twenty years ago, it appeared that the epic quest in modern literature was in a cul-de-sac, plausible only if populated by Hobbits or rabbits (10). Corresponding trends hit the film industry even earlier: from Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967) until the Kurosawa-influenced Star Wars (1977), anti-heroes were the meat and drink of serious filmmakers. In fiction and film, the fantastic quest required rehabilitation. "Today, thanks in part to Peter Jackson's accomplished Lord of the Rings adaptation, fantasy is back to the point where contemporary fantasy writers like China Mieville style themselves as being the anti-Tolkien. Historically, fantasy has served as a pressure-valve for a variety of social tensions. Now it feeds the life of the mind more than it should, with fandom replacing real forms of engagement (11)." Go to story "This summer and fall there’s been plenty of crossover between films and games. Alien vs Predator, first a comic and then a game, is now a film, as is Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the Milla Jovovich delivery-system based on Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. Patrician Patrick Stewart has brought his spot-on pronunciation to Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone. Vin Diesel’s game studio, Tigon Games, has produced the excellent Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, a prequel to Pitch Black. John Batter, formerly a senior executive at DreamWorks’ computer animation division, the group that produced Antz and Shrek, is now general manager of giant game-publisher Electronic Arts’s L.A. shop. Mark Lasoff, computer graphics supervisor for Centropolis FX, which worked on The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix: Revolutions, and an Oscar winner for Titanic, is art director of EA’s blockbuster WWII Medal of Honor franchise, which also has a contract with John Milius, nutbag writer of Apocalypse Now, Conan the Barbarian and Red Dawn. And so on. "The two industries are converging and there’s no turning back. This is a huge kick for the casual observer, but even dispassionate natural historians of contemporary media, seeing the two species gamboling together in the wild, are feeling a sense of excitement, perhaps even liberation. And why not? It looks like progress. It gives you hope. Like anything, though, the novelty of cross-industry adaptation can wear thin. After you’ve watched several dozen ants launch themselves noisily downstream on leaves you start wishing for an ant that can swim. There’s not much to do, however, but be patient and put your trust in evolution. If you are lucky someone like Donald Mustard will come along." Go to story "P.G. Wodehouse, creator of the ultimate literary butler, and A.A. Milne, creator of Winnie-the Pooh, started as friends in Edwardian London. But their falling out in 1941 revealed something essential about the men--and their lasting creations." Go to story "The 9-year-old Met School defies convention, with no letter grades, no required classes, and 'advisors' instead of teachers who work with the same small group of students for four consecutive years. Instead of taking tests, the 580 students present 'exhibitions' of their work. "With 100% of its seniors accepted each year to college, the Met's 'one student at a time' approach to learning has caught the attention of educators around the country." Go to story "A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview. A bright's worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements. The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview." Go to story "A close relative to the chimpanzee that is thought to be the closest human relative may be on the verge of extinction, scientists say." Go to story
|
|||||