In the Graduate, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) is first seduced by Mrs. Robinson, and then falls in love with her daughter Elaine. The final scene in the church is a classic, the lovers manage to escape by using a cross to bar the church door.
Apr 30, 2007
The Graduate
Apr 27, 2007
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, the story of a man destroyed by the mental health system.
Nurse Ratched doesn't want to cure the patients, she wants to control them. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) rebels against her, and finally ends up losing his life.
Apr 26, 2007
Apr 25, 2007
Calorie Restriction
Slate has published a couple of articles about Calorie Restriction. I won't link to them because they are really bad.
The difference between anorexics and people on CR is the goal. CRONIES are trying to improve their health by eating high quality food in smaller amounts. I don't know what the goal is for anorexics.
Can there be an intersection the two populations? Probably. Should people who have had eating disorders try to do extreme CR? Probably not.
But, if you overdo anything it becomes bad for you. Exercise, drinking water, working, typing on your keyboard. So taking CR to an extreme is bad for you. Well what a surprise!
Eating high quality food in smaller amounts, which results in losing between 5-10% of one's body weight is good for you. Very good in fact.
I know I've done it.
Apr 24, 2007
France Looks Ahead, and It Doesn't Look Good
In a NYT opinion piece titled France Looks Ahead, and It Doesn't Look Good, Tony Judt, heaps praise on Jacques Chirac.
Whatever I think of Mr. Judt's positions on other subjects, I have a hard time accepting his praise for Mr. Chirac.
Purely symbolic gestures like admitting the French government's share of responsibility in the Holocaust, being for allowing Turkey to enter the EU, or being outspoken on global warming, and against the war in Iraq, are all fine and well. But that is a very meager list of accomplishments after 12 years of presidency and decades in high level government positions.
I certainly hope, for France's sake, that the next French president will accomplish more in the next five years than Chirac has in the last 12.
Apr 22, 2007
The Truce
The Truce, the sequel to If This Is A Man, is composed of small slices of life taken from Primo Levi's return from Auschwitz. The horror branded him for life; he has nightmares in which he wakes up and is actually still in the concentration camp and hears the wake up call 'Wstawach'.
Apr 15, 2007
Apr 14, 2007
If This Is A Man
In If This Is A Man, Primo Levi describes the 11 months he spent in Auschwitz. Through luck, perserverance and intelligence he was one of the few who managed to survive. His story is a factual, simple and precise description of the system designed to rob men first of their humanity and then their life.
Apr 11, 2007
Apr 10, 2007
28 Days Later
After twenty-eight days, Jim wakes up from a coma. While he has been unconscious the Rage virus has killed, or transformed into zombies, almost the entire UK population. He finds a few survivors and they struggle together to survive. Right after the collapse of civilization, some men turn into raping murdering beasts.
Apr 9, 2007
Freedom and Neurobiology
by John Searle
 clipped from www.ft.comhow do we humans, with our conception of ourselves as free, rational, moral agents, fit in to a universe ”of mindless, meaningless, brute physical particles”?
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Apr 8, 2007
A History of Violence
For many years Tom Stall/Joey Cusack does everything to put his violent criminal past behind him. Despite himself he becomes a hero by by killing two criminals in self-defense. The resulting publicity forces him to confront the past from which he had fled.
A History of Violence
Apr 4, 2007
Apr 2, 2007
Apr 1, 2007
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