As no doubt everyone reading this blog will know, the past month has seen an absolute bonanza of space-related science news. Lots of cool and exciting stuff there but we’ll start with the non-space stuff first.
Given my recent post on the Dog Emotion and Cognition course, this first bit is especially relevant. This BBC article covers a Japanese experiment which shows that dogs are able to observe strangers interacting with their owners and calibrate their own behavior accordingly. Specifically when offered food by a stranger, dogs will decline the offer if the stranger has previously been observed as acting in a “mean” manner to its owner.
I had a bit of a lull while waiting for the second part of an algorithms course to begin on Coursera and so while browsing the site, noticed this “study at your pace” format course. Since both my wife and myself are crazy about dogs, I thought that it might be a good course for the two of us to go through together and likely has insignificant homework. It’s run by Brian Hare of Duke University.
Since you’re reading this, yes, I’ve never actually watched The French Connection before this though I recall that this was one of the boring old films that often showed up on Malaysian television channels when I was growing up. Now I know that it’s a highly regarded crime thriller containing one of the best car chase scenes ever put on film, so watching it is a must.
We’d watched The Talented Mr. Ripley, the one starring Matt Damon, a couple of years back and rather liked it but I didn’t realize that this German film by director Wim Wenders is actually about the very same fictional character until quite a ways into it. Obviously I’ve also never read any of the novels by Patricia Highsmith and this one covers a later period in Ripley’s life.
This one is obviously one of my picks, made on the basis of it being an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman novel, though it’s not one I’ve read. It also helps that this is one of the rare fantasy film that Broken Forum users seem to like. My expectations were low however as its Rotten Tomatoes rating is only mediocre and it seems to be largely forgotten now, with not even a cult following to its name.
This is the first of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films that I’d seriously considered not watching in the cinema. Ever since Edgar Wright left the director’s seat, it had been plagued by rumors of production problems. When it was first released, its critic ratings were awful and people were eager to call it Marvel’s first real stumble, though ratings have slowly climbed up since then. Plus, let’s face it, Ant-Man isn’t exactly the most inspiring of superheroes as even the actor who plays him, Paul Rudd, admitted.
Yes, it’s Braid and yes, I really should have played it ages ago, but I just kept putting it off. One reason is that it’s a puzzle platformer and I really hate platformers. Another is that I read that famous Atlantic portrait of Jonathan Blow as well as the equally famous parody of that article, and the guy does come across as being incredibly pretentious. The more time passed, the less important it felt to go back and play it, no matter how great it was.
