More perspective on Norvig's article on Chomsky. Useful as a third point of view. What exactly does it mean to explain something? There's a fundamental disagreement here, and, unlike in many previous instances of this kind of disagreement, this one has very concrete consequences.
- Michael Nielsen
"Scientists used very high-resolution scanning to study the skulls of two of the earliest known mammal species. Comparing the shape of their brain cases to those of slightly earlier animals, or "pre-mammals", revealed that the first brain areas to over-develop were those associated with the sense of smell. The findings are published in Science." - Eivind ☥ from Bookmarklet
- Fossil Huntress
Some of us can be examples about going ahead and growing, and some of us, unfortunately, don't make it there, and end up being examples because they had to die. I hit rock bottom, but thank God my bottom wasn't death
- ThenWang
Saw him live in Hawaii. He tore it up. RIP.
- Josh Haley
saw him co-headlining with Jeff Beck in 1989. he drove up in his car (this was in Dallas at the State Fair Colosseum) and, after he pulled through the gates into the load-in area, he got out and chatted with the fans hanging over the wall and signed things for them for close to 20 minutes before someone came and got him to come inside. seemed like a really nice guy. he and his band really did an outstanding show, too.
- Joe The Sausage
şarkı güzel de, Maltepe'de oturup güle güle filedelfiya sen ki özgürlüklerin şehrisin dinlemek samimi gelmiyor bana :)
- Joan Miro
O zaman hiç müzik dinlememek gerek mirat can.Bu ülkede ayşem ayşem diye müzikte yapılıyor.Ama benim hiç ayşem olmadı mesela.Bence müzikte samimiyet tamamen notalarla ve kulakla oluşuyor.İtirazı olan?
- Bora
"Taking walks is the entry drug into the quiet, solitary heaven of idleness (the next level up is “sitting on a bench without a view”). For modern Americans, idleness is a shameful, private indulgence. If they attempt it in public, they are stricken by social anxiety. They seem to fear that the slow, solitary, and obviously purposeless amble that marks “taking a walk” signals social incompetence or a life unacceptably adrift. If a shopping bag, gym bag, friend or dog cannot be manufactured, nominal non-idleness must be signaled through an ostentatious “I have friends” phone call, or email-checking. If all else fails, hands must be placed defiantly in pockets, to signal a brazen challenge to anyone who dares look askance at you, “Yeah, I’m takin’ a walk! You got a problem with that?” In America, visible idleness is a luxury for the homeless, the delinquent and immigrants. The defiantly tautological protest, “I have a life,” is quintessentially American. The American life does not exist until it is filled up. Even a pause at a bench must be justified by a worthwhile view or a chilled drink."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
"While we have an Inception review where you can leave comments, we’ve set up this page as a place where you can discuss the Inception ending and other spoilers without worrying about ruining the movie for folks who haven’t seen it yet. To help steer discussion we’ve added a lengthy analysis of Inception (especially the ending) and explained why our analysis of the film fits with the story Christopher Nolan intended to tell."
- Jandy
from Bookmarklet
I was disappointed that this article didn't try a little harder. Some of the things that see entirely ambiguous and interesting to me are mentioned in the article but dismissed with "we are reading a little too deep into things." They can't be *that* deep if they occurred to me while I was watching the movie.
- Your Neighbor Steve
I see what you mean, Steve, but the times I saw them dismissing things like that it was because either a) they're convinced that looking at those things too deeply actually distracts from what the film is really about (as in, yes, the ending is ambiguous, but it doesn't really matter which way is "real" because the point is that Cobb chose which way he WANTED to be real, and that's the...
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- Jandy
Excellent analysis - I agree with Steve that I'd like to see a bit more about the totem (and the airport pickup), I think that covers most of what I liked about the movie. I came to a different conclusion about the end, but that's part of the charm - there's enough ambiguity to provoke thought and discussion.
