Having at least a couple of films by Takashi Miike, I can’t say that I’m a fan but this one has a decent Rotten Tomatoes rating and there are always moments such as now, given the high drama of politics in Malaysia, when we just don’t feel like watching anything too heavy. I thought that this fantasy samurai film, adapted from a successful manga, might at least be entertaining and pretty.
Late on this one as I was out of the country for almost all of last week, though of course I was always going to watch this. This is a highly anticipated film even to me and I still own the original Infinity Gauntlet comics. Still I kept my expectations to realistic levels and on the whole found this to be solid superhero film and about a good a capstone to the MCU as one could hope for though it isn’t exactly transformative.
Like everyone else sensible I use the trainwreck that is Star Citizen for popcorn-munching fun and actually bought Elite Dangerous instead. I’ve had this on the back burner for a while, as I’m not much of a fan of flight sims of any sort. I do have fond memories of playing Frontier: Elite II however so I thought I’d give this a go. Now that I have a bit more disposable income I thought I’d also give gaming with a proper joystick a go. I did try playing it with a standard gamepad for a bit but after having a lot of difficulty with just docking, I knew that this would be impossible. I bought a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro, pretty much the cheapest on the stick on the market and was shocked by how much easier it is to control and how much more fun it is to fly ships with it.
This one was another recommendation from our cinephile friend and given his leftist sympathies, it’s not hard to see why he wanted us to watch this. British director Ken Loach is quite well known and has made a career out of making films like this but I don’t believe I’ve ever watched any of them. After watching this one however I can see that the director means well but I’m not sure that I can agree with his cause.
This is an older film by Stanley Kubrick that neither my wife nor myself have watched so it was automatically put on the list. I doubt that we will ever watch his earliest films made independently of the major studios but I certainly intend to watch all of the others eventually. His most famous collaboration with Kirk Douglas is of course Spartacus but before that they had made this lesser known film set during the First World War.
Based on how much both of us liked Right Now, Wrong Then, I had high hopes for this latest film by its director Hong Sang-soo. It also features the same actress Kim Min-hee as the lead as well as many other familiar faces from the earlier film. Unfortunately neither of us liked this one, finding it self-indulgent and almost incomprehensible.
Not too much stuff this month and even what we have is lighter fluff than usual.
The outlier here is this economics study examining how being financially invested deters a proclivity to war. The researchers gave Israelis seed money to trade stocks and then periodically quizzed them about their voting intentions. The intent was to prove that people who become invested in the stock market also become more favorable to peaceful outcomes, in this case peace with Palestine. The results appear to be small but positive.
I don’t usually post news about gadgets but I love how this has been a staple of science-fiction forever and is only just now becoming reality. It’s a wearable device that recognizes subvocalizations, that is speaking in your head without actually making sounds. It works by interpreting neuromuscular signals, not actually reading your mind, so I guess you do still need to work your tongues and throat and mouth muscles even if no air passes through your lips. I would say it’s still much more usable than talking to yourself to give voice commands to devices.
An article that is closer to home is this one about the Bajau people of Malaysia and the Philippines. Renowned as being expert divers, they have long been subject to speculation about whether their abilities are trained or genetic in nature. A new study found that the Bajau do indeed have larger spleens than usual, which are used to store oxygenated red blood cells and release when the body needs them. Genetic analysis of the people, compared against closely related but land-locked peoples also show genetic modifications related to an enlarged spleen.
The bit of science news that got the most play this month is the accidental discovery that puffin beaks are fluorescent. A researcher shone a UV light on a dead puffin based only on a whim and saw that the ridges on their beaks do indeed light up. It’s a revelation of no great consequence but serves as a reminder that nature still has all sorts of surprises for us right under our nose especially when we realize that other animals who can see into other parts of the spectrum have known about this all along.
A more involved read is this article about the ethical aspects of growing brain organoids. These are blobs of tissue grown from stem cells, with brain organoids in particular being made out of neurons. Scientists have known how to make them for a while and they are useful as a smaller, simpler model to study than a complete brain. But as the organoids have grown larger, with some research involving linking distinct organoids together or transplanting them into animal hosts, ethical concerns are raised as to when exactly an organoid become a brain and develop a consciousness. This article doesn’t provide any answers but it does serve as a good overview of the topic.
