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Re: The Twelve Songs of 2008

mike rot — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:03:15 -0000

Before I had listened to Dig Lazarus Dig a friend of mine told me it was not one of his best albums but then I heard it for myself and its just this sort of crazy Nick Cave that I most respond to. That said the deinitive Cave album is No More Shall We Part... agreed?

Re: The Twelve Songs of 2008

mike rot — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:38:39 -0000

Martha's more famous song of the year was Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole, which I should have maybe added also... that chorus with that sweet voice just works so well.

As for Eluvium, the song that I was thinking reminded me of the score to Revolutionary Road is called something like... oh shit, I can't remember which is weird because the title is something 'remembering what you've forgotten'... its a great song, but not of 2008.

Lykke Li was something I scrounged from end of the year lists of my favorite sites and thought this sounds good.

Re: William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience

mike rot — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:17:22 -0000

um, hate to tell you, but that experiment hasn't been done yet, they had to postpone it because of unforseen problems... cause you know its reassuring to know there are unforseen problems when conducting an experiment with the capacity of creating mini black holes. Yay Science!

Re: William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience

mike rot — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:54:00 -0000

Look forward to the world ending sometime this June.

and Jonathan, I would probably go with Will To Believe before Varieties... it seems the more interesting of the two, it really gets at the idea of what you are doing when you believe something.

I just gotta requote my favorite passage, because this, to me, is a huge huge insight that most people ignore because they are conditioned to ignore it:

"In spite of the appeal which impersonality of the scientific attitude makes to a certain magnanimity of temper, I believe it to be shallow, and I can now state my reason in comparatively few words. That reason is that, so long as we deal with the cosmic and the general, we deal only with the symbols of reality, but as soon as we deal with private and personal phenomena as such, we deal with realities in the completest sense of the term"

Re: LOST - Season 5 Discussion Thread

mike rot — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:56:04 -0000

the wait is about over... my favorite distraction cometh...

Re: William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience

mike rot — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:59:22 -0000

I suspect most people wouldn't even
have a clue if a God revealed itself, so enamored with the grammar of logic they scarcely know of anything outside of it, despite living it daily.

The most absurd of inversions, to create a system of understanding and live inside it, forgetting where it ultimately came from, and at the height of ignorance denouncing the spectres of religious sentiment as deviations from this primary fact, even though they, more likely than anything abstracted, speak to direct truths...

the equivalent of ignoring a pang of pain in your body because your prescribed diagnosis says no such pain exists.

Re: LOST - Season 5 Discussion Thread

mike rot — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 08:54:06 -0000

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Ok I think that was the most disappointing two hours of Lost I have seen, there was overload and bad acting, and merely going through the actions. That said, there was a lot of reveals although I doubt I can figure out alone what they all meant.

I was so hoping that Faraday with the record analogy was going to say that there are individual cycles of grooves on a record and each cycle is like a parallel universe, and what was happening was that they were jumping from one groove to the next, which I guess he sort of said but the idea of a record skipping over and over is that its between two points, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense seeing as they are jumping all over the place. I was also thinking he was going to prove my theory right by saying something like there is a cycle on the record but in their situation it was like the needle lifts every so often, its a closed time loop but they are like the needle and the record is like the island, still moving along its path but they are separate from it.

Re: Time Traveller

mike rot — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 15:45:12 -0000

(kinda spoiler, talking about one of the limitations of Mallett's time machine, below)

well I could say a lot to counter the Hawkings argument as Mallett gets into it with some fascinating out there ideas that would make for great science fiction, but the more down to earth answer he poses and in fact is a limitation of the theoretical time travel he is exploring is that you could only go back as far into the past as the first moment the machine was activated. So if the first operating machine was made in 2010, only then would you have time travellers visiting. There is an argument how you could get around this limit but, like I said, it makes for more great science fiction than realism.

One of my favorite films is Primer, and I loved the idea explored in it of nesting machines within one another, it almost hurts my head to think of it, but I would love to know if there was anything remotely plausible about taking Mallett's ideas and nesting them so as to go further back in time.

Re: The Top Ten Books I Read in 2008

mike rot — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:44:17 -0000

Ok I love Heart of Darkness, so once again, 180 degrees from Goon...

I did not like Secret Agent, and a lot of the other Conrad I tried I wasn't much of a big fan, but I loved Lord Jim, and I always thought it should have been remade as a film today, that it is a great story and most people today have not seen the original.

Re: LOST - Season 5 Discussion Thread

mike rot — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:52:24 -0000

Ok I am totally back into loving Lost mode. Anytime you have a Desmond episode I am back. And I am really digging on the hook of this season, what they are doing with the people stuck on the island. I get a quantum leap vibe but its all good. So I guess we know what the whisperers are now, that have shown up in past seasons... probably people stuck the last time the donkey wheel was turned.

So much to absorb. I loved seeing the hostiles pre-Dharma, things are starting to click, seeing how Widmore fits in, why Albert was looking into Locke as a child.

does anybody else think that chick with the gun is the same that Faraday fried? Isn't that what is supposed to be made of him saying you look familiar, and didn't she say "you again" when they first encountered each other? But then afterwards she acted as if she didn't know him? I don't know, I am confused by that.

