Wes Anderson, L. Frank Baum, and the American Humbug

• Cat Steven Songs, influence of Harold and Maude.
• His films employ a similar visual style, primarily through the use of vivid primary colors. He is known for deliberate, methodical cinematography, using 90 degree camera angles, parallel and perpendicular arrangement of forms, frequent use of symmetry, close-ups, quick pans, and slow motion shots.
• Wes Anderson is known for making independent-type stylistic films that mix poignancy and dry humor. Examples of his humor include malapropism and understatement.
• All of Anderson's films utilize the font Futura Bold in either the opening credits, title sequences or closing credits and is also displayed in other printed materials used throughout his films. Each film also uses Futura Bold to display the main closing credits in a particular format where the first name is displayed in a title case and the last name is displayed in all caps (except The Darjeeling Limited which uses capitals for full names).
• He often uses folk and early rock as the background music in scenes.
• His often damaged characters are viewed in a compassionate light.
• His main characters frequently come from families with money (Anthony "never worked a day in his life" in Bottle Rocket, Blume's multimillion dollar business in Rushmore, the elaborate townhouse in The Royal Tenenbaums and the family inheritance in The Darjeeling Limited).
• By contrast, each movie has minor characters who are working class (such as the housekeeper Inez in Bottle Rocket and personal assistant Pagoda in The Royal Tenenbaums)
• About his American Express commercial, Anderson states that his films, "point out the beauty in flaws and vice versa."
• The depiction of escapism and companionship through chemicals seems to be one of his trademarks also. In each of his films, one or more of the main characters smokes cigarettes or marijuana, excessively drinks, takes pills, etc. To accompany the cigarettes in his films he also features Zippo lighters prominently; from Dignan in Bottle Rocket lighting firecrackers to Raleigh St. Clair in The Royal Tenenbaums. Additionally, his films often feature a heavy-smoking female character.
• A recurring character in Anderson's films is a respected middle aged male who is essentially a fraud.
• All of Anderson's films, with the exception of The Darjeeling Limited, end with slow motion sequences - although The Darjeeling Limited's antepenultimate shot is in slow motion.
• A recurring plot point featured in his three latest films is the reunion of family members.
• Furthermore, almost every Wes Anderson movie contains a shot of one or more characters under water.
• A shot of a character's point of view is usually included, for example the opening to The Royal Tenenbaums or a person walking with their feet visible while reading a card, which can be seen in The Darjeeling Limited as the brothers examine their itinerary.

From the 9-26-09 reading of the wikipedia article on Wes Anderson, the director of The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore.


http://www.slate.com/id/2228592/


Here's a good bio-article about L. Frank Baum, the creator of the Wizard of Oz,


The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a traditional fairy tale to which Baum added a peculiarly American twist: the humbug. In addition to the usual talking animals, evil witches, scary forest, and challenges to be overcome, Oz has at its core a fraud. The Wizard is not a real wizard, but a lost American balloonist who uses stage tricks—hanging a disembodied head by a wire, for example—to fool people into thinking he is powerful. Deploying spectacle to impress his guests, he sends Dorothy and her companions to kill the Wicked Witch of the West (who has real magic powers). When they return, successful, they discover the truth: Toto, scared by Oz's roar, tips over a screen the Wizard hides behind. There stands "a little old man, with a bald head and a wrinkled face." He pleads, "… don't strike me—please don't. … I'll do anything you want me to. … I'm just a common man." "You're more than that," retorts the Scarecrow. "You're a humbug."



Humbug is bullshit.


The lovable fraud, according to the Slate article, and collated with evidence from my own experience, is an american fairytale.


Some implications and thoughts on this later.

Technician Portfolio 17: LSAT editorial

Technician > Viewpoint

Time to get testy with the LSAT

By Jake Goldbas, Staff Columnist

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Published: Thursday, September 24, 2009

Updated: Thursday, September 24, 2009

Saturday marks the end of a great labor of love for students like me who will take the Law School Admissions Test.

I first started preparing for the LSAT by accident. In Professor Barbara Levenbook's Philosophy of Ethics in Law class, the multiple-choice sections are similar to some of the questions on the LSAT. I also learned some fundamental concepts in the difficult Logic-Mathematics 335 course with Professor David Auerbach (engineering and computer science majors would recognize mathematical logic, as it is used in discreet math and basic computing programs).

Starting this past May, I have worked by myself, with an LSAT class, with friends, with my parents, after drinking coffee, after waking up early in the morning, late at night, after going to work for a full day, after going to school for a whole day, when I wanted to and when I did not want to.

This week, on Tuesday night, after working for many hours on my preparation, I dreamt about taking the test and getting a great score. It was a good dream, however, it still felt a little weird when I woke up the next morning and realized I had dreamt about the LSAT.

