Skyfall

Again it took me a long time to catch up - here, it's with Daniel Craig as 007. I best like the way Sean Connery defined the role, and Pierce Brosnan came closest to that image of James Bond. So, when I first read about the "new, gritty" James Bond that appeared in "Casino Royale", I didn't like it a bit, and subsequently didn't watch any of the Craig Bond movies.
I guess I have to thank Adele for singing the title song - it really is a little gem, and it has stuck in my ear. It even made me want to watch the film, and finally I did. I was pleasantly surprised. "Skyfall" has the mixture of lots of action and a dose of humour that make a good Bond movie. Craig doesn't have Connery's roguish or Brosnan's boyish charm, but his quiet, deadpan manner is not a bad substitute. While Connery ambled through his adventures like they were an interesting, amusing game, and Brosnan seemed to be able to draw on an internal innocence that made any damages to the soul temporary, Craig doesn't let you forget for a minute that his business is an unpleasant one that leaves the soul scarred. Not that he's moaning or complaining, but his stoic poise betrays that there is suffering that the stoicity needs to mask.
I liked the humorous touches - Bond swaying to the rhythm of the original Bond theme, Moneypenny, the "circle of life" remark... I also liked the ambiguity of the ending - after all, the result of Bond's actions in the grand finale were the same two deaths that Silver had wanted (not counting the collateral henchmen damage), only they happened on Bond's and M's terms, not on Silver's. It's a difference that matters. But it's a far cry from earlier Bonds saving the world.
Still, if that's the new grittiness, it's OK with me. Now the other Craig 007 films are firmly on my viewing list.

The Gun Apocalypse

I'd wondered for some time what American gun nuts need all those assault rifles for. I think this guy has hit on a reasonable answer. It's a good fit with the popularity of Zombie Apocalypse scenarios.

Gedicht / Poem / Стихи

Der, wer dichtet, richtet Worte
Aus um Muster zu erzeugen
Aus Bedeutung und aus Klang.
Mal ein kleines, feines Muster,
So wie Karos oder Streifen,
Das man leicht erkennen kann;
Mal ein schweres, das verwirrt,
Wo man nicht weiß, ist da eins?
Lies die Worte, hör die Worte,
Lass sie auf der Zunge klingen,
Klingt es gut, hast du's verstanden,
Klingt es schlecht, versuch es anders.
Wenn das Muster schief und krumm ist,
Wenn die Worte hohl und dumm sind,
Kann's ein schlechter Leser sein,
Kann's ein schlechter Dichter sein.

Kitchens by the Dozen

When I was a boy, "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "Belles on their Toes" (In German: "Im Dutzend billiger" und "Aus Kindern werden Leute") were among my favourite books. I liked these memoirs of living in a large, "rationally organised" family, which to me, at that age, seemed to be extremely funny and attractive at the same time. I was vaguely aware that the Gilbreths were supposed to be real people, not inventions of a fiction author's imagination, but somehow I'd never expected for information about them to show up in the real world. So it was a pleasant surprise to find this article in Slate about Lilian Gilbreth's contribution to modern home kitchen organisation. It's a bit like finding out that, say, Sindbad was a really existing merchant adventurer who plied the seas at the times of Harun Al-Rashid.

Hobbes's God

Last week's Economist published a review of "the first critical edition of Hobbes’s “Leviathan”". Even though Hobbes

destroyed many of his private papers, which is one reason why the life and work of Hobbes has long been such a tricky subject for scholars,

it's astonishing that it took so long. I liked this nugget:

Above all, though, it was Hobbes’s scientific materialism that rendered him an anathema. Like Descartes, and other devotees of the “new philosophy” pioneered by Galileo, Hobbes regarded nature as a machine. But he took this idea further than anyone else and maintained that absolutely everything is physical. There are no immaterial spirits: man’s immortality begins with the resurrection of his body. And God himself is a physical being. This is what made Hobbes an “atheist” to practically everyone except himself. For most of history an “atheist” was a man who worshipped the wrong God, not no God at all; a physical God, as imagined by Hobbes, was not really God. Hobbes’s idea is one of the rarest heresies in the history of Christianity. Some have claimed that Tertullian, one of the Latin Fathers of the Church, believed it. But the idea was abhorrent to all denominations until the 19th century, when the new American religion of Mormonism adopted it. Like Hobbes, Mormons maintain that the Bible means what it says in the passages that describe man as made in God’s image. If Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate in next month’s American presidential election, believes the scriptures of his own religion, he accepts that God the Father “has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s”—the very belief which caused Hobbes to be vilified for centuries.

Now, whatever official theologies say, the image of a god with a human form has always been a feature of Christian popular belief (the father-figure with the beard). Interesting to see this view to be held at least by one great philosopher and by one major religion.

Nietzsche in a Nutshell / Nietzsche kurz & knapp / Краткий курс философии Ницше

Der Übermensch / The Superhuman / Сверхчеловек.

Есть только миг

В послндние два года ушли из жизни дорогие мне люди. Эта песня для них - для бабушки, для Раке, для John Reilly, хотя я его знал только по интернету, и для Саши - сколько раз он пел её для меня!