Limitless

 

Limitless. So this is not normally a film that I would rush out and see. But, a few friends wanted to see a movie, any movie!, preferably an ACTION movie. So, Limitless it was!

So the basic story-line is, a struggling writer gets a hold of a new, not-yet-approved super drug that him super intelligent for 8 hours or so. He finishes his book in four days, and then tackles the stock market in order to achieve supreme wealth in a matter of weeks. 

With films, I have a basic test: watchable or unwatchable? I think that the line of watchable or unwatchable hovers around 2.5 out of 5 stars. Are all of the film elements of a passable level in their own right?... and do all of those film elements mesh together imperceptably to create a believable scenario that draws you in to the point where you forget about your own life, your own body sitting their in the chair, the un-eaten jar of nuts in your bag?... On this point, Limitless passes the test! I give this film a 3.5 out of 5. It's definitely above a pass, with seamlessly arty special effects, an apt sound-track, believable casting and acting.

There is also something to be said about films that are based on books. Limitless is based on a novel of the same name by British author Alan Glynn. Contrasted with other action films (that often have only limited dialogue peppered throughout expansive visual action scenes), Limitless has an intelligent and thoughtful narrative flowing throughout the entire film, adding a layer of interest for the cognitive senses.

Thematically, the film (and novel) are apt and timely; at present, smart drugs are actually starting to become available through both legal and illegal means. This film will therefore be of use to various high-school and university teachers wanting to engage students in discussion regarding the ethical complications that these sorts of drugs will have as they permeate society.

A few of the major thinking points that this film raised for me are:

1. Currently, Olympic athletes must pass drug tests in order to compete. What sort of status would smart drugs have in society in terms of regulation and control? Would aspiring students need to pass drug tests in order to entire prestigious colleges or companies? Or would these colleges and companies tolerate the use of such drugs in respect to the intellectual advantages and productive benefits that may result from usage by students or employees?

2. What kind of impact would these drugs have on society if they are only available to those who can afford/obtain the drug? How would you feel if you were applying for a job in competition with a person using a "smart drug"? Would it become necessary for you to also take the drug in order to retain competitiveness?

3. The drug portrayed in this film is an "intelligence" drug, which enables the user to fully draw on his own memory and neural pathways, recognise patterns and make accurate predictions. In my experience, however, intelligence is separate from motivation and action. It's one thing to be a high level thinker, but another to be motivated enough to do something with your intelligence. This relates to the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of judging individuals on IQ. Provided that the IQ is high enough (ie, 100), individuals have been known to achieve great things in life due to motivation and sheer tenacity. Having a genius IQ does not mean you will create genius work,...  making a mark on the world usually entails a great deal of perserverance, effort and productive activity. People may take a smart drug expecting that they will suddenly shoot to the top of the ladder, but I think a lot of people make it in this world by actually putting in the hours (whether that be through research, repetition, vast productivity, or networking with the right people and entering the circle of cronyism at the top of many organisations).

At the end of the day, Limitless is very watchable; exploring interesting issues regarding the human use of performance enhancing substances; which is certainly a phenomenon that is not going away any time soon.

127 Hours - human survival at it's most extreme

Last night I went to a preview screening of 127 hours at the outdoor cinema at Burswood. As I expected from reading some reviews prior, the film was excellent. All of the film elements: script, casting, acting, set, sound, music, cinematography, editing/pacing, effects etc were singularly exceptional and also perfectly gelled together.

The dynamic soundscape, bright colours, slightly raw but crisp and powerful camera-work made for a strong impact on the senses. The representation of Aron: as reckless, bold and adventurous; spontaneous, creative and unhinged; a loving son; a young man reflecting on the failures in his life; and finally, the mix of a primal, wild super-human mad-courage and a serious, calculated and desperation-driven rationality that enabled him to cut his own arm off.

The story is inspiring because many of us would not be able to do the same. Many of us would perish, pinned by the rock. It reveals the human survival instinct at its most extreme, and it serves as a reminder for all the softies out there (myself included) to toughen the $%#* up!.

