The 700-foot-high Trylon and 200-foot-wide Perisphere, at the center of the fair.
I came across the old footage of the 1939 World’s Fair, which was promoted, at the time as “the world of tomorrow“, talking about the magnificent world of twenty years from now, of 1960!
Ironically, this fair co-incided with the outbreak of World War II, but in my opinion, the optimism within did prevail longer, probably up until the 1970s (there was a follow-up fair in the mid-1960s!).
There is an immensely positive message here, of how the future had to be better.
When people talk about how “it’s time to build” again, I think this — recapturing this lost optimism — is the only way to mean it in an unambiguously good way.
I had written previously about how 2006 was a year with a lot of great movies.
Yet, since I was going by what came to mind then, there was one important omission: “A Scanner Darkly”
If you didn’t know it, you wouldn’t believe it starred each of:
Keanu Reeves (a long way from Bill and Ted, shortly after the Matrix trilogy, and before John Wick)
Winona Ryder (for me, she will always be Lelaina from Reality Bites, 27 years ago now, and under-appreciated until her recent role in Stranger Things)
Woody Harrelson (old-timer familiar to younger audiences from Hunger Games and No Country for Old Men)
Robert Downey Jr (right before he entered the Marvel-verse as Iron Man, became Sherlock Holmes)
I would say that the movie was “prescient” given its portrayal of surveillance, drug addiction, all themes in the world today, but then I’d have to say that the book was even more prescient.
The style of the movie is animated-but-not-animated, using “digital rotoscope”, which combines the live-action is “painted over”, which creates an impression of … well, you’d have to watch it.
Much of the straightforward narration is theatrically bad, yet dialogue and internal monologue carry a cruel (and cruelly funny) conviction. And the larger plot is brilliantly hinged upon a consciousness split by two insanities: the Kafkaesque charade of secret self-surveillance and the terrible advance of irreversible brain damage. Flawed, almost too grim to take, but stunningly realized.
Yes — no doubt you’ve seen a lot of surveillance in movies, by now, though I’d guess you haven’t encountered self-surveillance.
It has the feel of the apocalypse about it, a sense of these being the last days
At the nadir of his despair and double-agent confusion, he wonders whether the agencies spying on him through their scanners have a clearer idea of who he is than he has himself. He has surrendered himself so totally to the service of the state that the authorities now have a godlike insight into him: godlike in its power, that is, but with a very human malice and caprice.
After dipping into movie soundtracks several years ago, I haven’t actually returned to any other consistent “genre” (I know soundtracks aren’t a genre, I lack a better word, and music stores do treat them this way).
That is, until on my birthday (recently, sometime last week) I scrolled through random items, looking for something “I hadn’t heard in a long time”.
Enter an expression, or 'END' to quit:
45
Answer: 45
Enter an expression, or 'END' to quit:
8 * (7 + (9 / 3))
Answer: 80
Enter an expression, or 'END' to quit:
4 * ( 5
Calculation error: ParseError { location: LineCol { line: 1, column: 8, offset: 7 }, expected: ExpectedSet { expected: {"['0' ..= '9']", "['*' | '/' | '+' | '-']", "\")\""} } }
Enter an expression, or 'END' to quit:
END
Japanese scientists have induced the jellyfish to repeat this transformation at least 10 times in a row—allowing a polyp to grow into a tentacled adult medusa, before subjecting it to stress (for example, a needle prick), and watching the process begin all over again. In this way, a single jellyfish—hypothetically at least—might be induced to live forever, cycling endlessly from young to old and back again.
The immortal jellyfish has something that humans have sought for centuries: the answer to eternal life. But to them, it is nothing. Workaday. Simple creatures, they may not even know they have this prize. Certainly, what with their rejuvenation coming during periods of pain or suffocation, they will not enjoy it. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: “One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.” I’m sure that jellyfish would, if they could, agree.
I came across this plaque while on a trip last week.
Plaque before Gualala Hotel(it has my shadow on it, and some of the text is hard to read)
We were staying at Gualala, and were eating at Upper Crust Pizzeria, which was really good, and so we returned to it. Next to it was the “Gualala Hotel”. This plaque was in front of it.
At first, it was something I scanned through, and it did seem of some minor historical interest, and was about to walk past when I read the last few lines again.
Dedicated September 29, 6023 (2018)
I did the math.
6023 - 2018 = 4005
I vaguely remembered something involving 4004 BCE as a pre-deep-time possible “time of creation”, and … yes, that checked out.
Abacus Noir 