I define my own reality

[vovat]

bethje and I watched two Netflix films last night. The first was What the Bleep Do We Know?, which I found rather disappointing. I thought there would be more actual science in it, but it turned out to have a lot of new age power-of-positive-thinking kind of stuff. I mean, it started out with the science, but then got into stuff like, "If reality is based on our own perceptions, then we can change things just by thinking about them." And what was up with the crazy animated cells? Also, I have to wonder how accurate the story about the Native Americans not being able to see Columbus' ships because they weren't part of their paradigm was. I mean, I know that kind of thing can happen sometimes (i.e., people not noticing things because their minds don't WANT to notice them), but they made it sound like the shaman really had to concentrate before seeing them when they were right in front of him. Is that taking things a little too far? And how exactly was this story passed down to us, anyway? I wish there had been some more discussion of the more scientific matters, like how the same parts of the brain are used for seeing images and remembering them, and how particles blink in and out of existence. I guess the latter was what the last episode of Brave New World was for, though. That, and seeing They Might Be Giants with a bunch of weird fake piercings and such. {g}

Incidentally, I can only recall seeing Robert Krulwich once after that show ended, and it was when Beth was flipping channels and came across a show where he was describing the covalent bonds in water by hanging around people dressed as hydrogen and oxygen atoms. I have no idea what the show actually was.

Anyway, the other film was Hookers at the Point, which had originally aired on HBO. Since I'm really not that familiar with the world of prostitution, I thought it was pretty interesting. It really seems like a dangerous occupation, at least the way those particular hookers did it. One of them described how a guy looked her in his car, pulled a gun on her, and pistol-whipped her. But I guess the risk goes without saying, really.

I don't remember too much about my dream last night, but I remember finding out that lozenger8 (who, for those of you who don't know, lives in Australia) visited my area for a day, and I was bothered that she made no attempt to contact me about that.

Comments

[bec-87rb.livejournal.com]

Krulwich is an idiot.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

How so?

[bec-87rb.livejournal.com]

I don't know him personally, of course, and I may be rash here, but I watched Gigantic, and they did a little interviewing of him. If I remember, he was the announcer-voiced guy with the smooth hair who hired the Giants to do his science show, to write some music on spec about lonely germs, Cog, etc.

Two strikes against him:

#1
I remembered vaguely that "science" show he did with TMBG, and that I started watching it and got so annoyed at the lack of content at the time, I recall, that I gave up on it. And I am someone who likes her PBS science crap. I finagled a tape recorder from Dad's lab so I could record the sound off of Cosmos when it first aired on TV, if that tells you something. Carl Sagan provided a super-packed educational experience. Krulwich seemed to have assumed that we are so dim that he has to spoon feed it with sugar, the Johns being the sugar. That's not insulting, is it?

#2.
I expected that Krulwich would be of the same order as Sagan - a smart science guy who had a job sharing the informational wealth via TV, but one who had misjudged the attention span of the American tv viewing public. No, it seemed, he had just geared the show to his own low level of attention.
During the interview, he came off as a ditz, as a golly-gee-whiz guy, a handsome bear of very little brains, like Pooh. Adorable and not overly smart. He sounds good at first, but it's just his uber-voice, and if you listen, one of the reasons he finds TMBG so amazing - he drones on and on about them - is that, like most of the science guys he uses in the show, TMBG are smarter than he is. Well, duh.

Hence, idiot. Or maybe I should just say, "annoying guy."

Don't talk to the audience as if we were seven; if we don't get all of the ideas, that's okay. Give us some credit.

Now I could be wrong, and Krulwich just gives a terrible interview. I hope so, because he came off like a fluff-brain.

[k1cup.livejournal.com]

Plus, he's very close to having a combover. As you can tell, that's a big "thing" with me. :D

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I don't actually remember his interview in Gigantic. I mean, I remember that he was in it, but not what he said or how he said it. I should probably watch that film again at some point.

That said, I wonder if the the dumbing-down of BNW was due more to the people behind the show than to Krulwich himself. After all, it WAS on a big commercial network (ABC, I think?), and they tend to expect less intelligence on the part of their viewers than PBS does (when showing scientific/factual shows, anyway; PBS airing endless reruns of Keeping Up Appearances is a different story {g}). I don't know Krulwich's background, though, and it's possible that using him instead of an actual scientist (assuming he isn't an actual scientist, that is) was PART of the dumbing-down. That said, I seriously doubt the fact that BNW was a few steps below PBS science programming on the intellectual scale was totally down to Krulwich.

[loz]

I'm sorry. I promise that next time, I'll come and say hi.

:D

[vovat.livejournal.com]

In the next dream, you mean? {g}

[revme.livejournal.com]

I thought it was kinda funny that What The Bleep (what a fucking awful title, BTW) is actually a Cult Of Ramtha recruitment-type film. They funded it and all that crap, and then released it, separating the Ramtha Cult from the promotions, so folks'd think it was a real film. Then folks ended up diggin' up that it was, indeed, Ramtha, and also, that it really sucked besides.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that, but it makes sense, what with all that "you are God" stuff. On the other hand, how effective could it be as a recruitment film if they don't even mention what they're recruiting people for? I guess it's a case where they hope people will come across the Ramtha stuff separately, and then say, "Hey, this is like the stuff I saw in that movie"?

I don't think I'd heard of Ramtha before, but looking it up, it's apparently someone channeling a mystic from the lost continent of Lemuria. If people on these lost continents had so much knowledge and control over reality, how come they couldn't keep their continents from sinking, huh? {g}

[revme.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- it's basically that step, the getting people to think their wacky-ass shit doesn't seem quite so wacky-ass.

Also, Ramtha's pretty amusing, as the channeller is local! She lives in Yelm, which is basically a tiny town in the middle of washington. She's got a compound there and everything...