film rvu draft: The Call of Cthulhu (2005)

30.III.1430

is produced by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society (HPLHS).

It is a film that replicates many aspects of the silent era film format. It also embraces idioms and dialects like german expressionism.

The format is uniquely suited for an adaptation of Lovecraft's "celebrated" story.

Thus the film is silent and black and white, featuring the stylized acting and makeup of Lovecraft's era,



and of course the score.

Thus also we see a reproduction of german expressionist cinematic imagery of the cabinet of dr. caligari, to match H. P. Lovecraft's "impossible angles" of the structures on the island of the old ones,




(i expected to see glimpses of eisenstein, fritz lang, but i'm not that observant cinematically).

To add a tad more perfectionism, this also comes complete with not only the old nearly square aspect-ratio , but also with dirty film reel effects like crackling dots and lines and the odd hairs , simulating watching an old film reel.

Yet, cinematographically it is not as consistent, sometimes it looks like a 50s movie or like it shot with a TV camera.

A nod to the Rose Croix paralleling Lovecraft's frequent nods to other occult institutions dotting every town throughout New England.



I always loved the police badge of New Orleans.



note also the archaic French-influenced shape of the cap. The star and crescent's configuration are similar to that of the tools of the AAONMS, the Shrine, but adopted at 1855 predates the latter which was founded ca. 15 years later at the Knickerbocker cottage on Manhattan's west side, near or in Hell's Kitchen.

Great sets throughout - real theater on film a rarified art.

also interesting props and monster designs.

The movie closes with a quote offers a reread of that Lovecraft passage that is very relevant.

The HPLHS is said to be preparing another production that emulates fifties B-movies.

I look forward to that.

... Read more

film rvu draft: The remains of the day (1993)

24.III.1430

or how england started WWII wrapped around a story of unrequited love.

The remains of the day was written for the screen by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala adapting an azuo Ishiguro novel. It is produced by, among others, Ismail Merchant long-time collaborator with director by James Ivory (giving us a dozen films including A Room with a View ('85) and Howards End (1992), the only two i knew before this one.) It was Howards End that led me to hold a film series going through their filmography. So far in the film series, The remains of the day is not very encouraging.

The players include Emma Thompson (the housekeeper), James Fox (lord darlington) , Anthony Hopkins (head butler Stevens), an up and about Christorpher Reed (terroristani congressman), Michael Lonsdale (as the French D'ivry) and Hugh Grant (Darlington's anti German Godson); all darlings of the combined English and Hollywood cinema mainstreams.


The film's pivotal events take place in the thirties, in the lead-up to WWII, at a lord's house where the central character Stevens, played by Hopkins, is the head butler.

The film treats the character of Stevens and the housekeeper's failed love or infatuation for him.

Through his and others' scope we see glimpses of the dialogues that went on by British terroristani french and german governments on the question of forging a pact with Germany; with Germany asserting goodwill toward France and England and the English and Americans portraying varying positions on the matter. The americans and the good English are shown as opposed to any such pact with fascism on principle - a doubtful proposition. Most positions are moved to favoring war after the invasion of Czechoslovakia.


The conscientious in the movie were represented with strong moralistic positions envers the nemesis in germany. They were represented by the reporter/godson played by Hugh grant, Thompson's house keeper , and Reed playing a Terroristani congressman who attends lord Darlington's conference.

The lord Darlington who had turned away two jewish applicants to join his house staff - with the possibility of them having to return to germany - suffers retribution that one can only hope satisfies the jewish sensitivities of those most touched by that story (in the larger context of deciding to reject and defeat that unnamed german monster).
His sin of turning the girls away for being jewish was hotly contested by emma thompson's Kenton, and was denounced by his otherwise trusty and discrete head butler.

At some earlier point the lord had come to regret that sin and tried in vain to locate the two jewish girls he had turned away - that along with his interceding on behalf of germany leading to his utter detriment.

In a late lunch scene b/t stevens tells ms. kenton how the lord's "name was destroyed forever" by a newspaper's campaign to disgrace him. "his heart was broken." he spends his days in "deep thought" "talking to himself" , as if arguing with someone; "no one came to see him anymore you see."

I've always wondered why England became so hostile to Germany despite its elite's support and alliance with other fascist regimes, and in spite of the fact that the English royal house is intimately connected with royal houses in Hanover and Sax-Gota in Germany.

Likewise i wonder how with such an eclectic mix (japanese novel, indian filmmakers, british director) that film is told with the distinct and characteristic tone of jewish anger at the nazis and the holocaust. Is it due to its Terroistani as well as jewish producers?

