In recent days my friends --- including several physicists --- have been tormenting me with the news about the court case in Hawaii attempting to stop the turn-on of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. I would like to think that I have a sense of humour about my work, but I do not have a sense of humour about relentless focus on the spectacular (as opposed to the central, or the important); nor do I have much time for the current conviction that crackpots and obsessives, for some mysterious reason, deserve to be given cultural space.
Ahem.
I was pleased to see an editorial in the New York Times today, dismissing the concern while having fun with it at the same time. I may not have a sense of humour in this matter, but at least I can appreciate it in other people.
[I have previously posted on the LHC, and on the ATLAS experiment, which I am joining this year.]
Showing posts with label current gossip. Show all posts
Showing posts with label current gossip. Show all posts
Sunday, 6 April 2008
Sunday, 9 December 2007
Life imitating art (imitating life)
The previous post reminds me --- fans will understand --- of Kiefer Sutherland's impending stint in jail for a repeat drink-driving offence. Quite a serious offence, it seems, from the description.
A lot of the credibility of the Jack Bauer character in 24 comes from the sense of damage about him: the feeling that the haunted look, and the troubled backstory, are not just window-dressing. Mr Sutherland's rather public excesses and disappointments --- and the plain fact that he struggles with them, not always successfully --- are thus one of the key things he brings to the role. As well, of course, as physical believability (if one can call anything in 24 believable), acting ability, and that wonderful, wonderful voice. Someone described it as velvet, wrapped around a brick. It's as like, and as unlike his father's, as the two are like and unlike each other, but it's when Kiefer is playing Jack calm, and the innate courtliness and respectfulness of the man comes out, and yet he still has to be menacing, that one says "Yes, he is his father's son".
A lot of the credibility of the Jack Bauer character in 24 comes from the sense of damage about him: the feeling that the haunted look, and the troubled backstory, are not just window-dressing. Mr Sutherland's rather public excesses and disappointments --- and the plain fact that he struggles with them, not always successfully --- are thus one of the key things he brings to the role. As well, of course, as physical believability (if one can call anything in 24 believable), acting ability, and that wonderful, wonderful voice. Someone described it as velvet, wrapped around a brick. It's as like, and as unlike his father's, as the two are like and unlike each other, but it's when Kiefer is playing Jack calm, and the innate courtliness and respectfulness of the man comes out, and yet he still has to be menacing, that one says "Yes, he is his father's son".
Monday, 23 April 2007
Age shall not weary them
Jack Nicholson is seventy. It seems as though there must have been a mistake somewhere.
The film section of the Guardian (the source of the Nicholson retrospective linked above) also has an interview with Natalie Portman, who is about to turn 26: an equally odd thought, although the occasion is of course less of a big deal. The article is much concerned with age issues, which is a little predictable, but it does manage a sensible and measured discussion of her parts in Léon and Beautiful Girls, which is no mean feat.
I am over NP. Like a certain other promising actress who gave a few stellar performances as a teen, there is simply no way to see what the fuss is about, on the basis of the last five or six years. Mercifully, Jack hasn't shown interest in either of them, so far as I know.
For the sheer pleasure of the quote: Elvis Mitchell in the NYT, discussing the film Blade II:
The film section of the Guardian (the source of the Nicholson retrospective linked above) also has an interview with Natalie Portman, who is about to turn 26: an equally odd thought, although the occasion is of course less of a big deal. The article is much concerned with age issues, which is a little predictable, but it does manage a sensible and measured discussion of her parts in Léon and Beautiful Girls, which is no mean feat.
I am over NP. Like a certain other promising actress who gave a few stellar performances as a teen, there is simply no way to see what the fuss is about, on the basis of the last five or six years. Mercifully, Jack hasn't shown interest in either of them, so far as I know.
For the sheer pleasure of the quote: Elvis Mitchell in the NYT, discussing the film Blade II:
And the vampires are still the kind of chic Versace-ridden Eurotrash you see dwelling in the most perilous areas of nightclubs; they're the type usually inhabiting the V.I.P. sections, secreted behind the velvet ropes with Jack Nicholson.
Thursday, 19 April 2007
Perks?
Miranda Devine's ability to spoil an argument never ceases to amaze me.
In an op-ed article in today's SMH she mounts a critique of "try before you buy" cohabitation, hanging it on the Windsor-Middleton breakup the way one hangs a coat on a peg. One first has to wade through a page of tut-tutting at British snobbery: all very entertaining, but surely it's absurd if egalitarian sentiment becomes an excuse for feeling superior to the upper class?
