Monthly Archives: November 2014

Inherit the Wind

Saw the movie INHERIT THE WIND today for the first time in many years. This is the 1960 film version of the 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, as directed by Stanley Kramer, about the famous 1925 … Continue reading

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Resuming SFADB Development

I’ve had concepts for what I want to implement on my science fiction awards site, what was first the Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards (http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/) and which has been superseded by the Science Fiction Awards Database (http://www.sfadb.com/), since at … Continue reading

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Scientific fidelity vs narrative; anti-gay bigotry and socialism; the ecology of faith; Valerie Tarico on religion; Hans Zimmer and conceptual breakthrough

Here’s one of several articles in the past week or so about why we should not nitpick the science in Interstellar: Slate: Back Off, Scientists: Don’t be so nitpicky about the technical details of sci-fi movies like Interstellar I have … Continue reading

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EO Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence, part 2

Second of several posts about Edward O. Wilson’s book THE MEANING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, which as I described earlier both here on my blog and on Facebook, is a concise summary of this important scientist’s views on the big issues … Continue reading

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EO Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence, part 1

Here’s the first of several posts about Edward O. Wilson’s book THE MEANING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, which as I described earlier both here on my blog and on Facebook, is a concise summary of this important scientist’s views on the … Continue reading

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Hans Zimmer and Interstellar, again

Very happy to see this post on Slate by J. Bryan Lowder: Music of the Spheres: In Interstellar, Hans Zimmer scores the universe. This is to follow up my earlier post, Interstellar…Music, which concerned complaints that the music overwhelmed to … Continue reading

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And the moon rose over an open field

Here’s one of Paul Simon’s best songs, “America”, from Simon & Garfunkel’s 1968 album Bookends; a song that is recently getting play on a certain TV commercial… Has Simon sold out? Well, the TV commercial is about patronizing local, small-town … Continue reading

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Interstellar… Music

Gary Westfahl’s reviews save me lots of time and money. Whenever I think a new SF film might be interesting enough to see…. his review often persuades me otherwise. (And when I do see them, my reaction is much the … Continue reading

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Sibelius 1 and Mahler 6

I did a post a couple weeks back about how I tend to like the later albums by pop/rock singers and groups over their earlier ones. Springsteen, REM, Darren Hayes. This applies generally to classical composers as well, though the … Continue reading

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Fundamentalist Beliefs, the Real World, and Science Fiction

“Those of us in the U.S. think we’re amazing at everything… mostly because we’re blissfully ignorant about how the rest of the world operates.” Here’s a fun video of a fundamentalist pastor from an Atlanta suburb whose mind is boggled … Continue reading

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