The film was nominated for best picture and other awards by BAFTA, AMPAS and the Golden globe but won none. But it is suggestive that the film it lost to was Schindler's List.

The remains of the day as it were was heavily outjewed by spielberg's winner.


A good follow-up to the WWII story can be found in Adam Curtis- The Living Dead 3/3: The Attic (1995) , which talks mainly about Thatcher, in the last quarter of it, in its brief references to Churchill's demise at and after the end of the war - when he must have realized his war mongering was fed only by a fantasy with no basis in reality.



... Read more

i am negative mass - socially

08.iiI.1430

as per that post

I behave (and they , the others, behave) exactly like that a pair of particles one with negative mass and the other with positive mass.

I (-ve mass) am attracted to them (+ve mass) but they are repulsed by me and accelerate in the opposite direction.

As normal matter we can only accelerate away from negative mass matter.

So we'd have to force an acceleration towards it to meet it as it accelerates towards us.

all that remains for my money is show the physical equivalent of my social situation.

pneumatically, i could think of a similar situation , first erroneously with God - with the faulty notion that when he draws near to humans (usually via agents) they just run away from him - , then rather with the metaphysical in general. the true or absolute metaphysical, or al-ghayb. people often run away from that towards their own imagined metaphysics.

The logic says negative mass is not impossible (the math of mechanics involving mass < 0 is consistent), but the physics says it is impossible.

But physical law has severe problems.

For starters, mass of the photon is zero whereas i thought that mass is positive / definite / impermeable.

Secondly, physical laws do not account for octual cosmological motions. They do so only by stipulating that 96% of the universe is made of some dark stuff (74% energy, 22% matter) that we cannot see, cannot interact with - save through gravity.

dark matter sounds like another way to label our ignorance of the universe. something occluded (ghayb) right there in nature.

whether it exists or the laws are wrong, it is apparent it must have positive mass.


A photon at rest has mass zero. But in motion, whatever its energy mass, it would deflect off of negative mass, because positive mass values accelerate away from negative mass values.

Instead photonic light permeates / penetrates it rather than bounce off of it. It is deflected towards it (seen in the form of grav. lensing) not away from it.

the main issue is the radiation problem . Despite the fact that it affects electromag radiation gravitationally, we have no means of interacting with this matter (supposing it exists). we cannot detect it, ie bounce something off of it, much less touch or process it.

Given that our photons go right through dark mass if it exists, does this mean no nuclei in dark matter? or much fewer?

Apparently so. Wikipedia text confirms this: most dark matter is apparently nonbaryonic , and light goes through it.

is dark mass the reason our night sky and outer space are black ?

In any case, dark matter does not help me here. There still is no physical negative mass.

moreover negative mass appears even as nonsensical as the idea of negative energy.

yet I exist, and my social situation exists. This means nothing, for my social field is just another hilbert space with another set of symmetries having a number of gauge generators of the symmtry group - it need in no way behave like gravity anymore than color or electroweak charges need behave like gravity. ... Read more

o negative mass where art thou

06.III.1430

Recently i wondered about a type of charge that would see one body attracted to another , while the other is repelled by it. It turns out that hypothetical negatively massive particles present such a situation.

Someone , misunderstanding the question, suggested it is the electric charge. But like electric charges repel one another, while two opposite attract one another. What I was asking for was different.

A particle attracted to another, while the other is simultaneously repelled by it.

It turns out such a situation is possible, but only hypothetically, with particles having negative mass.

As per the people's (for now) encyclopedia -

"Assuming that all three concepts of mass [inertial mass, grav potential mass and active mass (force in response to gravity)] are equivalent it would produce a system where negative masses are attracted to positive masses, yet positive masses are repelled away from negative masses."

- "Exotic matter." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 12 Feb 2009, 18:28 UTC. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Exotic_matter&oldid=270267597. Accessed 03 March 2009.

Objects with negative mass would enable us to have things levitate and would provide cheap clean transportation.

But where is it?

The law of nature requires that energy be only positive-valued or zero. it is called positive semidefiniteness. There are also limits on mass to length ratio.

In other words , "there is no antigravity."




