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“This emphasis on the static over the kinetic is not so remarkable in an artist who, after all, began his career in—and remains committed to—the compositional rigors of painting, collage, and sculpture. But to see how it relates to folding space, we must further illuminate this concept of traveling without moving.” A new assessment of David Lynch’s much-maligned Dune.

What Lulu and Gabby see, originally uploaded by Koosama.

My friend Jonathan sees “ghosts”. It started when he was in his mid-20s. One day at 3 am he was awakened by the sound of women talking outside his window. He went out and saw three women hanging the laundry. He thought they were his mom and aunts, and wondered why they were hanging out laundry at 3 am. When he got close to them he realized that they were not his mom and aunts. They were wearing old-fashioned clothing, and floating a foot above the ground. He stared at them in shock. They stared back at him, curiously. He ran back to his room.

I like the temporal anomaly explanation for ghosts. Some kind of time warp causes the past and the present to briefly coexist in the same space. To Jonathan, the three women were ghosts from the past; to the women, Jonathan was a ghost from the future. Or maybe those with “the sight” perceive past, present, and future as simultaneous occurrences. Which would make it very difficult for them to keep appointments and meet deadlines.

Jonathan’s “sight” seems to have been passed on to his daughters, who are 12 and 9. He asked them to draw what they saw.

“Call it the LVMH-ization of cooking. Truffles have become a luxury brand, one that connotes a way of life as much as a style of cooking. “Chefs use truffle oil because it’s easy to add a gloss of glamour with it — and because it helps sell dishes,” S. Irene Virbila, chief restaurant critic of The Los Angeles Times, said in an e-mail message.

“Although the scent of a truffle just dug can be one of the most profound gustatory experiences of the Western world, it’s one that not many people in this country have had on truffles’ native soil. Once there were only a few expensive and exclusive restaurants that recreated that experience, which only select customers could afford. Truffle oil has simultaneously democratized and cheapened the truffle experience, creating a knockoff that goes by the same name.” Chef Daniel Patterson in De Gustibus, the NYT forum for opinions and reflections on food.

Apropos of the Antikythera question, another mystery: Why did the Incas, Aztecs, Mayans, and other cool civilizations in the Americas (but one) fail to invent the wheel? Thanks to the Lifetime Underachiever for the link.

Post-9/11, Hollywood movies are required to provide not just entertainment but psychotherapy. It’s okay to cry, look Spidey does it all the time. Peter is eaten up by feelings of revenge and guilt, but he’s still a hero. Harry has father issues, but redeems himself in the end. Marko (Sandman overread: The desert comes to Manhattan) committed crimes, but he was only raising money for his daughter’s medical bills. Eddie was after Peter’s job, but he just wanted to be luvved. And if you want to do an interpretative dance to spite your ex-girlfriend right after she’s made the career movie from Broadway starlet to waitress, go ahead, that doesn’t make you gay.

But Photoshopping/tinkering with a front-page news photo, that’s evil.

Here’s a piece on Sandman and the physics of granular materials.

Tiangge by Uro de la Cruz, originally uploaded by Koosama.

Handbag addiction, celebrity culture, and the Louis Vuitton sakonite.
Emotional Baggage, this weekend in the Hong Kong Standard.

The connection between champorado and tuyo and old black-and-white movies.

Today’s Emotional Weather Report in the Star.

Sullivan’s Travels, originally uploaded by Koosama.

Joel McCrea (1905-1990) starred in many fine movies including Alfred Hitchcock’s The Foreign Correspondent, Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels and The Palm Beach Story, and Sam Peckinpah’s Ride The High Country.

In Sullivan’s Travels (1941) he plays a successful Hollywood director of lightweight comedies (Ants In Your Plants; Hey, Hey In The Hayloft) who wants to make a “serious” movie (O Brother, Where Art Thou?—a title the Coen Brothers used much later) about the plight of the common man. For his research he hits the road disguised as a hobo and encounters a failed starlet played by Veronica Lake. She declines his offer of an introduction to Ernst Lubitsch, but convinces him to take her along on his research. She’s actually more interested in the guy than in what he can do for her career. This makes perfect sense because he’s hot.

Hotness is inversely proportional to the awareness of one’s own hotness. McCrea who, being a big, handsome lug, is intrinsically hot, does not seem to know the effect he has on women, which makes him even hotter. So H = x/a, in which H is hotness, a is awareness, and x is the hotness constant which spells the difference between a man who is merely attractive and one who makes your chromosomes go boink, boink, boink.

Roger Federer’s fans need to start rooting for him again. He’s been in a slump lately: since March he’s lost to Guillermo Canas twice, Rafael Nadal twice—including the Battle of the Surfaces, an exhibition match on a court that was half-grass and half clay [They should play in Manila, where a single court can have several types of surfaces: shell (Who else plays on shell?), dirt (where the shell is cracked), grass (growing out of the dirt), and mud (when it rains)], and most recently, to Filippo Volandri at the Rome Masters. That’s as many losses as he usually sustains in a whole year.

What’s the problem? Dissatisfaction with his coach (He recently parted ways with Tony Roche)? Too many Vogue layouts?  Ennui? He’s not losing interest, is he? This is the worst patch he’s been in since 2004. I don’t think it’s a major worry but Roland Garros starts soon, and it has the added burden of history.

That last loss was particularly distressing, not only because Volandri is ranked 53rd in the world, but because it was all over in two sets in 78 minutes. The Fed can usually turn these things around by lifting his game just a little, but on this occasion he seemed listless and his shots had no conviction. This is according to news reports—I didn’t watch the match because I’ve gotten so used to Federer winning(and all those greatest-player-ever articles) that I felt no need to cheer him on. A player wins and loses on his own, but it’s the fans who help create the atmosphere of belief that makes victory possible. Roger Federer needs us after all. Where did I put those streamers?

Was the Antikythera mechanism—fragments of an ancient mechanical device that were found in 1900 after two thousand years in the Aegean Sea—the world’s first computer? John Seabrook in The New Yorker: “Until this moment, I had, like many others, continued to puzzle over why, if the Greeks were capable of building such a technically sophisticated device, they used that capacity to construct what is essentially a toy—an intellectual amusement. But as I beheld this whirring, whirling symphony of metal, a perfect simulation of a mechanistic and logical universe, I realized that my notions of practicality were foolish and shortsighted. This machine was much more than a toy; it embodied a whole world view, and it must have been, for the ancients, wonderfully reassuring to behold.”

As you troop to the polls, consider these nuggets from the noted political scientist, comedian George Carlin, who turned 70 the other day.

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are
stupider than that.

Honesty may be the best policy, but it’s important to remember that
apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.

The very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere,
someone said to themselves, “You know, I want to set those people over there
on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.”

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

I love and treasure individuals as I meet them; I loathe and despise the
groups they identify with and belong to.

In America, anyone can become president. That’s the problem.

The future will soon be a thing of the past.

The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse:
You cannot post “Thou shalt not steal”, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”,
and “Thou shalt not lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.

I think I am, therefore, I am. I think.

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.

Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher In The Rye. A Wrinkle In Time, In The Night Kitchen, and The Witches. To Kill A Mockingbird, Flowers for Algernon, Slaughterhouse-Five and Lord of the Flies. Books we loved and still love, books that American parents want to ban from school libraries. The American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom has compiled this list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000. The list includes the Harry Potter series and Bridge to Terabithia. The ALA reports that for every challenge reported, at least 4 or 5 go unreported. That’s the way to protect your children: close their minds.