I thought I'd now dedicate the rest of this blog entry to some other brave self-amputees (being, as they are, so few in numbers - at least according to Wikipedia). On the"Self-surgery: Amputation of Trapped Limbs" page of Wikipedia, there are only four other individuals mentioned other than Aron Ralston. The following text has been copied and pasted from this page (and the cited pages). Warning: not for the squeamish!

On July 20, 1993, Donald Wyman was clearing land in a remote section of Pennsylvania, as part of his work for a mining company. In the process, a tree rolled over his shin, severely breaking the leg, and pinning Wyman to the ground. He yelled for help for one whole hour, but no one came. He concluded that the only way to save his life would be to cut off his leg. So he made a tourniquet out of his shoe string and tightened it with a wrench. Then he took his pocket knife and cut through the skin, the muscle and bone just above the knee and freed himself. He crawled thirty yards to a bulldozer, drove a quarter-mile to his truck, then maneuvered the standard transmission with his good leg and a hand until he reached a farm house one-and-a-half miles away, with his leg bleeding profusely. The farmer at the house helped him get to a hospital where his life was spared.
 
In 1993 Bill Jeracki was fishing near St. Mary's Glacier in Colorado, when a boulder pinned his left leg. Snow was forecast and without a jacket or pack, Jeracki didn't believe he would survive the night. Fashioning a tourniquet out of his flannel shirt and using his bait knife, he cut his leg off [3] at the knee joint, using hemostats from his fishing kit to clamp the bleeding arteries.

In 2002 Doug Goodale cut off his own arm [4] at the elbow in order to survive an accident at sea. He had become caught in a winch hauling lobster pots up from the sea floor, and could not free himself. The power of the winch left him hanging over the side of the boat, unable to either free himself or clamber back aboard. Somehow he managed to haul himself back onto the deck, dislocating his shoulder in the process. However, he was still trapped in the winch, bleeding heavily, and with no way of getting free, his only option was to pick up a knife and cut through his right arm. He then managed to pilot his boat back into harbour to get medical help.

In 2003 an Australian coal miner trapped three kilometres underground by an overturned tractor cut off his own arm[5] with a box-cutting knife. The 44-year-old man, who was not identified by police, was working late at the Hunter Valley mine when the tractor tipped over, crushing his arm and trapping him.

You can't ignore MONEY

If you had of asked me 7 years ago what I thought about the topics of "money", "investment", "economics" etc I probably would have said: "BORING!". I grew up in a middle-class household where money wasn't a big issue (or one that was even spoken about),... and I also found the subject slightly distasteful. I did poorly at Economics in Grade 10, I think because at the time I found it to be abstract and had no experience in its practical application.

Today I am hardly a bastion of knowledge when it comes to the subject of money/finance. Don't ask me any questions about Keynesian economics (ask Ai-Ling!). I have very little in savings, zero investments and no assets. But a few things have changed since then.

Probably the biggest thing that has changed is: I have recently noticed that, uh, the whole world is currently in a tremendously momentous period of change due to developments in global and regional management of MONEY. If you are interested in the past, present and particularly the future path of human-kind, therefore, there is absolutely no way you can ignore this subject.

A problem that I have with the subject of money, is how enormous, expansive and complex the world economy is. There is no way that I will ever understand either its entirety or all of the tiny cogs and micro-machinations that it is composed of. I am not an economist, I do not work in finance and I never plan to. So it can be hard to come to any sort of understanding, when you only dedicating perhaps 1% of your time towards it.

One video that I found really helpful was Money as Debt by Paul Grignon. The most useful part of this video, I thought, was a very simple and visual explanation of how finance came to exist. So at first people were trading gold. Carrying gold around all the time was not very practical, so people started storing their gold with other people who offered the service. These first "bankers" then issued pieces of paper stating the amount of gold that each person had deposited, which people then used as currency. Then the bankers realised that they could easily issue MORE PIECES OF PAPER than ingots of gold... because people hardly ever came and retrieved the physical gold. I learnt that in these early times, rules were developed about the ratio of "paper money" to physical gold that the bankers were allowed to "create" ie, the birth of fractional reserve banking. But of course lots of people didn't abide by these rules. I don't know the figures,... but say,... at first the ration was 4 paper units:1 gold ingot,... this later became 10000 paper units:gold ingot... something like that. Of course this is all simplified but it really helped me to understand how the world of finance was born.

