Prometheus

I'm not even going to dignify a photo of this movie. What a load of crap. If one wants to steal and plagiarize 2001, try to plagiarize! Don't dumb it down to a fraction (less than 1/100) of the intelligence of 2001. This is proof positive that Americans in 2012 is much, much stupider than Americans in 1968. In turn it is proof positive that the American science education has seriously fucked up for the past 45 years and is sliding farther downhill as we speak.

Do these people even know what the fuck DNA is? It is a bad sign that the screenwriters were too lazy to even look up or make up a name for the star system of the spaceship's destination. (Yeah, yeah, I know the moon has a code. What of it?)

Perhaps the most hilarious part of the movie is how plastic and ridiculous the "gods" look. And they look stupid. Even the Nazi biologists knew that they needed a biological weapon that would target the brown people but spare themselves. Pu-leeez. No surprise then that the aliens are all Nazi-white. Hell, my ancestors had nothing to do with those white-ass aliens. Thanks but no thanks. The Nazi association hit me again looking at the (bottle-)blond David Fassbender and Charlize Theron walk around the movie with their icy faces for most of the movie. American movies and television have increasingly become progressively white-flooded in the past 20 years that I've been watching them. I wonder when I'll finally reach the puking point. Getting close though.

As we walked out of the theater I complained about how incredible --- incredibly stupid, that is --- the movie is. Sam said with his usual deadpan, "We don't go see this kind of movie for scientific validity. It's all about the slithering tentacles."

"And slime," I added.

"Yes, it's all about the tentacles and slime." He said. "But there is nothing scary about tentacles. We can eat them."

"Yes, like squid." I said.

That's all what it's good for, stir-fry tentacles.

The Man Who Folded Himself

by David Gerrold，写于1971年，最近新出的再版。这是一本关于时间旅行的小说。我觉得关于时间旅行的设定和理论已经被写尽了，没新东西可以挖掘了。这篇小说中采用的理论化解时间旅行 paradox 跟 2009 年 Charles Stross 的中篇《羊皮纸书》 (Palimpsest) 里的设定差不多，简单地说就是历史是可以重写的，不会崩掉。后半部分的发展看得出是受到海因兰的经典短篇《你们这些僵尸》的影响。

看到一半的时候猜到了作者是弯的。看到75%的时候几乎可以肯定作者是弯的。最后作者在重版的后序中承认了自己是弯的。小说风格颇煽情且内向，我觉得写得不错。现在我不太喜欢那种工程型的科幻小说，人物情节感情什么的都是摆设，终极目的是为了解释和具体化某个深奥的理论（不是数学就是物理），或者为了描述怪物与外星人的战争场面。我喜欢感情上比较亲切富于人性的故事。

Coppelia by Bolshoi

Bolshoi 几乎每年都要来肯尼迪中心遛一圈，演出一星期。今年带来的戏是 Coppelia，上星期五跑去看了一场。这剧感觉很女性，男主只有一段很短的独舞，另外有两段 Pas de deux 就完了，而女演员除了主角有好几场独舞之外还有好几场女群舞，第三幕（最后一幕）里还有三四个女配角（可能不该叫“女配角”）轮番上来独舞。不仅女角色的舞蹈数量占绝对优势，而且故事情节也是女性角色聪明强悍，一路掌握主动；笨头笨脑的男主角被教训了一通之后乖乖回头认错 ...

第一次现场看芭蕾舞，无从比较技术的高低，就不乱说了。总之感觉没有电影（不管是记录片还是文艺片）里那么让人眼珠弹落的高技术。但是！拍电影可以一个镜头拍几十遍挑个最好看的剪进去，而且不需要前后一气呵成，一个跳跃也可以卯足了劲跳，跳完歇半天。现场表演可是一整晚从头跳到尾，一星期 ... 好吧，倒不需要一星期天天演，基本上三个主舞者轮流上。

回家把节目单翻了翻，发现男主似乎很年轻，2007年才从舞蹈学校毕业，而女主至少三十多岁了，1996年就毕业进入 Bolshoi！

某同学也是第一次现场看芭蕾舞，不仅没打瞌睡而且看得津津有味。音乐好听，舞蹈这么 physical ，美女们这么漂亮，布景服装又极其华丽，眼睛大吃糖果还来不及。 跟美国的寒酸的芭蕾舞团相比（从The Company里看来的印象），Bolshoi 在服装布景上好奢侈，而且人超多，动不动就二十来号人呼啦啦一起上来跳群舞，乌泱乌泱的，Opera House 的舞台都显得小了。

我一直没搞清芭蕾舞中到底是怎么用脚尖站起来的，放狗一搜才知道 en pointe 真的是完全而彻底地站在脚趾尖上！额，好变态。但是还有那么多女孩子和女青年前赴后继地忍痛站在脚尖上，用脚尖走路 ...

