I downloaded the full image from Wikipedia & it is beautiful. I love this project!
More Moore
There are layers & layers of interconnection, which is one of the themes of the book / film and there is no shortage of this complexity in all the background drama & the characters, who are as engrossing as the art.
I have a theory, which has not let me down so far, that there is an inverse relationship between imagination and money. Because the more money and technology that is available to [create] a work, the less imagination there will be in it. My favorite films are those that were made on a shoestring. And they weren't adaptations of some other work, they were original pieces of cinema. All right, [Cocteau's] "La Belle Et La Bête" is an adaptation of "Beauty and the Beast" — but it was made into something very different. And I mean, John Waters, his early films, they're terrific! Because he was making them with some friends of his from Baltimore, with whatever cheap film stock he could borrow or steal. George Romero, in "Dawn of the Dead," "Day of the Dead," all the rest of them, he ingeniously used the fact that he had almost no budget to his advantage — claustrophobic sets, everyone's trapped in the cellar and the zombies are trying to dig their way in. Very inexpensive, incredibly powerful. That is where cinema really works for me.
Moore goes on to say exactly some of what I have in mind for my treatise on the difference between the movie & the film:
It's a thwarted and frustrated and perhaps largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values [standing up] against a state run by neo-conservatives — which is not what "V for Vendetta" was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about [England].
Natalie Portman, V & the Moriori
Cinema Confidential News: 03/15/06
Good interview, there is so much to reflect on in this movie and portman does that: here is one example:
There was a book I read that we all ended up reading in the movie; “Cloud Atlas,” which was pretty formative to my ideas about violence because it has this story of the Moriori Tribe, which is this non-violent tribe in New Zealand. They thought that if you commit violence, your soul would become tainted and you would become outcasts in their society. When the Europeans came, they were violent and now the Morioris don’t exist.
I have just read the original Alan Moore & David Lloyd graphic novel V for Vendetta and seen the movie. I feel like writing a treatise on the difference between the two! I am OK with both but the differences were worthwhile, and make me respect the Wachowski Brothers all over again. The did it for me in Martrix and they lost it in II and III and have it back in V (ha). I can easily echo her closing remark:
I’m looking forward to talking to people who see this movie because it provokes strong reactions from someone, and different reactions, is so interesting; to see people’s different interpretations and reactions is so nice to hear.
Here is a backstory about Alan Moore & his distancing himself from the movie.
PS: I am following up on the Moriori!
The Book of Ash – James Flint
I am really loving “The Book of Ash” by James Flint. Gripping, funny, provocative. The non-fiction novel (is that what it is?) has photos in it – which is in itself quirky like the whole project. On close examination (on the net) the photos are really quite exquisite, though they don’t reproduce well. I like his over the top language, in the way I like Tim Robbins.
The most I have enjoyed a book since “Snow Crash”. Highly recommended.
Powerful Shadows
I just bought a book by Bettelheim, Freud and Man’s Soul. The appeal was to get a grasp on a better translated Freud. New to me & starkly present in the bio on the first page of the book is the fact of Bettleheim’s suicide, that shocked me. More research reveals a wikipedia entry and other references to lies and abuse that mar his life. His theories are “proven” to be wrong. The man sure had a big shadow, but the reviews linked to above, “Given His Tortured Sense of Inferiority, Did Bettelheim Want To Be Found Out?” by Christine Downing gives a fuller account, allowing the possibility of seeing value in his work, light & shadow. After reading that I still want to go on reading my new book!
Always worth reading
He turns things on their head.
This is an interview that is a bit old, more related to A Force of Character, he has a book out since then – A Terrible Love of War. But this interview is worth reading, Hillman always is.
Yes, but calling can refer not only to ways of doing — meaning work — but also to ways of being. Take being a friend. Goethe said that his friend Eckermann was born for friendship. Aristotle made friendship one of the great virtues. In his book on ethics, three or four chapters are on friendship. In the past, friendship was a huge thing. But it’s hard for us to think of friendship as a calling, because it’s not a vocation.
Pile or file?
My physical file GTD setup on flickr
Discussion in GTD on Yahoogroups about the use of piles. The seemed a silly idea till I realised that my three trays are a Pile. Why not have that stuff in a File? It needs to be in your face until it is is filed so no other reminder system is need for the day to day stuff.