The test consists of six half-hour sections. Put those together, with directions read out loud and a ten-minute break, and the whole process is about five hours. The six sections are two argument sections, called logical reasoning; a mathematical logic-puzzle section, called logic games; a reading comprehension section; a writing sample; and a repeat of any of the three major categories. This last “experimental section” is not scored. I have, however, taken practice tests where I was so sure that the questions were too weird to be part of the ordinary test only to find out that in fact it was really part of the test, thus losing me points. The writing section is not part of the greater score of the test, but is sent out with the scores in order to show Law Schools that applicants can string cogent arguments together. The test is graded on a 120 to 180 point-scale.

The LSAT is, in many respects, similar to the Standardized Academics Test (SAT). The LSAT is similar to the SAT in that the two are long, multiple-choice based tests, which also have reading comprehension sections. The tests both have writing samples that are ranked outside of the test, and for entrance into higher-level academia. Obscure ivory-tower boards govern both: The College Board Governs the SAT and the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) governs the LSAT. Because of their simultaneous grip on the fate of my life and their complete absence in any material sense except for tests on test-days, I get the eerie feeling that these are ghostly organizations that sort of haunt around and wait until they can judge me for something. When has anyone ever met these people? Why should these distant ghosts make any sort of legitimate calls about peoples' lives?

Distinctly contrasting with this ghost-fog is the Kaplan Test Preparation Company, from which I took an enjoyable class. Fortunately, I had a great instructor in Jenny St. Clair, a local attorney who works with Kaplan for LSAT preparation. The comprehensive course has showed me the ins and outs of the test and given me a big confidence boost that I will perform well.

If you are thinking about law school in the future, I urge you to look at an LSAT as soon as possible. They are available online, but better yet, I urge you to introduce yourself as soon as possible to Mary-Anne Tetro, director for pre-law services at N.C. State. I recommend taking Dr. Levenbook's Philosophy of Ethics in Law Class and taking the Logic 225 course.

For those of us taking the test on Saturday, good luck.

Annie Dillard's About Eskimos

Eskimos, toothless,
on the move, practice
cruelty to animals;

mend traces; build
ice houses, warm,
where warm air rises.

On the move, it is hard.
Many Eskimos starve.
Those who live, move.

On clear days, large mammals
on the move, leave trails
floating, of mammal breath.

Watch the trails, watch
your step. Chew, if you must,
quietly. You can catch

an Eskimo: File your teeth.
Mark his path. If you see an
igloo, hold your breath.

Facade it until you want it

Now you're out of time and then what?

I keep thinking in my head: and then what? And then what?

And then what?

Rainer Maria Rilke told me to


"Fling the nothing that you are grasping
out into the spaces we breathe.
Maybe the birds will feel in their flight
how the air has expanded."


One of Gretchen Rubin's tips is to act the way you want to feel, and let your body and mind pick up the slack, so to speak. So it follows that if you want to feel happy, act like you are happy. Obviously it's not always that simple. I agree with Rubin that sometimes in some instances it is.

The reason that people are able to placebo-affect themselves is because the placebo effect can work. This seems circular but maybe there's some synthetic a priori truth to the bit.


Trent Reznor has this one song called "1,000,000" where he says that he feels a million miles a way, he doesn't feel anything at all.

The answer is that quality of life depends on knowledge. Knowledge depends both on exploration and discovery by oneself, and also the connection with one's surroundings and environment.

Continue to be excited. Get other people excited. Somehow you have to excite yourself into exciting yourself even more. The joy that you have can create more joy, the work that you do can create better quality and quantity.

Fake it 'till you make it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxqBGUIjMFk


When she goes, shes gone.
If she stays, she stays here.
The girl does what she wants to do.
She knows what she wants to do.
And I know Im fakin it,
Im not really makin it.

Im such a dubious soul,
And a walk in the garden
Wears me down.
Tangled in the fallen vines,
Pickin up the punch lines,
Ive just been fakin it,
Not really makin it.

Is there any danger?
No, no, not really.
Just lean on me.
Takin time to treat
Your friendly neighbors honestly.
Ive just been fakin it,
Im not really makin it.
This feeling of fakin it--
I still havent shaken it.

Prior to this lifetime
I surely was a tailor.
(good morning, mr. leitch.
Have you had a busy day? )
I own the tailors face and hands.
I am the tailors face and hands and
I know Im fakin it,
Im not really makin it.
This feeling of fakin it--
I still havent shaken it.

Some typed up Descartes - Discourse on Method Part 1

[Author's Preface]

If this discourse seems too long to be read at one time, it may be divided into six parts. In the first part, you will find various considerations concerning the sciences' in the second part, the chief rules of the method which the author has sought' in the third part, some of the rules of morality which he has derived from this method;in the fourth part, the arguments by which he proves the existence of God and the human soul, which are the foundations of his metaphysics; in the fifth part, the order of the questions in physics that he has investigated, and particularly the explanation of the movement of the heart and of other difficulties that pertain to medicine., as well as the difference between our soul and that of beasts; and in the final part, what things the author believes are required in order to advance further in the investigation of nature than the author has done, and what reasons have made him write.