... Read more

film rvu draft: Revolutionary Road (2008)

05.III.1430

Revolutionary Road was a surprise. But this review has spoilers.

i started out judging it superficial (the opening fight scene)
b/c their acting isn't that great let's face it. and the fight was
w/out proper buildup or establishmnt.
it made me feel as though all the exposition was left
to be covered by HBO's Mad men;
that the filmmakers actually presumed to assume that series as a prereq viewing.


but as it went on, came some good lines - unexpected from prior movies of that
caliber (caliber as measured by the niche of the two top billing stars winslet and dicaprio).

it seems told much more or totally (tho that would be hard) from a man's perspective.
this is because winslet's character is orbited by several men at different times, whereas each of the men sees nothing or nobody but his own self. But more importantly, as a male I was still as blind to her final motivations as i would be in a real relationship. The script didn't enlighten me at all about winslet's thinking
toward the end of the movie.

although others have argued that the movie works equally well when seen from either perspectives. see LaSalle, Mick. "Movie Review: 'Revolutionary Road' Year's Best." San Francisco Chronicle. January 2, 2009. but i wouldn't take his word on it.

there is an interesting article on Richard Yates the author of the novel, who sounds like a disaster - another familiar note. Reading this Independent article was what recommended the movie to me in the first place, so I watched it rather than another when I got the chance to watch a movie.

Sam mendes is not really up my alley. His american beauty (1999) had an appearance of striking introspection, unmitigated realism in depicting emptiness of suburban life, but to me it never really went far enough , and took silly and gratuitous turns that did not ring "real" for me.

didn't like road to perdition w/ hanks. then his involvement in the colonial kite runner , unfavors him further.

His outlook was thus stunted, and joined the line of "slice of life" realist movies that pop up every few years like grand canyon, magnolia that never quite make it to where they set out to go.

This film maybe goes a step further, but still belongs in the same fare. Not to mention that its retrospections were thoroughly co-opted by HBO's Mad Men, whose third season many are waiting for.

One of the factors that helped the film for me was that I watched it without knowing hardly anything about it. Any details i'd read in the Independent article were gone, and only some vague notion that it was up for oscar nominations or something - meaning nothing. ie, I was without any expectations other than the typical fare from its two top billers.


it was intense at times. hit familiar relationship notes sometimes.

it was like a collage of stories and situations from different relationships.

bUT IN the end, the whole still rang hollowWw.

And just like in 'American beauty', the tragedy itself is gratuitous. But that was what the drama was building up to all along, that was the story of the movie, right?
But Then the tragic end defeats the points the film was making does it not?

And there is no redemption. In this Mendes et al. remind me of that other claustrophobe, aronovsky. Why no redemption dude? Why so glum glummy?

The nihilism is literally dehumanizing.

Won't be watching it again any time soon.

... Read more

etymo note: diwan douane

2.III.1430

diwan btw is not turkish as i thought it was.

it is the fa3laan wazn/sarf/verbal form
of diyah, which is what is due - possibly (and apparently) also related to dayn , whence debt and "religion". ... Read more

versioned systems and planetary orbits

2.III.1430

versioned systems have varying frequency of numbered revision.

versioned systems include software and standard / protocol specifications.

both can be made equivalent as "specifications" or algorithms or state machines.

if we consider the recurring property(ies) of each numbered revision,

One such property is the event or state of release itself. We could treat it as a sort of point of return (function value of that property) to which the system returns periodically, analogous to the physical concept of position .

The length of time it takes a system from one revision to the next, is like that taken by a planet to complete an orbit back at the same position.

Unlike planets and their orbits, a versioned system can have more than one orbit
on which it revolves, depending on how many recurring properties are taken into account.

The frequency of revisions of a specification can be akin to the orbital speed
and thus magnitudes of the orbit.

The larger the system, the slower the rate of revision.

thus specifications that apply to protocols w/ global scope eg rfc's, svr4,
xml1.0, java2, can exceed a decade between revisions,

whereas data client software applications undergo revisions every few months.

the extension might be made to things like common international law, and even
religious predicate.

thus revisions of small systems have smaller/narrower and faster orbits
whereas very large systems describe much wider orbits much more slowly.

Question is orbits of what? ( a time interval? are they orbits "around"/"about" a time axis ?)
This marks another distinction between solar system orbits and the
orbit metaphor/perspective of revisioned systems.

Another difference is that upon return to same location (release of a new revision)
the system is no longer the same,
here the system would have a different size complexity, for instance.
which is sort of akin to a planet arriving at the same location
with a different mass each time.

Thus, we have this comparison:

planets	versioned systems/specs/software/programs
- location	- revision release
- describes/travels on a single orbit	- travels multiple orbits/
	possesses multiple inherent orbits
- always the same at same location	- grows or changes in size & other things
- orbits a gravitation field source	- orbits what? dont know.
- interval to return to same pos,	- intervals vary between each release/update,
fixed	not fixed

... Read more

art dept.: watercolor of the day

16.II.1430

Carl Larsson, The Christmas Eve (1904-1905)



Uncharacteristic for watercolor paintings so often diffuse. In addition it is a pretty "ligne claire", in close proximity in its strokes to the other ligne claire medium of the time, poster art.