Interesting about the U.S. army being involved... where did they disappear to?

Re: Time Traveller

mike rot — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:55:53 -0000

I will have to rewatch Primer, but I do not remember any mention of frame dragging in it?

I guess Primer would have been coming out simultaneously with when Mallett was writing or just finishing this memoir, it is a shame, I would love to hear his opinions of it, as it is to my mind, the most mature of the time travel stories. Nearly the most complex things I have absorbed, but then I watch Lost, and five seasons in, trying to untangle the thousand things going on, damn, makes Primer look easy.

Re: William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience

mike rot — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:18:09 -0000

its not either/or...

you use reason as a tool, and understand what it is used for, what contexts it is supposed to be used, what it can and cannot work upon.

as Wittgenstein famously stated: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

The problem is not with reason per se but the application of it. We have inversed the importance of it in our lives, (to quote Dostoevsky 'as if we were born from an idea'). We see everything as fair game for the analytical, save perhaps the foundations of the analytical otherwise we would realize quite quickly how little authority it has. The James quote makes it clear, you are alive, you exist first, then the articulations of that existence are made and they will always remains symbols of the reality, no more, no less. Reason has no de facto jurisdiction over saying what is immediately felt by the existing thinking being as true or false, or there is no soul, or you do not feel what you think you feel. these are absurdities, things whereof one cannot speak, and should remain silent.

reason is like a pair of glasses, a tool for seeing, you put them on and all of sudden IN THAT CONTEXT things appear different... and it is as foolish as thinking now wearing those glasses it is the case that everything seen through them is true and primary above all other cases... YOU FORGET you are wearing glasses. They could be rose-coloured, warped, x-ray, whatever, but you forget you had to put them on to see this way. You forget that reason is a tool.

A thought experiment is not a natural occurence unless you are an academic philosopher. We like to think we 'reason' things out more than we actually can prove to do. intuition is a far stronger force in our lives, but depending on if you are pre-occupied with reason, if you make it a career and live out a lifetime indebted to it, well of course it would seem significant. An Amazonian tribesman has his own way of perceiving of what he does, and it no less true than the academic philosopher.

If God made man in his image, and there are clinically insane people in the world, who could not as much as add two plus two, do you really think reason is the essential language such a God would need to speak to grasp his credentials? isn't that assuming too much importance to reason?

Re: William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience

mike rot — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:29:38 -0000

do you really think you would need to go through some kind of small talk with God to figure him out, like an omnescent being would need to go through that to have you 'believe' in him.

knowing through being I would say is how you would know God.

that said I do not believe in God, because I have never known him, her, it.

I said God made man in his image BECAUSE you were talking about communicating with him on a human level (on a rational level), I think both are part of the same fairy tale.

Re: LOST - Season 5 Discussion Thread

mike rot — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:30:59 -0000

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Ms Hawkings, yeah that makes more sense.

Re: LOST - Season 5 Discussion Thread

mike rot — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:09:20 -0000

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I don't think Ben and Daniel ever talked, and the other person that it seems odd Ben doesn't know or interact with is Desmond. According to Daniel, Desmond is special in this whole time-travelling thing, and clearly Ben had to of known of Desmond in the hatch for all of that time pushing the button, but why is there is no concern about him in Ben's scheming? I am pretty sure Desmond is one of Widmore's chess pieces, even in this last episode, I think he was playing him.

Re: LOST - Season 5 Discussion Thread

mike rot — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:44:58 -0000

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On the list of WTF unanswered questions in Lost, the role the button pushing plays in the show, both what it does and why, and how it relates to the Ben and Widmore, that is up there. Desmond's seemingly spontaneous decision to resist pushing the button caused the plane crash in the first place, that is pretty big deal. How could that be pre-ordained, he wasn't prompted, he seemed to do it of his own volition. As a Widmore pawn, Desmond was necessary to get the plane to crash, and I believe it has already been determined that the plane crash was a Widmore move. So how do you get everything to fall into place right up to the moment Desmond breaks down? Or is it possible that it is not the button pushing that effects the explosion, that its all a put-on... I don't know... if I had one question to be answered its that, I don't get it.

Regarding your idea Ross, I am not sure how changing the future can change the past? Or maybe you mean Widmore and Ben have both been to the future and they KNOW that neither of them can be killed... but somehow Ben's daughter was killed, Widmore was able to break the rules.

They need to do something dramatic this season, and kill one of the big names... like Jack. I mean he was originally not supposed to be an important character so I can totally see them doing it.

Re: William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience

mike rot — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:46:13 -0000

by 'knowing through being' I mean in any other way of knowing then through rationalization, the essence of belief (and by the way the integration of rational proofs into a worldview is itself a belief, so actually you do more of this knowing through being than you let on). Another term to call it is tacit knowledge, we know more than we are able to articulate. The problem is that the allure of scientific credence overwhelms our other senses in a culture saturated in this positivist spirit, we identify with the thinking mind and think everything that matters is justifiable in a socially verifiable manner. Its absurd, especially when they throw religion into the mix, you are then only disputing with a shell of its meaning, a nominal idea of religion, not religion in its entirety.