She eventually makes a good point, if scarcely a new one: cohabitation, considered from the outside, seems scarcely in women's interest and "gives all the advantages to men". Very well, but what follows from this?
According to Ms Devine, it follows that If Middleton had really wanted to marry William she never should have set up house with him. Smart girls don't give away marital perks free. Really? Smart girls? Marital perks?
A critique of an institution is, by itself, no guide to individual behaviour. Ms Middleton is no more able to single-handedly change her social environment than any of us, but must act in the place and time she is given.
The naff reference to "smart girls" casts this as a matter of calculation, so let's be calculating. KM may have been trying out some merchandise of her own. Fancy being married to the heir to the throne, ladies? Not sure? Then perhaps you might want to try the role on for size, without making an irreversible commitment. It might be a way of finding out if you really do want to marry the guy, with all that implies. And at the risk of an obvious statement, KM may have been unenthusiastic about living through her twenties in celibacy. Is there anyone who doesn't feel some sympathy on that score? Anyone?
So perhaps the "New Rules" rhetoric is just a wrapper, and MD's real goal is a moral one, seeking to tie sex and commitment closer together. As a Christian, of course I sympathise. But one needs a fairly broad vision of the problem for this to make sense. If one is merely acting in a market, and the market is unchanged, then principles slow you down. There is such a thing as lonely virtue.
The problem is that many people don't feel ready to marry in their twenties, or would not feel supported in such a choice. This is almost certainly a criticism of our society; it may well (say it in a small voice!) be a criticism of ourselves. One is still left with the question of what to do. Marriage (and cohabitation for that matter) is a social phenomenon and I would have thought it an excellent start to broaden the frame of reference. Perhaps we can act differently as families, or groups of friends, or subcultures, or workplaces (!), and provide a milieu where an older-fashioned choice makes sense.
But to jump straight to how-the-individual-should-act is to claim that it is never prudent, or wise, or good, or even the lesser of two evils, to compromise with a flawed institution. This is ethical nonsense, and that makes it bad advice.
In an op-ed article in today's SMH she mounts a critique of "try before you buy" cohabitation, hanging it on the Windsor-Middleton breakup the way one hangs a coat on a peg. One first has to wade through a page of tut-tutting at British snobbery: all very entertaining, but surely it's absurd if egalitarian sentiment becomes an excuse for feeling superior to the upper class?
She eventually makes a good point, if scarcely a new one: cohabitation, considered from the outside, seems scarcely in women's interest and "gives all the advantages to men". Very well, but what follows from this?
According to Ms Devine, it follows that If Middleton had really wanted to marry William she never should have set up house with him. Smart girls don't give away marital perks free. Really? Smart girls? Marital perks?
A critique of an institution is, by itself, no guide to individual behaviour. Ms Middleton is no more able to single-handedly change her social environment than any of us, but must act in the place and time she is given.
The naff reference to "smart girls" casts this as a matter of calculation, so let's be calculating. KM may have been trying out some merchandise of her own. Fancy being married to the heir to the throne, ladies? Not sure? Then perhaps you might want to try the role on for size, without making an irreversible commitment. It might be a way of finding out if you really do want to marry the guy, with all that implies. And at the risk of an obvious statement, KM may have been unenthusiastic about living through her twenties in celibacy. Is there anyone who doesn't feel some sympathy on that score? Anyone?
So perhaps the "New Rules" rhetoric is just a wrapper, and MD's real goal is a moral one, seeking to tie sex and commitment closer together. As a Christian, of course I sympathise. But one needs a fairly broad vision of the problem for this to make sense. If one is merely acting in a market, and the market is unchanged, then principles slow you down. There is such a thing as lonely virtue.
The problem is that many people don't feel ready to marry in their twenties, or would not feel supported in such a choice. This is almost certainly a criticism of our society; it may well (say it in a small voice!) be a criticism of ourselves. One is still left with the question of what to do. Marriage (and cohabitation for that matter) is a social phenomenon and I would have thought it an excellent start to broaden the frame of reference. Perhaps we can act differently as families, or groups of friends, or subcultures, or workplaces (!), and provide a milieu where an older-fashioned choice makes sense.
But to jump straight to how-the-individual-should-act is to claim that it is never prudent, or wise, or good, or even the lesser of two evils, to compromise with a flawed institution. This is ethical nonsense, and that makes it bad advice.
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