十月份圣彼得堡的Mariinsky芭蕾舞团会来表演 Prokofiev 的灰姑娘现代版，打算去看一下。主要是非常喜欢这个音乐，好复杂的玩意儿。

在苏联的政权下仍然出现了 Prokofiev，哈恰图良这样现代风格的作曲家，很厉害呀。

Ragtime

最早接触到 Ragtime 音乐是在电视上看见一个节目介绍百老汇音乐剧 "Ragtime"，至少有十年了，具体是哪一年已经不记得。这个音乐剧根据 E.L. Doctorow 的同名小说 (1975年）改编，叙述二十世纪初期，即 Ragtime 类音乐正当红的时代，社会上层的白人，东欧移民，和社会下层的黑人音乐家三组人物的故事。男主角由男中音 Brian Stokes Mitchell 担任，节目中虽然只有剧中片段，都给我留下很深的印象。尤其是主题曲 Ragtime，不知为什么，听过很少几次，它的旋律就留在我的脑子里长久不去。不过呢，主题曲虽然是 Ragtime 类音乐，剧中大部分曲子仍然是音乐剧歌曲，并不是 Ragtime 风格。

后来好几年没什么动静，直到两年半三年之前，我偶然地发现本地NPR电台WAMU每周六晚上播出的老派（1920-1940年代）爵士乐节目 Hot Jazz Saturday Night ，迅速地迷恋上了传统爵士乐。然后又过了一段，差不多两年前，在这个节目上听到了年轻钢琴家 Bryan Wright 录制的 Bix Beiderbecke 作曲的印象派钢琴组曲，极其惊艳，就去找来 Wright 刚刚出版的 CD "Breakin' Notes"，这时才彻底地爱上了 Ragtime 音乐。

Ragtime 或许不能算是 Scott Joplin 发明的，但毫无争议是被他作的一系列经典钢琴曲推上主流音乐舞台的。

Scott Joplin

也说不清为什么这么喜欢 Ragtime ，一方面我本来就喜欢钢琴的音质，而且 Ragtime 节奏非常有固定特点，好像一直可以弹下去弹下去弹下去永远没有结束，但保留了即兴演奏的空间。大部分的 Ragtime 曲子听上去很欢快，exuberant，可以舞之蹈之，同时又含有淡淡的忧伤 (melancholy)。Ragtime 的这些自相矛盾的特质把我迷得颠三倒四不能自已。其实 Ragtime 属于非常过气的音乐，跟传统爵士乐一样从红遍四海变成非常小众的音乐类型，现在只有很少的铁杆音乐家和音乐迷在演奏和听。这让我觉得自己仿佛是个恐龙，仿佛生错了时代。

贴两段很喜欢的曲子：

Bryan Wright & Martin Spitznagel 两人合奏的经典名著 Maple Leaf Rag。两人交接的时候特别有趣可爱。

现代 Ragtime 作曲家 David Thomas Roberts 演奏的 Gladiolus Rag，跟一般的 Ragtime 欢快的演奏风格不同，速度较慢而温柔，于是 melancholy 十分明显。

今天在友人收集的花样滑冰节目中看到 Matt Savoie 的2004年自由滑节目 Ragtime Medley。这个节目我过去没见过，一看之下联想起 Ragtime 的各种美好。故记之。

****

加一句奇异的巧合。

在 YouTube 上翻 Ragtime 视频时发现原来有个叫 World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest 的东西，一群 Ragtime 爱好者混在一起弹奏极老的古董钢琴，还比赛。惊奇地发现这玩意儿每年在 Peoria, Illinois，这地方我虽然没去过，却早已听说过，原来是 Matt Savoie 的家乡！

A Shadow on the Wall

A quote from "A Clash of Kings": 

In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold. Between them stands a sellsword, a little man of common birth and no great mind. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. Who should he kill?

Therein lies GRRM's meditation on the nature and meaning of power. What is power? What is dominance and submission? And why? 

