So I’ve just gotten around to starting Fallout 4. Since this looks like it’s going to take a long time to play, I thought I’d also check out its free to play companion game which was good enough to get some praise on Broken Forum. It plays a lot like those free games on Facebook or whatever, though it’s not too annoying and is charming enough. You can indeed spend real money to speed things but as far as I can tell, everything that you can buy can indeed be obtained in-game so it’s honest in that regard.
So this is another classic that I never got around to properly watching before this. As my wife noted, even if you don’t know this film you definitely will know the score by Ennio Morricone, iconic as it is. This film is officially the final part of the so-called Dollars trilogy directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood. But this is by far the most famous and successful of the three and it’s not as if continuity matters so I picked it to watch first. I definitely will get around to watching at least the first film at some point however.
Every time I feel like I’m getting a handle on world cinema I am chagrined to discover how much I have yet to learn. This was a recommendation by our cinephile friend. It’s made by Hong Sang-soo, an independent South Korean filmmaker who has been around for a while but this is the first time I’ve seen his work.
A fairly mixed bag of stuff to kick off the first month.
First, here’s an article about how flying in airplanes exposes humans to more ionizing radiation than working in a nuclear reactor. This means that aircrews are at significant risk as their annual exposure is estimated at 3 millisieverts while nuclear industry bodies recommend that the general public should be exposed to less than 1 millisievert a year.
Then there’s this very cool paper about how there could be more water on Mars than expected, trapped in the form of ice beneath the surface. Data from spacecraft were used to analyzed areas where erosion had occurred, finding eight locations where there is ice layer of more than 100 meters thick as shallow as only one or two meters beneath the surface.
Also very cool is this article how research into how even plants are affected by anaesthetic drugs. They specifically targeted plants that are known for being capable of movement such as Venus flytraps and the creeping herb that folds inwards when touched. Using a variety of anaesthetics, applied either to the roots or added to the air as appropriate, they found that in all cases the plants temporarily became still and unresponsive just as animals would. The hope is that this will help scientists understand exactly how it is that this class of drugs causes unconsciousness, about which we still know surprisingly little. On a philosophical level, it also raises the question of just how conscious plants can be.
A couple of articles from The Economist next. The first of these examines how humans usually have abstract descriptions for colors but not for odors. The research takes place in Malaysia where a local tribe known as the Jahai are the exception to the norm, having a vocabulary that is capable of describing odors in the abstract. The article also presents evidence that the inability of most humans to describe odors is not due to innate language ability or biology but due to lifestyle, with hunter gatherers having more need for a rich language to describe odors than farmers.
The next is about economics. It’s about a massive accounting of the long term returns of many different classes of assets. They found, in line with man on the street expectations but contrary to conventional academic thinking, that the best long performing investment is still housing, beating equities which is also more volatile to boot. The finding further reinforces suspicions that capitalism inherently reinforces inequality as the average real rate of return on wealth appears to outstrip GDP growth.
Finally here’s one that is just for fun. All of which will have heard of the mistaken missile alert in Hawaii. Of course this makes for a fantastic natural experiment when you think about how the announcement changes human behaviors. A large pornography website Pornhub released data showing that immediately following the sending of the message, traffic on their sites crashed massively by 77%. As residents were informed that it was a mistake however, traffic recovered, spiking to well above normal levels before returning to usual patterns. You can probably imagine for yourself the mindset of the average person when confronted with the news based on this data.
So this one made it onto the best of lists of a few critics and was even a recommendation by my cinephile friend. Heck, it was even recommended by LYN members, a popular Malaysian English-language forum, though that is a rather dubious mark of honor. I don’t recognize the name of its writer / director Taylor Sheridan but I do recognize the MCU film stars. Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen are of course obvious but it also stars Jon Bernthal who plays the Punisher on television.
My wife added this to her want list ages ago as she is familiar with the novel it is based on. However it is little known outside of China and proved to be impossible to find. I only found it when I discovered a YouTube channel that seemingly specializes in very old Chinese films. It’s pretty odd to consider what is or isn’t allowed on YouTube at times but these films are so little watched that I doubt it’s much of an issue.
This is the second in the series of films that my wife picked out about senescence and its debilitating effects on the mind in particular. I believe that On Golden Pond was a much more prominent work than Away From Her, featuring as it does a star-studded cast. I find myself embarrassed that while it is the more traditional and even more sentimental film, I actually like it more due to how well-rounded it is and the excellent performances.