- Jennifer Dittrich
Heh. Mal's totem was number one. He's very specific that the totem has to be yours and yours alone, and yet he uses someone else's which seemed like at least a sign or a symbol that he has lost touch with reality. I can accept that it's more a symbol than a clue, but it hardly seems like it's thinking too hard about it. (Though I will say that after he said that in the dreamworld it...
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- Your Neighbor Steve
I will also assume that since the last seconds of the film are explicitly ambiguous (is that possible?), then there is no "answer" to the overall question about what level of dream or reality we are seeing at the end. I'd be very surprised if there is a smoking gun to be found, but would love to see more thoughts about it all.
- Your Neighbor Steve
I agree about the kids, but I'd need to rewatch and look specifically for that. The fact that they were in the same positions, IIRC, was highly suspect. As far as the totem, it wasn't that it had to be yours and yours alone, but that you had to be the only one who knew its exact properties. There's not some mystical connection between a person and the object. After Mal was gone, Cobb would've been the only one to know.
- Jandy
I saw the kids as being two different ages - two sets of child actors - at earlier points in the film, so I don't think the IMDB stuff says anything. For the people I was with, the ambiguity rested in that we never *really* knew how long Cobb was kept from his kids.... perhaps it was only three months and it just felt like aeons for Cobb because of living so much of his life in...
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- Marianne
Yeah, I know it wasn't mystical, but still. Seemed like a tip-off for...something. :) Also, I love Marianne's idea that Cobb could have only been away for a few months, which actually seems kinda likely now that I think about it.
- Your Neighbor Steve
(Full credit, it's my friend Joe Weems' idea. He says he CHOOSES to believe in a conventionally happy and realist ending no matter how many good reasons I can come up with otherwise.)
- Marianne
Ok, not that I have been losing sleep over this or anything... What's the point of having a totem that only you know the weight, etc? So you can tell if you are in *someone else's* dream, because their subconscious won't know the characteristics. But in your dream, your subconscious would be able to recreate it. So having Cobb carry Mal's totem is a way of deliberately planting the seed of doubt in the audience's mind that Cobb might be inhabiting Mal's dreams.
- Your Neighbor Steve
I like this idea. (That would make Ariadne a projection of Mal's subconscious maybe? And projections potentially more complex than given credit for?)
- Marianne
I don't know, but I do like the idea that a character named Ariadne who helps the lead find his way out of the maze is not "real." But I'm pretty sure that the plan behind the movie is to make multiple explanations plausible and none of them definitive.
- Your Neighbor Steve
Yeah, so far I've seen two or three explanations that are all very different and affect the "reality" of the rest of the movie in different and interesting ways, but none of them have been convincing enough to completely rule out the others. I kind of like that.
- Jandy
Have you watched Donnie Darko with the director's commentary? I thought the director's take on what happens in that film was much lamer and reductive than what I'd come up with! So, yeah, reality bites.
- Your Neighbor Steve
Ohhhh, so totally agree re: Donnie Darko. I was mad after listening to the director's commentary. I know it sounds really stupid to say such a thing about the writer/director, but I couldn't help but feel like the guy didn't even get his own film.
- Hookuh Tinypants
Paul did you actaully read all the 3845 comments ?? That discussion by itself can become a book :)-
- Peter Dawson
I skimmed it. Half of the comments are about Harry Potter, which I mostly skipped.
- Paul Buchheit
I wonder if there's some "Godwin's Law as applied to Harry Potter" which says that once you see a Harry Potter reference, you can ignore the rest of the thread.
- Gabe
Me, too. I'd like throw in Doctor Who, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and The Princess Bride in that list as well.
- Akiva
We had this discussion recently here on friendfeed, which I found very interesting. Perhaps someone on a PC can find and reference the comments within this thread.
- JCunwired
from Android
No, sorry. I will try to find it later on my netbook.
- JCunwired
from Android
I had never heard of _House of Leaves_ before. Interesting.