The best I can come up with at this time, after reading and obsessing over A Song of Ice and Fire for over a whole year and am a little fed up with my addiction by now, is this:

Power is one person getting another person to do his bidding.

Simple, isn't it? Yet so complex.

In the end, one person is just one person. He may be a big person with terrifying power who can kill you if you do not obey, like Gregor Clegane (aka, the Mountain that Rides). He may be a vastly rich person who can pay someone to enforce his will, like Tyrwin Lannister. There are various ways to make one person do another one's bidding, with force, with incentives, with fear, with faith, with love, friendship, loyalty, or any other psychological devices. The entire human history is a display of these tricks. Nowadays they call it "leadership."

"Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less."
“So power is a mummer’s trick?”
“A shadow on the wall,” Varys murmured, “yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”

(People almost always interpret the "very small man" Varys refers to as Tyrion Lannister, but that is not completely true. He could also mean Joffrey Baratheon.)

But a man is a man, and Valar Morghulis --- All men die, or "Anyone can be killed." When a person says, "Fuck you, I'm out of here," or when a group of people say, "Fuck you, we refuse," how is one man to stop them from walking off?

GRRM's meditation about power and submission can be traced back to his southern vampire novel "Fevre Dream," which is ultimately about slavery, both in terms of the actual slavery in the South and the mental slavery that is an integral part of the human experience. Everyone submits to someone or something in life. There is no escaping it. And submission --- doing another one's bidding --- is neither good nor bad in itself. But he is exploring how and why the system of dominance and submission works between people. Humans are both social animals who rely on their tribe/pack to survive and self-conscious animals with a sense of individual, creating the contradictions in our social life.

Again, I have the eerie feeling that GRRM is so incredibly not American in the head.

There is no answer to Varys' riddle, and there is no answer to GRRM's musing over power and free will. One of the most telling options he proposed lies in Book 4 in the series, "A Feast for Crows." In Braavos lived a secret society of "Faceless Men," which was established by escaped slaves from Valyrian mines. They gave the gift of death. The mission of Faceless Men, in addition to assassinate for pay, was to give the gift to people who beg for it. Indeed it is a mercy and a gift for many, especially for slaves.

The idea is more clearly expressed in Book 5, "A Dance With Dragons." When Tyrion Lannister became a slave in Astapor and later Myreen, he pondered that even in slavery one has a choice --- the choice is death. He chose to live and be enslaved, because death is so ... final. But, still, the point is, one always has a choice.

So, then, GRRM is indeed American after all.

Don't Troll the Idiots

There are stupid questions, and there are idiots who will never let facts get in the way of beliefs.

I was a bit taken aback (and delighted) by the blunt words of Pamela Gay, a professor of astronomy at some university in the Midwest who gave a talk on common misconceptions and flat-out wrong ideas in astronomy. She has a podcast online that I mean to check out.

In addition to disputing theories like the end of the world according to the Mayan Calendar and why the moon has different phases (not the Earth's shadow), she gave the advice "Do not troll the idiots, because they will just troll you back. There are people who do not understand, and there are idiots. Know the difference. When you get into an argument with idiots, find an escape as quickly as you can." 

Another funny comment from her. She mentioned that, in her class, a student asked, "Dr. G ...", because this is the Midwest and people can't say "Gay."

The Solution to the Time Travel Paradox

It is so simple and works so well in the currently known scientific theories. I went to a talk about faster-than-light travel as a sci fi trope, and the scientists on the panel all said it was impossible, while the writers on the panel said it is useful as a story-telling device. I asked a question about dealing with time-travel (backward) and the paradox that ensues as a storytelling device and the many different approaches to resolve the difficulty. One of the panelist (a very nice Italian guy who brought his wife to the convention) recommended a book by David Gerrold titled "The Man Who Folded Himself" (not a spoof of Heinlein's "All You Zombies") who used the premise elegantly. I'll have to check it out.

One of the benefits of putting up one's hand during a talk is that others in the audience can hear you too. A sci fi fan with an education in physics in the audience, John Ashmead, stopped me after the talk and told me about his research on quantum physicists' work that has given a theoretically sound solution to the time-travel paradox. When a particle is sent back in time with an intervention to create a paradox, they have shown with calculations, the paradox will cancel each other out and therefore will not occur. This calculation is consistent with all current quantum physics and relativity, including the theory of "block time" (aka, block universe or eternalism). Simple. Depressing. Probably true.