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The Brothers Quay
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1509
Nothing short of Genius. The stuff of animated nightmares, odd, compelling, deeply rich and evocative symbolism and themes.....
They credit their inspiration and influences in part to Jan Švankmajer and are credited for inspiring the likes of Tim Burton.
A short sample below, taken from "Street of Crocodiles", more can be found linked to it, or anthologies rented from Bird Dog Video.
Jose
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1503
I'd walked by the restaurant a dozen, 2 dozen times, looking for work, it was always empty and so I never thought of applying.
Finally, though, in the interests of being thorough and leaving no stone unturned I dropped off a resume.
A younger couple, waiter and waitress, South American, took my resume, promised to pass it on to the manager.
That night I got a call. Thick Spanish accent, Jose was his name, wanted to know if I'd applied at his restaurant, I had I told him, perhaps then I could drop round and have an interview? Great.
Now it's not going to be a hot job, I know that, but anything is better than nothing, so I swing round for the interview. The younger waiter and waitress are gone, Jose sits me down, gets my experience, he's a shorter, burly and swart Spaniard. Makes sense, it's a Spanish restaurant. He tells me the other 2 servers, they've been fired, he found my resume in the garbage, they'd thrown it in there without showing him so he fired them both, besides they were stealing and can I start right away and am I available to work days and nights?
St Criss Angel
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Conversations
- Hits: 1307
He was on this kick for a while, watching all the Criss Angel specials on TV and recounting the many miracles therein to me as if they'd really transpired.
Now I'm a bit of an amateur magician myself, the keyword is amateur. About the only trick I've mastered with any proficiency is the vanishing of money, which nobody has yet paid to see me do. But from that perspective I tend to be a little skeptical of paranormal claims - "Extraordinary Claims demand Extraordinary Evidence".
He's not so skeptical.
I bought him a book on Criss Angel, an autobiography, it was appalling drivel, but key in it was Criss Angel's personal refutation of paranormal means to achieve his ends. Most magicians are like that, think of Houdini, Derren Brown, Penn and Teller. They deny that miracles occur because they are their stock in trade, they work behind the scenes and know how they're done, can do similar, and so themselves are great skeptics.
And for a time he doesn't bring Criss up anymore. Maybe 6 months. He's disappointed in him, his denial that he's the new Messiah.
But there was a new special on TV last night where Criss levitated and vanished and he has to tell me about it...
I'm impressed, I haven't seen it but I'm sure he's very good....
I'm not getting it.
"Wouldn't it be good if we could all levitate and turn invisible?"
"It would be good, but he is a magician you know, I think it's just a trick...." I tell him
Now he looks skeptical.
"Maybe. Or maybe he just wants us to believe it's a trick. He could be fooling us..."
Benford's Law
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1362
Listening to Radiolab, much fodder for the imagination. Like Benford's Law. For those not familiar, it basically states that "in lists of numbers from many (but not all) real-life sources of data, the leading digit is distributed in a specific, non-uniform way. According to this law, the first digit is 1 almost one third of the time, and larger digits occur as the leading digit with lower and lower frequency, to the point where 9 as a first digit occurs less than one time in twenty. This distribution of first digits arises logically whenever a set of values is distributed logarithmically."
Or, more precisely: "Benford's law states that the leading digit d (d ∈ {1, …, b − 1} ) in base b (b ≥ 2) occurs with probability:"
Source: Wikipedia
Now this is intriguing. It can be explained to some extent and in some instances by mechanisms of growth (eg: fibonocci sequence), or in other word most systems & organisms "grow" and so when measured exhibit typical growth patterns (eg: cities - addresses grow out from center, hence disproportionate number of addresses beginning with a 1..). But note the qualifier - that to some extent and in some instances. There are apparently as well instances of data that conform to Bedford's law yet in no ways could be considered "alive" or "organic". Which is curious.
And, to add to the curiosity, in the same program (radiolab, numbers), the point is raised that while the recognition of numbers is an ability we are all born with, it's not the observation of linear numbers and quantity as we know it, rather instead a logarithmic means of counting - meaning that a child will recognize double and quadruple amounts more readily and primitive tribes who have not developed the same perspective we have, if asked to choose the midway point between 1 and 9, for example, would choose 3, whereas we - by training and force of habit - would choose 5.
Which is very curious indeed. I've explained it poorly, but listen to the radiolab program to hear it explained more in depth and in a much more interesting fashion...
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