This is very much not great cinema but it’s so well known and so deeply embedded in popular culture, that I felt that I had to watch it for completionist reasons. This is after all the origin of the phrase, “build it and they will come” though the film actually says he will come. Surprisingly the phrase turns up quite often in the field of economics, such as when people argue that building infrastructure even in the middle of seemingly nowhere will be enough to spark an economic boom.
This is a bit of an obscure Taiwanese film by a director we’ve never heard of before, Stan Lai. This was a recommendation from our cinephile and I bet that was due to how much we both liked the Peter Greenaway films we’ve watched. It really was a play originally as unusual as the format is, and it seems that it’s still performed as such today. But it was so successful that this film adaptation was made, retaining the same director.
So I put off watching this for a long while but I knew I had to eventually due to its winning multiple Oscars and the controversy that engendered about this being an undeserved win. It’s just part of being involved in the cultural conversation. In the end, my opinion falls in line with the other critics. It’s a sweet and decently made film but the time when something like this could be considered one of the best films of the year should be long gone.
Absolutely swamped by science articles including feature-length ones. Unfortunately none of them are about the coranavirus which is still too new.
Getting the really hard stuff out of the way first, here is a long and highly speculative piece about how there may some kind of deep connection between the fabric of space-time as described by quantum mechanics and the error correction codes developed for use in quantum computers. These codes are necessary for physical quantum computers to be built at all as any physical implementations of qubits are prone to be randomly flipped by an uncountable array of causes and so these errors must be caught and corrected by an algorithm. Mathematicians and physicists however have noticed that these codes are essentially identical to a particular quantum mechanical construct called an anti-de Sitter space. This is not the same as our real universe but it does raise the exciting possibility that the fabric of our own space-time can be represented by these error correction algorithms.
Next is another highly speculative article about organic robots made by stitching together stem cells of a species of African frog. They are not capable of much more than moving and pushing pellets around in a Petri dish but that is already astounding so long as they can be programmed. Still these aren’t true organisms as each of them has to be handmade by surgeons and they are not capable of reproducing nor indeed do they possess any means of replenishing the energy stores within their cells. Still once this technology has been improved, it’s obvious enough that the applications are endless.
Everyone knows that normal body temperature in humans is 37°C but this study shows that this standard was established in the 19th century and the mean recorded temperature recorded now is lower. It seems that body temperatures have been steadily dropping over time and that has important ramifications on human physiology. The reasons are unknown but they could be due to people being more subject to inflammation due to diseases or evan a byproduct of modern humans having greater body mass.
Next is a study with results that shouldn’t surprise anyone. The authors attempt to dissect what leads to people becoming atheists, what they call the origins of disbelief, and concludes that by far the most important determinant is simply being raised in an environment with few cultural cues that point towards religious belief.
Moving on to economics, what has everyone all abuzz is this paper arguing that real interest rates have been in steady decline since the 14th century, roughly the beginning of capitalism. The paper doesn’t attempt to offer explanations but it is obvious to everyone that this has important implications on the ongoing debate over inequality centered as it is today on the historical return on capital as well as the urgent issue of interest rates today entering unprecedented negative territory. The suggestion is that while everyone currently expects this to be a temporary aberration that will eventually revert to the mean, this may well be a permanent change.
This next article isn’t included for the sake of the scientific discovery itself but for the insight that will profoundly reshape all study of human behavior. As everyone knows surveillance cameras are now ubiquitous and are used primarily to fight crime. But what happens when you open access to researchers of human behavior to see what people actually do instead of what they say they do? The article notes that the well-known phenomenon of the bystander effect doesn’t actually seem to exist after observing plenty of CCTV footage of emergency situations as bystanders do seem to readily intervene. This represents a treasure trove of data that will no doubt revolutionize the study of psychology though of course the usual concerns about privacy apply.
Finally here is a long but fascinating article on how modern television shows for children are crafted. It shows how through decades of experience, producers have finely honed their understanding of exactly what works for children of various ages and deliberately target different shows for different age groups. Collaborating with child psychologists, everything from the design of the characters, the types of plots, the length of camera cuts and so on are taken into account. That’s why shows that seem like complete nonsense to adults are meant to impart specific types of knowledge to the target children that the producers know works due to extensive trial and error.
Given that I thought director Bi Gan’s first film Kaili Blueswas far and away the best of its year, this follow up was always going to have a lot to live up to. This is especially so given that he has managed to attract serious acting talent in the form of Tang Wei and Sylvia Chang this time around. Unfortunately as is often the case, while this remains very recognizably the work of the same director, I found it to be markedly inferior to the first film even as it tries to draw on many of the same elements.
So we’re far from done with delving the deep well of nostalgia so here is another live-action remake of a Disney classic. This one was heavily derided on its initial announcement for the casting of Will Smith as the Genie with his skin a ludicrous shade of blue. But I like how the casting now proper reflects, more or less, the appropriate ethnicities of the characters and I love how director Guy Ritchie completely commits to this as a musical. This is probably my favorite of the Disney remakes so far.
Like most people I bought this prequel entirely because of how much I liked the main game. This one is actually made by a different studio and being a prequel has no Max Caulfield and her time powers in it. Instead here you are put in control of Chloe Price and the story is all about how she gets to know Rachel Amber and become best friends. There’s a new mechanic called Backtalk which is supposed to represent Chloe’s ability to convince others to do things her way by insulting them but in practice, it’s another conversation option.