Part One

Good sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for everyone thinks himself to be so well endowed with it that even those who are the most difficulty to please in everything else are not at all wont to desire more of it than they have. It is not likely that everyone is mistaken in this. Rather, it provides evidence that the power of judging well and of distinguishing the true from the false (whcih is, proerly speaking, what people call "good sense" or "reason") is naturally equal in all men, and that the diversity of our opinions does not arise from the fact that some people are more reasonalbe than others, but solely from the fact that we lead our thougts along different paths and do not take the same thigns into consideration. For it is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to apply it well. The greatest souls are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues. And those who proceed only very slowly can make much greater progress, provided they always follow the right path, than do those who hurry and stray from it.

For myself, I have never presumed that my mind was in any respect more perfect than that of ordinary men. In fact, I ( have often desired to have as wuick a wit, or as keen and distinct an imagination, or as full and responsive a memory as some other people. And other than these I know of no qualities that serve in the perfecting of the mind, for as to reason or sense, inasmuch as it alone makes us men and distinguishes us form the beasts, I prefer to believe that it exists whole and entire in each of us, and in this to follow the opinion commonly held by philosophers, who say thtat there are differences of degree on ly between accidents, but not at all between forms or natures of individuals of the same species.

But I shall have no fear of saying that I htink I have been rather fortunate to have, since my youth, found myself on certain paths taht have led me to considerations and maxims from which I have formed a method by which, it seems to me, I have the means to increase my knowledge by degrees and to raise it little by little to the highest point which the mediocrity of my mind and the short duration of my life will be able to allow it to attain. For I have already reaped from it such a harvest that, although I try, in judgments I make of myself, always to lean more on the side of diffidence than of presumption, and although, looking with a philosopher's eye at the various actions and enterprises of all men, there is hardly one of them that does not seem to me vain and useless, I cannot but take immense satisfaction i nthe progress that I think I have already made in the search for truth, and I cannot but envisage such hopes for the future that if, among the occupations of men purely as men, there is one that is solidly good and imprtant, I dare to believe that it is the one I have chosen.

All the same, it could be that I am mistaken, and what i take for gold and diamonds is perhaps nothing but a bit of copper and glass. I know how much we are prone to err in what affects us, and also how much the judgemnts made by our friends should be distrusted when these judgments are in our favor. But I will be very happy to show in this discourse what paths I have followed and to represent my life in it as if in a picture, so that everyone may judge it ofr himself; and that, learning from the comon response the opinions one will have of it, this may be a new means of teaching myself, which I shall add to those that i am accustomed to using.

Did I kill my blog? Portfolio 16 again

How to please the postman

By Jake Goldbas, Staff Columnist

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Published: Friday, September 18, 2009

Updated: Friday, September 18, 2009

Here’s a quick way to build harmony: write home. Here’s something to write home about: your grades.

The next time you get a grade above a B, write 3 sentences on loose leaf about how you got it and maybe if you’re feeling bashful, you can say to the person you write to that he or she inspired you. Tell your loved ones you are working hard and thank them for their continued support (this is the crucial point).

The gut instinct is to send it off to your parents. This is spot on. Those of us who are close to our grandparents, you could think of them too. Write to the teachers in high school you were close to (talking especially to freshmen here). Those of us involved in local church, synagogue or mosque groups could write to those groups at home. Those of us involved with community organizations such as the Masons, the Lions Club or Rotary International could write to them.

You never know; the last time I sent my grandma a letter about an A I received, she sent me a letter of congratulations and $20 back.

The reason that we cannot usually tell our friends about our grades is because of the natural differences between us. It is overly competitive to say that you got higher than someone else, like holding it over his or her head. On the other hand, it is harsh if they score higher than you do. So people generally keep to mum about this kind of thing.

If you fail or are failing a course, seek help, but also recognition. These two are dependent and correlated. Writing home about this kind of thing should not hurt either. Say you work for five hours on a paper and the professor still fails you -- you might gain some much-needed support.

I have a three-page paper worth 20 percent of the entire course grade due today, for example. Any grade for this paper less than an A minus hurts me significantly.

Fairness and justification are important parts of administrators jobs. Make it easier for them by sending your papers in. Parents are also likely to side with you if they realize what your side is, in this case your paper, test, homework and so on.

Furthermore, say that you’re taking a course on nuclear physics and you take a test. Seeing that you got a nuclear physics grade that is a B plus for some ruthlessly hard test is more impressive if parents, grandparents and organizations actually see the test.

Sending an A plus to the chancellor’s office might offer them encouragement and remind them why they are here. You do not have to go that high though. You could send a paper to a dean or a particular professor you are close to. This can help with the recommendations that they have to write for you later, as they will see some of the variations and nuances of your work. For example, if you are an engineering major who is getting an English minor, seeing your other work will help them write a well-rounded recommendation for you.

Lastly, instead of throwing out old papers, you could mail them home. Have your parents put those letters on a shelf in a closet back home. You can then use this portfolio of graded papers on resumes or graduate school applications.

School should be an occasion to write home about -- do it.

Portfolio What is it 16 now? I don't remember