Why notice all this stuff… the David Allen Getting things Done craze has got me.
It is quite profound, at the basis of such practical stuff on the surface is a major impact on the psyche, for me anyway.
Quicksilver : Volume One of The Baroque Cycle
Neal Stephenson’s new book announced.
The editorial review now on Amazon
Book DescriptionIn this wonderfully inventive follow-up to his bestseller Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson brings to life a cast of unforgettable characters in a time of breathtaking genius and discovery, men and women whose exploits defined an age known as the Baroque.
Daniel Waterhouse possesses a brilliant scientific mind — and yet knows that his genius is dwarfed by that of his friends Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Robert Hooke. He rejects the arcane tradition of alchemy, even as it is giving birth to new ways of understanding the world.
Jack Shaftoe began his life as a London street urchin and is now a reckless wanderer in search of great fortune. The intrepid exploits of Half-Cocked Jack, King of the Vagabonds, are quickly becoming the stuff of legend throughout Europe.
Eliza is a young woman whose ingenuity is all that keeps her alive after being set adrift from the Turkish harem in which she has been imprisoned since she was a child.
Daniel, Jack, and Eliza will traverse a landscape populated by mad alchemists, Barbary pirates, and bawdy courtiers, as well as historical figures including Samuel Pepys, Ben Franklin, and other great minds of the age. Traveling from the infant American colonies to the Tower of London to the glittering courts of Louis XIV, and all manner of places in between, this magnificent historical epic brings to vivid life a time like no other, and establishes its author as one of the preeminent talents of our own age.
Sounds amazing. And there is that name: Shaftoe straight from Cryptonomicon. That alone is intriguing.
The title is of interest to me. Obviously this is set in a pre Internet era. But not in a time before the archetypes of cyberspace were around. I am in the middle of, well further than that, almost completing an essay on that topic, and Quicksilver looms large. Mercury, or Hermes as the Greeks called him was working, driving the realm we now know as cyberspace. I wonder if Stephenson has made the same connection? Undoubtedly!
Easter Saturday 2000 recycled
I was looking for something in the old EditThisPage weblog I kept and was struck by a lovely (if I say so myself) sequence of posts, I have reproduced them here more or less as they were there. I like to keep a series of great pix going in the links. I did that even in the old links pages. I’d never post one I do not like. Aesthetics count and I like to keep tweaking the look. The photo from the Chester Street garden is nostalgic, we moved out last November!
www.oreilly.com — Animal Magnetism: Making O’Reilly Animals
”From start to finish, an O’Reilly animal requires anywhere from 8 to 20 hours of manual labor. And for reasons no one can fully explain, hand-drawn animals on high-tech computer books became a wild success.”
I think it is because computers were never about the thing itself… the fetish is about the living and organic thing they do. I feel an affinity with the O’Reilly images as I have used the William Morris tapestry in as a logo for years, I see a similarity… the same idea, something, in this case, hand crafted, beautiful and symbolic of the Psybernet work… (tree of) life work contained in the (circle) groups.
With that in mind I kept looking. How is this for something Psybernet, more Morris stuff, the harvesting of our work?
TalkAboutTheNews.com
(Note: the site has since gone)
“Welcome to the first test MP3 audio webcast from TalkAboutTheNews.com.
This is a recording of interviews and conversations at the Mobilization for Global Justice in Washington DC.
Please subscribe to our newsletter for updates and how you can create your own MP3 news/talk webcasts in the near future. TalkAboutTheNews.com will be providing free webspace, discussion boards, polls, and a whole lot more! Stay in touch! Listen to the unedited MP3 WebCast streamed by Live365.com “
Well if this was a test it worked beautifully and it seems great to be able to get the feel from people on the spot… as it is right there. What a contrast the sounds of a demonstration are with my autumn shot in the garden today.
Book: The New Science of Networks
Amazon.com: Linked: The New Science of Networks
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From a review on Amazon:
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Looks good. Yes one of many on the same theme, but each adding a new slant. Hubs and nodes – reminds me a little of the classic article: The Strength of Weak Ties ?