We seem to forget we are not socially verifiable ideas, there is some things personal, inexplicable, individual about us and no amount of clever rhetoric can take that away from us... unless of course the clever rhetoric is used to make devices that can annihilate civilizations in their hubris, in which case, as I have maintained, the worse threat to humanity is science not religion. science is the more megalomaniac, the deeper illusion.

Re: LOST - Season 5 Discussion Thread

mike rot — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:20:35 -0000

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on a podcast I was listening to someone brought this up, and I gotta say, I would bet money he is right. The last shot of the last episode of the last season will be a close-up of Jack waking up on the island. Its like how Aronofsky said the end of the Wrestler was always going to be that way, there was no other way. A story like this, I feel like it has to go there, make it cyclical.

Re: LOST - Season 5 Discussion Thread

mike rot — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:53:34 -0000

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Allow me to walk you through my cognitive experience of the final minutes of last night's episode

French people

(*blink blink*)

A French team shipwrecked on the island

(*blink blink*)

A French team shipwrecked on the island with an inordinate amount of time focused on the woman

(*blink blink*)

She is pregnant

(*blink blink*)

"My name is Rousseau"

(*blink ... ah!)

I have never felt so dumb in my life.

Pretty lousy episode overall, felt like a time killer, and I was getting upset when I saw the french team, not MORE characters, but I guess this is okay because they fit within the pre-existing set. Still the number of characters on Lost is ridiculous, now essentially each character gets like one or two lines of dialogue an episode if they are lucky... so that anytime they do speak it has to take up the herculean task of moving character forward... nobody ever just shoots the shit anymore, the characters have no breathing room

Re: LOST - Season 5 Discussion Thread

mike rot — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:03:32 -0000

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I have heard it theorized that Widmore and Hawkings were an item, and that they had two kids, Daniel and Penny, but something in the past divided them and now Hawkings works with Albert and Ben.

That first baby is almost certainly Miles.

someone also on a podcast suggested maybe Locke is Jacob, that Jacob was just an alias, and he didn't want to be known for whatever reason and he has been working through this alias as a kind of time police force.

lots of speculation.

I am betting Charolette is Ben's daughter though.

Re: LOST - Season 5 Discussion Thread

mike rot — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:22:20 -0000

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Rusty you nailed it, ever since Locke happened to be standing in the open as Echo's brother's plane came barrelling past there has been too many coincidental jumps... unless there is an inherent logic to the jumping (just as there is an inherent logic to the flashback encounters) and this would seem to be the case because of when it chooses to jump, always at a moment pertaining to the characters not to some random cosmic event. This is really bugging me this season, Lost works best when there is SOME suspension of disbelief but to make me have to swallow the fact that the island could be jumping through anytime in history and in the six or seven times so far they have been greatest hits pertaining to the characters, that is beyond coincidental, that is a joke... unless there is a logic to it, unless the jumping is not random. Or, as I defend Aronofsky's The Fountain, if it is explained that what is being seen is an eternity perspective and so all situations exist but for the sake of the narrative these 'greatest hits' are being shown. I doubt they will do that.

I will just say two things that I have heard:

1) The Oceanic Six storyline will be over soon, they are not stretching it the entire season.

2) things happening in this season are suppose to make you think one way, feel confident you got it figured it out and by the finale leading to the six season it will blow your mind and challenge your preconceived notions. I think Lindelof said that at ComicCon.

3) Aaron is important (but why not Walt and Sun's baby?)

Re: The Top Ten Books I Read in 2008

mike rot — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 09:25:09 -0000

Moby Dick is a book to be admired not read. Couldn't finish it.

Re: LOST - Season 5 Discussion Thread

mike rot — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:33:17 -0000

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Now that's a fucking episode. Honestly, they actually spent like fifteen minutes of an episode entirely on Jin, there is a bit more breathing room, and I think this was the most solid episode of the season. I love Ben putting on the brakes, I was thinking the same thing (damn these people like to bitch a lot).

So Ben did not know that Faraday is Hawking's son... now trying to remember what exactly he did know about him... he had intel on him from the freighter, but I guess Widmore hid his past well.

Can we agree now that Charolette is/was Ben's daughter? I didn't like the exposition before death, but Daniel did say the obvious ("why are you telling me this?") so I will give them some credit.

Re: LOST - Season 5 Discussion Thread

mike rot — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:55:50 -0000

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Ben would know of Desmond from the hatch that has surveillance over the hatch he was in for all that time. and That is my number one question, what pushing the button was all about, and what Ben's relationship with Desmond is,, why he let me him stay there pushing the button.

Next episode will be about getting them back... its title is some number that pertains to a flight number (so a podcast says).

Re: LOST - Season 5 Discussion Thread

mike rot — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:59:18 -0000

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Also I take back my early idea that Desmond is a pawn in Widmore's game, because if we remember Hawkings came into a Desmond episode several seasons ago and told him to do something, so clearly he is being used by Ben and Eloise.