It Is the Season to Be Jolly

On an impulse inspired by the season, I started making theme images (in Photoshop) and posted them, one after the other, on my Facebook account. Just for fun. Here they all are, in the original order.

Totally Messed Up Rising

The grand finale of the Batman films, The Dark Knight Rises, is a complete mess. The 2.5 hours have a plot that's a maze where the first to get lost were the scriptwriting brothers Jonathan and Christopher Nolan, the latter of which was also the director. That didn't help.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Totally Messed Up Rising

Not Taken by the Dramatic Curve

The film Taken from 2008, where Liam Neeson is a retired agent showing all his fury in saving his daughter from human trafficking, is a decent action movie, much thanks to him, but it fails mainly in its dramatic curve. So, the end can be nothing but disappointing.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Not Taken by the Dramatic Curve

Age-old Dilemmas Also Plague the Future

Looper is a film playing with the idea of time travel – but doing so with a dramatic nerve that leaves the intellectual paradox far behind. I wonder if that sci-fi ingredient is needed at all in the plot, except for the special effects. The story by director Rian Johnson is so classical, it needs no future.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Age-old Dilemmas Also Plague the Future

The Rage of Puberty

The film Chronicle, by director Josh Trank and screenwriter Max Landis, is a high school supernatural thriller turning into tragedy. Underneath the spectacular surface, it's all about the torment and rage of male puberty.

The essay has been moved to my personal website:

The Rage of Puberty

Patterns of Creation Myths

I made a new website, devoted to creation myths, their stories, structures, and patterns of thought. There is much to discover about the human mind in what kinds of ideas about the world beginning have been imagined way back in the dawn of civilization. We haven't changed that much since, nor has the essence of our perception of the world.

To begin with, the material on my new website, creationmyths.org, is mostly stuff I earlier had on my stenudd.com website. But there it was hidden beneath layer of layer of other stuff. So, I thought I'd better make a new domain explicitly for my writing on creation myths.

And it got me adding a new text, about Rig Veda 10:129, an Indian hymn contemplating in a drastic way what might have been before the world was created. It's an old favorite of mine among cosmological writings of the past.

I've studied creation myths for years and years, mainly but not only within the history of ideas, where I'm still supposed to complete a dissertation on the subject. I don't know about that, but surely there will be a book of some kind, eventually. In the meantime, I will keep adding to my new website. Please have a look at it:

creationmyths.org

Still a Beatle

I saw the TV concert of Paul McCartney with orchestra doing songs from his Kisses on the Bottom album, a handful of carefully chosen evergreen covers and a couple of new songs of his composed in the same style. What stood out the most was what a delicate singer he can be.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Still a Beatle

Kosice Closeups

I was in Kosice, Slovakia, for an aikido seminar. Before it started, I had a chance to stroll around the city with my camera. As usual, I looked more for details than scenery. I wonder how long I will keep that up.

You find more of my Kosice photos here: Kosice Closeups

Tokyo Photos

I was in Tokyo for a couple of weeks, mainly for meetings. But I got some time for strolling in the city with my camera. Here are some of those photos. Click the images to see them enlarged.

A band playing by the Shinjuku station.

A vocal group performing in Shinjuku.

A street view from Shinjuku.

Another street view from Shinjuku.

Shinjuku buildings.

Kind of a crossing on a Tokyo street.

A demonstration in Tokyo, don't ask me about what.

At the little fish market in Tokyo.

The slight difference between generations.

A Shinjuku house in front of my hotel window.

A rainy view from Yoyogi Olympic Center.

A Tokyo shop.

The Tokyo subway.

A Tokyo subway station.

Uniformed group on a Shinjuku street.

Tokyo view from Yoyogi Olympic center.

You find more Tokyo photos on my website: Tokyo train ride photos

God Is Retreating

It's getting increasingly difficult to be religious – not that it stops lots of people from persisting – as the progress of science forces God to retreat step by step. In  the world and how we learn it works, God is becoming redundant.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

God Is Retreating

Driven by Pleasure

In an episode of Through the Wormhole dealing with evil and psychopathy, a neuroscientist explained how normal people and psychopaths drive their cars. He did so while driving his car. It struck me: Oh, what if he's a psychopath? It turned out he is.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Driven by Pleasure

That Damned Why

Continuing to watch episodes of Through the Wormhole, I sense a pattern. The science described mainly speculates about the how, rarely about the why. That might be increasingly insufficient as we get closer to the inner workings of the universe.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

That Damned Why