- Ruchira S. Datta
The following books changed my life: "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins, "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World" by Harry Browne, "Prometheus Rising" by Robert Anton Wilson. After reading those in the mid-90's I emerged a completely different person.
- iTad
Glad to read T4D's comment - "The Selfish Gene" upended my world in college, and I haven't yet recovered. (The context for that is probably important, eh?) But each good book I read (or re-read) changes the way I look at the world.
- Jason Miller
When I read The Selfish Gene it felt like a curtain had been pulled open in my brain.
- iTad
++Jason Miller about each good book, which is why I find it a bit of an odd question. The latest for me is Douglas's _The Symbiotic Habit_ http://amzn.to/a166iP Readers of _The Selfish Gene_ might find this one interesting (on the other hand, Douglas doesn't have Dawkins's sense of style).
- Ruchira S. Datta
Another eye-opener for me was "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. Scary stuff, in a way.
- Jason Miller
Work computer has OneNote installed on it. This is quite nice; thought I'd tried it before at some point and didn't care for it, but maybe that was an old version. Of course, I don't think it'll sync with my Evernote at home and my iPhone, and that's kind of a pain.
"While we humans carry on with our daily lives down here on Earth, perhaps stuck in traffic or reading blogs, or just enjoying a Springtime stroll, a school-bus-sized spacecraft called Cassini continues to gather data and images for us - 1.4 billion kilometers (870 million miles) away. Over the past months, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has made several close flybys of Saturn's moons, caught the Sun's reflection glinting off a lake on Titan, and has brought us even more tantalizing images of ongoing cryovolcanism on Enceladus. Collected here are a handful of recent images from the Saturnian system. (30 photos total)"
- Alexander Kruel
from Bookmarklet
"A frog with a Pinocchio-like extendable nose was among more than a dozen new species discovered in a remote mountain wilderness in Indonesia. Wildlife found in the Foja Mountains included several new mammals, such as the world’s smallest wallaby, a blossom bat that feeds on rainforest nectar, and a giant woolly rat, as well as a host of insects and other animals. The discoveries — which also included a gargoyle-like gecko with yellow eyes — were made during a survey of the area by Conservation International."
- Demetrios the Traveller
from Bookmarklet
"Imagine that, as a teacher of European history, you are continually faced with belligerent demands to ‘teach the controversy’, and to give ‘equal time’ to the ‘alternative theory’ that the Holocaust never happened but was invented by a bunch of Zionist fabricators." — Richard Dawkins
I once had an American history class (until 1865) that skipped the Louisianna Purchase, the bill of rights, War of 1812, the French Indian war and most of the revolution. Fortunately I was only taking it for fun to be near a girl
- RAPatton
from iPhone
Can I get one for the body as well as the face?
- Dion Almaer
Very interesting. Hope they post the download link soon so that we can all play with it.
- Brady Brim-DeForest
It seems as if the main problem with most people in the examples shown is their forehead is too short or too narrow. Wonder if there's a subtle clue that big brains are beautiful there! :)
- Lindsay
@Jason - that's an interesting concept. Would you be more likely to trust the girl on the left or right? Would you be more likely to talk to either one of them at a party (or more intimidated by either one?).
- Lindsay
Notice that for all the women they soften the jaw, while squaring it for men. Everyone also gets a slightly thinner face and upturned almost smiling lips.
- FFing Enigma
@SB yeah and the forehead adjustment... almost like there is a triangle with the forehead at the point and they flip it so the chin is the bottom of the triangle... weird.
- Lindsay
They are different women! Blame Paul! : )
- Erhan Erdoğan
Lindsay: whenever sketching generic faces, the face starts as an inverted triangle and the eyes appear a third of the way down from the top of the forehead; lips and nose appear below and above (respectively) a line 1/3 up from the chin. Looks like these pictures are rearranged to meet that particular school of drawing.
- FFing Enigma
That is interesting yet odd. Seems that the faces are slendered with the software.
