james reilly

"Searching for home on Google Earth was the spark that cacique (chief) Almir Surui needed to embark his tribe, the Paiter Surui, in a digital activism odyssey. The place that Almir and his tribe call home is the 7 de Setembro indigenous reserve, an area of about 250 thousand hectares located amidst the states of Rondônia and Mato Grosso, in the Brazilian midwest. The image he saw on the computer screen scared him. Despite all their efforts throughout the years against illegal wood extraction in the region, he noticed a huge brown spot where there should have been an untouched forest. This shocking experience, however, brought him a valuable insight: he had just stumbled upon a whole new world, one where he could pass on his people’s conscience and traditions to all those interested. In his own words, “That technology, which takes one from a place to another without moving, reduced days of walking to mere seconds. It was something different. It made me dream and plan actions ..” - james reilly from Bookmarklet

"It's even harder to adapt to the digital gale sweeping through publishing when big 'old-media' stories about canonical authors are still grabbing everyone's attention .. William Goldman, who wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, is almost as well known for his coruscating portrait of the movie business, Adventures in the Screen Trade. This, in turn, is celebrated for its dictum about Hollywood executives – "No one knows anything" – a phrase that has a way of popping into mind whenever the discussion turns towards the future of books and newspapers..." - james reilly from Bookmarklet

I know something: ebooks and ereaders will substantially replace paper books and other varieties of print publication (including newspapers and magazines). That's a no-brainer, and has been so for at least fifteen years, because they afford numerous advantages. - Sean McBride

"Born from humble beginnings rooted in deplorable poverty and a broken home, Charles Spencer Chaplin would one day rise to worldwide prominence through the artistry of his comedic genius and the newly invented ability to disseminate information, art and entertainment through film.." - james reilly

Questions of extraterrestrial life rest on theories of Martian history. - james reilly

The search for life beyond our pale blue dot is fraught with dashed hopes. Will the chemical and mineral fingerprints of Earthly organisms apply on other worlds? - james reilly

"This rambling piece of writing is an attempt to bring together various and disparate thoughts on A Serious Man. A month after the film's release it is, as the classic cliche states, a day late and a dollar short. Its position is clear enough, here on this blog, but its momentum, if any, cannot be determined with any degree of certainty.." - james reilly from Bookmarklet

“To say that Kurt Schwitters was an amazingly versatile artist and anticipated much is such an absurd understatement that the remark is almost dada,” wrote Walter Hopps in 1962, and it’s no less true today. The art of assemblage in particular is inconceivable without him, but his ideas reached into graphic art, architecture and theater as well, and he wrote all manner of texts, including short urban tales parallel to today’s flash fiction craze. The following is a brief homage to Kurt Schwitters . . . - james reilly from Bookmarklet

"Rush University Medical Center has opened the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) Clinic to offer patients suffering from major depression a safe, effective, non-drug treatment. TMS therapy is the first FDA-approved, non-invasive antidepressant device-based treatment clinically proven for treatment of depression." - james reilly from Bookmarklet

"Number 85 Broad Street, a dull, rust-coloured office block in lower Manhattan, doesn’t look like a place to stop and stare, and that’s just the way the people who work there like it. ... It’s the site of the best cash-making machine that global capitalism has ever produced, and, some say, a political force more powerful than governments. The people who work behind the brass-trim glass doors make more money than some countries do. They are the rainmakers’ rainmakers, the biggest swinging dicks in the financial jungle ... "Aha! You catch us plotting in real time," says Lloyd Blankfein, breaking away from a cabal of senior executives discussing his trip to Washington the previous day. Blankfein, 55, Goldman’s chairman and chief executive, .." - james reilly from Bookmarklet

"Delays in producing H1N1 doses have cast doubts on traditional method using chicken embryos ... Most of the world's H1N1 vaccine started in 30 chicken eggs kept here in a warren of labs at New York Medical College. Working seven days a week, microbiologist Doris Bucher and her eight assistants made "seeds" that manufacturers around the globe are using to grow the vaccine used in the swine flu shot..." - james reilly from Bookmarklet

Among the new documentary films being shown at the Sheffield (UK) Doc/Fest is Igor Mayboroda’s "Rerberg and Tarkovsky: The Reverse Side Of “Stalker”. Behind the unwieldy title there lies an exploration of the troubled genesis of one of my cult artefacts, Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 science fiction film, Stalker, a personal adaptation by the director of a Russian sf novel, Roadside Picnic, by Arkadi & Boris Strugatsky. Tarkovsky’s production suffered from technical calamities, illness, artistic disagreements and, worst of all, location work in a polluted area which (allegedly) caused the early deaths of a number of the people involved, including the director and leading actor, Anatoli Solonitsyn. All of which makes the completed film seem both miraculous and chilling for reasons beyond its uniquely sinister atmosphere. - james reilly from Bookmarklet

Thanks for the tip. I've never seen Stalker, so I've got more material to watch this Winter season. - Kittyburgers

"Or so says Australian psychologist, Joe Forgas, who seems to think a case of the “grumps” can, in fact, make us think more clearly. The University of New South Wales researcher says grumpy people, rather than happy types, are better at coping with demanding situations because of the way the brain “promotes information processing strategies.” ... Professor Forgas said: ‘Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, co-operation and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world.’" - james reilly from Bookmarklet

"..Man was made for joy and woe; And when this we rightly know Through the world we safely go. Joy and woe are woven fine, A clothing for the soul divine. Under every grief and pine Runs a joy with silken twine..." Auguries of Innocence by William Blake - alapinto

"A reader commented on my recent statement that English good and god are unrelated and noted that this statement, in addition to being counterintuitive and undemonstrable, can even lead to schisms. Being a peaceful man, I am very much against all kinds of hostilities. Nor do I think that the history of words should interfere with faith to such an extent as to result in religious wars. But god and good are indeed unrelated .." - james reilly from Bookmarklet

As a UK adviser is fired over politically unpalatable advice and an English teacher is suspended over an article about animal sexuality, the fate of facts is on the line. - james reilly

Nature and its laws seem to be governed by patterns which can be described mathematically, and human beings have been hard at work trying to make sense of such patterns for a very long time. In this first episode of the documentary series The Story of Maths, Marcus du Sautoy (who recently succeeded Richard Dawkins as the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University), traces the history of math, from its inception in Egypt as the solution to practical problems having to do with land distribution and taxation, to the development of numeric placeholders in ancient Babylon, to the culmination of mathematics into an analytic and logical system in the hands of the Greeks. The devil, of course, is in the details, and the details are exquisitely fascinating, as you are about to find out. Related videos: The Story of 1, with Terry Jones from Monty Python A water-tight proof of the Pythagorean Theorem Carl Sagan on the pre-socratics and on Plato's influence on... - james reilly