Navigation

Archive | Uncategorized

You Wanna Bet?

By on May 17, 2011 1

Betting is the replacement for dueling.

duellists

It’s not a perfect replacement, of course. (Nothing is a perfect replacement for anything else.) It only applies in certain cases. But what it has in common with dueling is the challenge either to back up one’s opinion or retract it. In that sense, it serves a similar social function, and gives the challenger a similar feeling of satisfaction. And in addition to being (obviously) morally preferable to dueling, a challenge to wager also makes more sense epistemically. When a challenge is accepted, the outcome of the wager can show who’s right, whereas the outcome of a fight doesn’t (unless the wager is about relative fighting prowess, but in that case the duel just is a wager). And when a challenge is refused, well, fear of being refuted is an epistemically relevant reason to retract an opinion, while fear of being killed is not.

Le Petit XXe au XXIe

By on May 16, 2011 1

I grew up on the Tintin books, in both English and the original French. Now comes a Tintin movie written by Steven Moffat (the first draft anyway), directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Peter Jackson, and scored by John Williams. I’ll probably want to see that.

Tintin poster
another Tintin poster

Click the pix for biggification.

Viking Cinema, Part Tveir

By on May 16, 2011 8

In my discussion of Thor yesternight, I forgot to mention the film’s surprisingly antiwar politics. I can’t go into details without spoilage, so I’ve once again relegated them to the comments section.

SPOILER WARNING:

Viking Cinema

By on May 16, 2011 12

Just saw Thor, which was a lot of fun. Tom Hiddleston really stole the movie as Loki (and the script gave him a nicely ambiguous role to play). Jotunheim looked cool. (Well, it looked like a cross between Mordor and the White Witch’s palace, but that seems about right.) The cameos for Straczynski and Lee were a hoot. And the post-credits sequence promises more good fun to come. (I have a comment on the post-credits sequence, but since it’d be a spoiler for those who haven’t seen Thor yet, I’ll put it in the comments section.)

Thor poster

My only real gripes were: a) Natalie Portman seemed a bit lackluster – closer to her Star Wars performance than to her much better V for Vendetta and (I gather) Black Swan performances.

And b) why can’t they bother to pronounce Norse names correctly? I can see why they might not want to depart from the familiar pronunciation of “Odin,” but why not go authentic for “Heimdall,” “Jotunheim,” “Mjöllnir,” etc.? (Still, at least they didn’t have the Asgardians massacring Elizabethan English the way the comics do. Just how hard is it to learn the differences between “ye” and “you,” “thou” and “thee,” and “doth” and “dost”?)

While we’re on the subject of things Norse-related, I recently recalled, in a comment thread on how the filming of Tolkien’s Silmaterial might be handled, the short animated film of Beowulf from 1998, voiced by inter alia Derek Jacobi and Joseph Fiennes. It’s the most faithful adaptation of Beowulf I know of, and I think the animation style is beautiful. Check it out:

And now, back to Thor:

SPOILER WARNING:

Blogger on the Inside

By on May 14, 2011 1

SPOILER WARNING:

Watch the following video clips only if you’ve seen the latest episode of Doctor Who (i.e., Neil Gaiman’s “The Doctor’s Wife”); in them, Gaiman talks about writing for the show, and describes/mourns some bits that got dropped from the script. (And no, the picture of the Beatles really isn’t a spoiler.)

And don’t forget this bit of cut dialogue (previously blogged).

In related news, the line in this episode about biting being like kissing, only there’s a winner, is a nod to the line in Steven Moffat’s Jekyll about killing being like sex, only there’s a winner. Whether the reference is Moffat’s or Gaiman’s I’m not sure.

Wichita = Gallifrey?

By on May 13, 2011 0

Randall Holcombe, discussing the FSU funding flap, writes (inter alia) that “Charles Koch is well-known for supporting libertarian causes.”

That wording tickled my funny bone, because of its similarity to a Doctor Who villain’s famous reference to “the Doctor’s long association with libertarian causes.”

[To the humour-challenged: No, I am not making either a pro-Koch or an anti-Koch point in this post. Sometimes a joke is just a joke.]

Powered by WordPress. Designed by WooThemes