- Jim Goldstein
from twhirl
I wonder what would come out of applying their algorithms to face of black or asian person? Different countries have different concepts of beauty.
- arty
This technology should be made available in eye glasses, just imagine how much better your work day can be!
- Claude Betancourt
Paul - Think you should definitely add the option. "Click here to be beautiful without the expense of plastic surgery! .... and you may even get more 'Likey's" :)"
- Charlie Anzman
Some of the stuff coming out of Siggraph this year is really freaky. How about combining this with the automatic video editing stuff? ;)
- Joe Beda
without a doubt amazing. It's incredible how subtle the changes are yet massive difference.
- Zee.
Huh, that's pretty crazy. Creepy, but cool. :)
- felix
I haven't read the paper, but I wonder if it adapts to different notions of "attractive" (that changes from culture to culture ...)
- Rui Pires
+1 @Claude I was thinking the same thing! Incorporate this software in wearable monitor glasses, and the whole world would be beautiful! I'll bet we can look for these on the shelves in the U.S. just before November. Social media and reality enhancement software have put Winston Smith out of a job.
- ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ
do i sense another manga-style meme starting?
- anna sauce
So, if it turns me into Gilbert Godfried... what does that mean?
- Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ
You know, if these guys had gotten together with the realtime video+photo enhancement folks and approached the Beijing Olympic Comittee then that singing girl in the opening ceremonies might not have had to been replaced with a body double. (Yeah, I just brought three of this week's biggest memes together. I'll be here all week.)
- Kevin Fox
The artist proportions were laid out by the Greeks as the perfect human, that's not being used here. This beautification engine, I think, builds on top of a previous study where some students tried to mathematically identify attractiveness. They had participants rate the attractiveness of head shots from yearbooks. What they found was there was a high correlation b/w the geometrically "average" face and high attraction. That "average" is based on the proportions of the di
- xero
stances between the individual elements of the face and their relative sizes. IIRC the software adjusts elements so they statistically/geometrically complement each other. It's not actually working toward a golden set of proportions, but a set of proportions appropriate for the individual as defined by the masses. I wouldn't think of it as "facial discrimination" so much as "deviation from ones potential".
- xero
I'm waiting for the first Facebook application that automatically enhances your profile picture like this. Every social network should run this on the avatars. Beautiful people!
- Benedikt Koehler
Can you imagine the controversy if dating sites got a hold of this?
- xero
@paul automatically apply it to all profile photos, huh? are you sure you ready for results? check my picture - try to see wonderful cossacks writing infamous letter to Turkish Sultan :)
- A. T.
I wonder if they'll turn Mickey Mouse into Mighty Mouse
- Dave Q
this will have a lot of practical applications to create a (virtual) world of beautiful (or more acceptable facially) people.
- Apostolos Tsompanopoulos
Just a complicated high tech implementation of beer goggles.
- Hayes Haugen
This is what came up as the top Google hit for paul buchheit friendfeed.
- Spidra Webster
I just read the first comment and may I ask why we should apply it automatically to all profile pictures??? Who are we gonna kid that way?!
- ambidextrous
There is now a hoax viral email claiming to be from me. Yay? Needless to say, never forward any email that urges you to forward it. http://www.snopes.com/compute...
The nice thing about viral emails is that they are a good way of warning all of your friends that you are gullible and probably not a very reliable source of information :)
- Paul Buchheit
The funny thing is, it might actually be true if it was talking about FF. Why don't you delete stagnate accounts, Paul? ;)
- Jimminy, CoG of FF
I'm going to forward that to all my friends.
- Amit Patel
GUYS GUYS THIS SOUNDS TOTALLY LEGIT BETTER START FORWARDING -- PAUL, CAN I REPLY HERE? PLS DONT DELETE MAI ACCOUNT. "Over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that Gmail's system has been getting slower. This is due to the increasing number of Gmail accounts. Since this occurrence, we have decided to delete accounts that are no longer in use. We will determine who's account is...