I was also pretty interested to find out, that when you take out a loan, the bank
WRITES THAT MONEY INTO EXISTENCE. Ie, you ask for $400K for a home loan. The bank says: "sure thing!" and then writes $400,000 on its balance sheet. Even though the $400 is in the negative, that debt can then be "re-packaged" into some-one else's investment. So when you see those clips on the news of money being printed... and you think that's how most money comes into existence,.. it's not really true. Money is virtual!

One thing that I find really bizarre and a bit scary, is that the world of finance/the amount of "virtual" money that is created and traded in the stock-market etc is way bigger than the actual world economy. The amounts of debt just kept increasing, puffing up like a massive balloon... and now, in most places in the world this has popped/or is rapidly deflating,... taking down with it the ACTUAL economy. The balance sheets of ACTUAL companies involved in real physical products and services.

So everyone is panicking, selling their "virtual" monies and buying physical gold again,... but unfortunately that is removing a lot of the actual finance and liquidity that was required by actual businesses to go on operating.

It's a little surreal, living in Australia where large effects from the global financial crisis have yet to hit home. I look at the rest of the world and feel sad for the low-middle classes of very normal people around the world who have now had the brunt of the crash forced upon them as austerity measures such as reduction/elimination of social services, pensions, welfare, public health, education etc. I think only time will tell if Australia will suffer a similar fate...

Anyway, to sum this post up,... we are now living in a time where MONEY is the biggest player of our times. It will be extremely interesting to see how things go from here,.. we can only hope that more people will try to understand it and hopefully be able to curtail its worst abuses.

17 tips for hosting a party

Paul Petrov of the Ballet Russe, backstage at the JC Williamson New Year's Eve party, Theatre Royal, Sydney, 31 December 1936 / Sam Hood, originally uploaded by State Library of New South Wales collection.

I think now, having (co)hosted at least 6 parties, I have a few things to say about hosting a successful party.

1) If some of the party will take place outside, make sure you use mosquito coils and have mosquito repellant available for the mosquito prone.

2) Supply enough chairs for two thirds / half of the guests. You don't want to have chairs for everybody, there'll be too many chairs and there'll be less "party flow". But some people will want to do some sitting down at some point. That's why I think 2/3 or 1/2 is the optimal ratio. If you are throwing a really big party though, people don't expect chairs as much. I am only talking about 30 or so people.

3) There should be no fluorescent lighting. Everyone looks terrible under fluoro and it makes you feel like you're in a meat fridge or office. Warm/soft/non-direct lighting only!!! For any lightbulbs, 60W or less and not direct! (ie, no ceiling lights, just lamps pointed upward, downward or at a wall).

4) You should have a stock of "emergency drinks" on hand. Ie, a carton of beer for the inevitable occurrence that someone will forget or run out of drinks. Add to that, some dry ginger ale, tonic water and coke, for people to mix with. Add to that, a cheap bottle of spirits.

5) People need to eat snacks if they are drinking. Due to the costs of providing emergency drinks and so-forth, at our last party I asked people to bring their own snacks. I think this worked well and nobody minded.

6) Make sure the party starts at 8pm or later. I think this is the unofficial code for: "we will not be feeding you dinner". For instance, if a party starts at 6pm then I think the host needs to feed food to the guests or at least assist in food facilitation ie, with a barbeque.

7) Have some blankets on hand for when people get cold.

8) Ask your most music obsessed friend/s to DJ/supply the music.

9) Make sure there are no dirty dishes in the sink, people might need to use the sink for preparing their drinks.

10) If you are the host, spend more time with the people you see less frequently and/or the people who don't know many other people at the party. The friends you who see regularly, you'll see them again soon, plus they know your house and can look after themself more easily.

11) Have some ridiculous decorations/something that people can play with. People enjoy novelty items.

12) Take lots of silly photos so you can more easily remember what happened.

13) Put away your valuables/things that could be broken easily.

14) Use lighting to direct flow of people. If there are any rooms/parts of the house that you don't want people to go onto, make sure all the lights in those areas are OFF. People won't really hang out in blackness.