Though the coloring techniques seen here are familiar in belgian illustrated stories (BD) which took off about three decades later. So this watercolor, like poster art offers an example of the predecessors of the art of the BD, particularly its coloring, which gives color areas a rich texture (see the coloring of the wall in my profile photo which is taken from one of Herge's Tintin albums).


Goes very well with a lot of the music, short stories and science texts from the first quarter of the XXth century that i've been perusing.

Bonus watercolor

The same as the foregoing goes for this bonus watercolor, with a subject even more fascinating and more intimate, brimming with nostalgia and potential, that also reminds me a bit of Leo Tolstoy the illustrations of a famous edition of his classic stories for children. (should update on the edition and illustrators when i locate the book in one of the bookshelves.


Carl Larsson, Frukost under stora björken (Breakfast under the big birch) (1896)

... Read more

indepsim disco: three examples

12.II.1430

Independent simultaneous discoveries dept: 3 examples. the 3rd one cuts the deepest.
1. independent and almost simltaneous development of infinitesimal analysis by Mrrs. Newton and Leibniz.

2. Early in the 19th century, Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) and William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865) independently and almost simultaneously proposed the idea of defining complex numbers as ordered pairs (a, b) of real numbers endowed with certain special properties. Apostol, Calculus volume I (1967) ch. 9, p. 358.

3. The third ring of Saturn "was first detected by Mr Bond at Cambridge U.S. on November 15, 1850; Mr Dawes, not aware of Mr Bond's discovery, observed it on November 29th, and Mr Lassel a few days -later." Maxwell, Scientific papers of James Clerk Maxwell, Niven ed., Cambridge UP (1890) ch. XIX p. 291.

cf.:
telepathé communication

... Read more

Bring back the horse-drawn carriage + garbage in

13.II.1430

And the electric tramway too. We ought to push to bring back clopping the horse-drawn carriage for transport in downtown areas, with larger omnibus variants. Word!

We ought also to unleash the power and cleanliness of the bicycle (and scooters) for most delivery jobs as those circulate only in small-radius zones.

Motorized transport should only be between city districts , not within the same area. For instance, want to go from point A to point B within Mohandesseen, or from Mohandesseen to Zamalek, or from Zamalek to the oepra house, take a horse-drawn carriage. Want to hitch a ride to Heliopolis or Maadi? Then hail an automobile for-hire.

We ought to restore the inset-rail tramway in downtown streets , that does not disrupt other traffic flow , like we used to have in Cairo and Alex - use the dedicated rail strip variety only for transport between suburbs (like the present-dat Cairo and Alx metro).

Also clean up the act of bus drivers, livery cabs, microbus service, and for God's sake update and enforce a single taxi fare for each city. Taxi drivers and their customers should not have to bicker over rates. (Personally I never bicker over rates; the problem is that cab drivers refuse to hire their cars because of their expectation of getting stiffed by the riders - leaving me and countless others stranded waiting for a ride , whether there's an emergency or not - unless I start waving hundred-pound bills, which I do now often just to get a cab to stop and listen to where i'm going).

And BTW, as a P.S., the municipal authorities are obligated by the same law that taxes homeowners on their property to collect residential garbage at publicized schedules, not leave the garbage bags prey to the unminded stray animals (weasels, cats dogs and rats) for days before collecting only the emptied torn plastic bags.

These are the conditions in the supposedly middle-income residences. Naturally people manage by pulling rank and threatening lazy and irregular garbage collectors with punishing actions involving abuse by cops. This mode of doing things - extra-legally - however leaves single-person households like myself at the mercy of the whims the of Oliver Twists that collect my garbage (if we can call it collecting) - which translates into a mound of trash outside my kitchen door.

UPDATE 27.II.2009:
See Rome bans horse-drawn carriages
... Read more

inaudible speech

12.II.1430

The extension (LENGTHENING) of some consonants (e.g. kâf) (as opposed to the extension of a vowel, like a, where extending it produces a continuous sound) at the diacritical "Silence", known in arabic as Sokoun, produces not only an interruption in the sound's continuity (that is, an actual silence) but also an interruption of the mechanical act of pronouncing the consonants, in this case a kâf, or qâf; for a good example of this, it is demonstrated in the readings of the Quran by some well-known readers (cf. some tape i have). I think this qualifies as inaudible speech, in the sense that if there is such a thing as inaudible speech this's got to be it (or part of it).

on the difference between what drives technology in the west and the muslim worlds.

on advancement
technological advancement would lose its meaning when engineering design becomes automated. The term "advancement" implies discovery of a way to do something, an algorithm, such as a machine, or function, and is thereby an act of design. Automating the act of design would eliminate the need for technological innovation on the part of humans -- just as a perpetual source of food would supposedly eliminate world hunger, or a perpetual motion machine would eliminate the need for energy.