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- Stephen Mack
I just got this in the mail! Am so proud of you Paul :-)
- Gagan Saksena
A vaccine being tested in the UK has helped been shown to help some patients fully recover from melanoma, even in its advanced stages. It attacks tumour cells, leaving healthy cells undamaged and carries agents that boost the body's response to skin cancer.
- Tristan Hambling
from Bookmarklet
Okay, got to the intermission. I think I'll have to watch the rest tomorrow. I really *really* like the Vito parts, but the Michael parts are losing me a little - I think it'll take a second viewing to get all the characters and relationships straight. It did for The Godfather, as well. But wow, talk about great use of composition, the camera, lighting, set design - brilliant.
- Jandy
This is a bad, bad movie. But a lot of it is bad in the good way. CURVING THE BULLET?! THE LOOM OF FATE?! OMG, are you for real? Also, I like car chase stunts with fancy cars.
Oy, that one was painful. And Jolie looks as if a good, stiff breeze could finish her off.
- Steven Perez
The ending was epic. Killing 7 people with one bullet and I paid to watch this. :(
- Faraz Mullick
I think my biggest thing is they're doing all this in utter seriousness because A LOOM TOLD THEM TO. Yet I kind of find that hilarious, so I kept watching.
- Jandy
Sometimes if they made a movie slightly less bad it wouldn't be entertaining. This is the perfect example.
- <3Heather<3
Heather, exactly. I was entertained almost precisely because I was going, WAIT WUT like every five minutes. If it'd just been a moderate amount of bad, it would've just been boring.
- Jandy
I waited till I finished the movie then handed the dvd over to the first guy who asked me for it. I'm glad I haven't asked it back.
- Faraz Mullick
The first 10 minutes were only bad-bad. The good-bad part didn't really get going until like fifteen or twenty minutes in. And then it just kept getting better-worse all the way through.
- Jandy
It was so bad I uploaded it back to the torrent server when I was done.
- Josh Haley
It was OK. For insane over the top action, Shoot Em Up was way better. And Wanted cut out basically 90% of what was good about the comic.
- Andrew C (✓)
Mogran Freeman's worst movie? You can normally rely on him being in good movies. This was awful.
- Kol Tregaskes
I absolutely love this movie. Without a doubt the over-the-topest and smashing-actionest flick I've ever seen. The final with the hero wreaking havoc into the bad guy's lair is just awesome. This movie is unbelievable, literally.
- Brome
Haha, yeah, I burst out laughing when they started explaining the loom and kept thinking of bullet-curving grannies.
- Amy
from fftogo
No. No. Not the Bees! NOT THE BEES!!! Oh, sorry. Wrong movie.
- Fleagle
Andrew, you're right, Shoot Em Up was much better - I got the impression with Shoot Em Up that they were doing it on purpose, though. I'm not sure they knew when they were making Wanted just how bad it was.
- Jandy
The source comic for Wanted is also over the top and not very serious. So presumably those involved knew they were making something ridiculous.
- Andrew C (✓)
I'm watching this tonight and will let you know my verdict
- Jorge Escobar
I love this movie. It has everything you could ever want in a movie- violence, special effects, Angie's wet ass, revenge, betrayal, mysterious thousand-year-old secret societies, and curvy bullets that go around stuff.
- Morgan
It's James McAvoy. I could watch him read the dictionary. xD
- Colette
The comic is totally different; it is set after the villians in the DC universe defeat all the heroes, and erase them from our memories. After that you have these crime famlirs that rule the world, but some are getting restless. The deadshot analog fakes his own death and his son needs to take his place, and accept his own inner villian/evil
- RAPatton
from iPhone
...omg, I'm so glad other people out there feel like I do: I left this movie feeling totally and completely fleeced of $11.75. unlike a similarily preposterous "action" movie that came out around the same time, "Eagle Eye," this one took itself too seriously for being such a horrible, horrible movie
- .LAG liked that