15) Make sure there is an ample supply of toilet paper, very easily accessible in the toilet so there is no possibility of it running out, or people not being able to find it.

16) Don't go to bed until the last person leaves.

17) If someone has passed somewhere, make sure they are breathing/in a position where breathing would not be obstructed by surprise vomit.

So there you have it, Karen's guide to throwing a party. I think if I have to wrap it up in a nutshell, make sure people are physically comfortable, drinks are flowing, and there are no lights shining in their face.

Life-hacks

Gosh, I can't believe I haven't blogged here since June 2010. I've decided that this year I will try and blog more regularly. So here goes!

The first topic of the year is life-hacking. If you don't know about life-hacking, just punch it into google as it's all over the internet. The concept/idea started to spread online a few years ago. Basically, people share ideas online about how to make different aspects of their life more efficient/cheap/logical/easy/stream-lined/quick/pain-less.

I am not a life-hacking fanatic, but I am interested generally in this area. I love sleeping and lazing around at home, so if there are any ways of making more time to do this, then I will try and use these.

Anyway, here are some relatively minor "life-hacks" that I am now doing regularly. Some of these probably don't really qualify as "life-hacks" but just as straight domestic sense, but anyhow.

1. Thermos Coffee to work
Late last year I started making my morning coffee at home on our cofee machine, and then bringing it to work in a small thermos. A small coffee at work costs $3.80 (even with staff discount). Drinking one coffee a day would cost $19. Fourty eight weeks of this would cost $912. The coffee beans, electricity and water costs of making my own coffee and taking it to work, I hope wouldn't be more than $200? I don't know exactly, but it's definitely much cheaper to make it yourself.

2. Work clothes laid out the night before
Ever since I started full-time work, I have always laid out my work clothes the night before. That way it only takes about one minute to get dressed in the morning.

3. Smart-rider (RFID transport pass) and work pass put together.
Using coins to catch the bus was a pain in the ass. Fumbling in my purse for my new smart-rider was a pain in the ass. But then I tucked the smart-rider in with my work pass (which I wear around my neck). I haven't lost either of them since that.

4. Sniping cheap clothes off ebay.
Sniping is using a third party website or program to automatically put in a bid on an auction item at the very last moment. Initially I thought that sniping was kind of like cheating and unfair to the other bidders. However, those bidders could also snipe as well if they wanted to. Auction sites don't mind if people snipe and at the end of the day, you only put in the price you are willing to pay anyway. If someone else put in a bid with a higher maximum price than yours, you'll lose the auction.

So what I do, is I trawl ebay for clothes in my size at the lowest possible price (including shipping). I have bought lots of nice clothes for work that would've retailed for over $50 that only cost me $0.99 + $5 shipping.

If you are to buy clothes successfully of ebay then you need to be pretty aware of your body size/shape, what fits you, and also what types of fabric you prefer. For instance, I won't buy anything that is 100% cotton because I can't stand ironing.

My only problem with buying clothes off ebay is that now I have become somewhat addicted, so I need to be a bit more careful of this in 2011.

5. Turn off the TV
About a year ago, my boyfriend and I agreed to switch off the TV and not watch it at all. I think we were getting sick of all the advertising, and were also aware of how much TV saps away your time. Over the past year I only watched about 10 minutes of Channel 7 news (I wanted to see some footage from the huge storm/flood in March 2010), and TV at other people's houses.

When I say that we don't watch TV, that only means that we don't watch any broadcast TV. Actually we still watch DVDs (currently the third season of 30 Rock), downloaded movies, and streamed programs (through ABC iview), youtube etc. The programs that we watch at the moment are:

The 7:30 Report (ABC iView online)
At The Movies (ABC iView online)
PBS News Hour (streamed through the PBS website)
The Keiser Report (streamed through RT.com)
30 Rock (on DVD)
Equals 3 by Ray William Johnston (youtube)

I think that's all we regularly watch. By not watching free-to-air TV, you only watch the shows you actually enjoy, no filler!

6. Computer in the kitchen

We had a spare computer lying around so we set it up in the kitchen with some speakers. So we can watch all of the above programs while eating dinner. It's also good to stream video and audio (TED talks, youtube lecture, podcasts, news etc) while preparing dinner or cleaning up. Grooveshark.com is great for streaming music.