Technological innovation itself is an act for the sake of itself, or exists for its own sake. Just as software developers write frameworks where each new one simplifies the preceding programming interface, and new machinery simplify and facilitate tasking, by older machinery or technology. So design is a closed cycle where designers build successively sophisticated working models building on older ones, and importantly to enable them to carry out more design innovations. In other words, technological innovation directly begets more technological innovation. Thus far, this has been an act done only by humans and some animals or other lifeforms, if you believe in them.

Automated technological innovation, could in effect put an end of technological innovation -- that is, if we want to. Technological innovation (so far) is not like the act of manually typesetting a printing template, which has been quickly replaced by the personal computer. We, humans like to take pride in feats of engineering, little known designs that revolutionize or accelerate industry, etc. Engineers (and lately software developers) are ranked now higher on the social ladder, than the human typesetters of old (pre-late 80s) ((- they're just about the only job on the media that doesn't have hollywood films made about it.)) so automating software or machine design (maybe even architecture?) will not necessarily replace engineering design; design is closely linked with art, which dedicates a field to it. Humans would probably still look for the human touch and beauty of an architectural design, or the shape and functions of a kitchen blender or cd-player.

(continuation of last paragraph from previous entry)
What is potentially at an end, is the *need* for industrial-grade utility deisgn. Automating design, most likely beginning with software, as well as logic chip design, can thus be applied to communication systems, and other information systems, perhaps proteonics and even use biomimetic methods to contribute to its own design algorithmic repository. It is probably easy to apply automated design, but through human agency or intermediacy here, to the design of manufacturing, packaging systems, as well as abstracts such as urban planning systems. If nanotech or something else bring us into the informatic utilization of matter, design, automated design could push out our understanding of what is possible by an order or more of magnitude.

... Read more

etymo note: بقول فول فاصوليا fava Fabaceae Phaseoleae

11.II.1430

Phaseoleae are a tribe of the subfamily of Faboideae, commonly the legumes (ar. بقوليات ) that comprises most of the beans raised for human and domestic animal consumption, including peanuts, and fava beans, the common bean, lentils, soya, peas, among others.



Faboideae is one of the three subfamilies of the family of Fabaceae.

There does not seem to be a direct link between بازلاء and فاصوليا , but the latin name of the former is Pisum sativa. And it seems to take after the near eastern name rather than vice versa, since the basilla or peas are originates in the near east.

At long last this also explains the arabic name for peanuts "sudanese fava", because they come from the same.

Beans, fava, lentils, peanuts and peas belongs to genus Phaseolus (of a subtribe (Phaseolinae) of the Phaseoleae tribe), Vicia (of the tribe of Vicieae), Lens, Arachis and Pisum of the subfamily Faboideae alias Papilionoideae of the family Fabaceae alias Leguminosae.



Scruntch! scrunch scrunch ...

ps. of course we see no connection between ful or fa[v|b]a and fasolia.

... Read more

genetic engineering for fun

10.iI.1430

Instead of trying to one-up nature in productivity or resistivity or "improving" them, and besides the need of GE in medical research, I could think of better safer uses.

Take the largest bacteria known, unicellulars that can be about .3 .5 and .75 mm long, and find ways to induce gigantism in them so that we can have even bigger macroscopic samples of a unicellular organism. Thus which very cheap microsopes one can probe details of the cell.

Now if we can do the same for eukaryotic cells , and maybe induce an endosymbiosis we could grow gigantic samples of early unicellular algae, and take it from there. ... Read more

self-similarity in geography

09.iI.1430

There is an unmistakable degree of self similarity where every sea, every subcontinental outcrop or indentation finds its form repeated in relative miniature somewhere inside and or near it, and someimes also far from it as if reflected about some axis.

And with the formal replica in miniature there are also political replicas to the regionally larger political or ethnolinguistic structure.

... Read more

P مـ م Ρόδος Ruːdes عامود rod

12.I.1430

Rhodes was known for its colossus which to be truly colossal and on a harbor for the far flung to see, it must have stood on a pillar.

In taking the semitics/phonoecian's `amoud, they mapped the glyph due to simil of form to P the letter Rho, and mistook the with a R phoneme,

Remaining text. ... Read more