---

Okay that's all I've got today for you. I'm going to try and update my blog a bit more regularly on random topics from life etc from now own, so see ya soon!

Rose Heritage Cafe

Arch, originally uploaded by sleepy chan.

Monday was a public holiday, so I took a Japanese friend up to the Bickley valley in the Perth hills for a bit of local tourism.

We went to: Rose Heritage Cafe (Carmel), Cosham Wines, we attempted to go to Brookside Winery and the Packing Shed but both were closed for a private function, and lastly, Piesse Brook wines. Oh I forgot, we also went to Lesmurdie falls and... Lesmurdie IGA.

This photo is from Rose Heritage Cafe. I didn't really know what to expect from this place expect that we could eat lunch there. We did indeed eat lunch there, but this was not the highlight. This place actually has an extensive nursery with about a million different species of roses, plus a few extras. They also have a "French Garden" (for which I cannot vouch authenticity), but involved a pretty awesome bed of light-fluorescent succulents (click through the image above to see my flickr stream).

This is a pretty nice place in general. I would recommend it to: tourists, guys looking for a place to take their girlfriend or wife on a surprise day-date, anyone looking for a place to take their mother or grandmother out for a scone and cup of tea, people with small children (there was a pond with a million koi fish which many small kids were entertained by), people looking for a place to get married, and lastly, people who like plants.

This day spent in the hills reminded me of the fun of being a "home tourist". Sometimes, when you get bogged down by the same old schedule, just try and become a home tourist for a day and go somewhere you've never been before. I think I'll try it more, provided I don't run out of places to go to in Perth/Perth surrounds.

Just Like Heaven

Okay okay okay. I know I watch a lot of trash. Forgive me! There is a part of my heart that loves the cheesiest crap that Hollywood can deliver. Just Like Heaven, well, it was cheesy, no doubt about it. But was it trashy? Not really. It was more like a pleasant stroll in a rose garden or a lovely cup of earl-grey tea. Sweet, but somewhat unaffecting. Why did it not really affect me? Probably because I didn't buy the chemistry.

I notice a trend in some of these romantic comedies (well, in this movie, and also in The Proposal and I suppose in Suddenly 30). You have the over-achieving career-woman who works so much that they've not left any space for a personal life. Then you have the sweet, down-to-earth guy who the girl has overlooked until some kind of personal crisis delivers him to her. The girl is all righteous, self-centred and bossy and the guy just kind of puts up with it dopelybecause he has always loved her.

This is my problem with a lot of these films in this kind of post-feminist(?) film-production landscape. The leading female, as an extreme example of the single American career-woman, seems to be more of a caricature than a character. She works too hard, other people are perhaps a little afraid of her, she eats chinese take-away alone at home etc. This is the reason why I think this movie failed; Reese Witherspoon's character was based a little too completely on a stereotype and I couldn't really learn anything about her apart from the fact that she worked 20 hours a day as a doctor and drank too much coffee. When she did come into Mark Ruffalo's life (sorry I can't remember the character's name, just the actor's), she swiftly proceeded to lash out with the pussy-whip, forbidding him to talk to his next door neighbour because she answered the door wearing a crop-top, and totally ruining his night out when he simply tried to have a whisky with his friend at the pub. Geez. IF SHE WAS THAT BAD AS A GHOST (which she was at that point in the movie) HOW BAD WOULD SHE BE IN REAL LIFE? I couldn't even really believe that they were in love.

If you didn't really care or notice chemistry between characters, then this movie would be fine, but the more I think about it, the less convincing they were. If you can suspend criticism and belief for about 90 minutes though, it was all rather pleasant. Your heart-strings will be manipulated in the usual ways and you can vicariously experience elements of their newly found love for each other. If you find it hard to surrender your intellect in such films, and don't find enjoyment in the escapist ride on a side-show alley ride of romantic emotions, then you would find watching this film to be a rather pointless exercise as it makes no meaningful statement about men, women or humankind.

Can I just add as an aside though, I THINK I LOVE MARK RUFFALO.


He's a vegetarian.