Odd Player

Originally produced in Italian, this narrative and dramatization of Leonardo da Vinci’s life is based on written documents (including da Vinci’s own notebooks), eyewitness accounts, and biographies, most written soon after the artist’s death. The film opens with Leonardo dying in the arms of the king, then calls into question the validity of that incident recorded by Vasari, once thought to be the definitive source of information on the lives of many Renaissance artists. Following this brief introduction, the narrator begins with the story of da Vinci’s illegitimate birth and continues, for the most part, chronologically through the stages of his life, concentrating mainly on his art and inventions. Although most of the scenes are taken from true incidents, much that happens during his early years is based on speculation, and drama is added throughout by suppositions of what he thought or did at times when documentation is scanty or absent. The lengthy narrative on two discs has been broken down into five segments that can be shown separately. In addition, there are a few short sections about the time period, including one detailing the younger, more prolific Michelangelo’s most famous works. Because it has been translated, the mouth movements and voice-overs are not always in sync, but the lush scenery, detailed costumes, and dramatic photography make for a compelling look at this important artist and inventor.

You can buy this disc here

The heroine Eleni Gage (Gatzoyianni) was one of the many victims of the atrocities committed during the Greek Civil War. Many may be familiar with her story via the film Eleni. This book, however, tells the story of another Eleni Gage who, in accordance with the papponymous naming tradition of Greece, was given the name of her paternal grandmother. North of Ithaka reflects her personal quest to retrace her roots and visit the house where her grandmother was imprisoned before her execution. In seeking information about her grandmother, the author also discovers the culture in which she lived. Her account is not only a moving testimony, but also a treasury of folk custom and tradition.

In the village of Lia, just below the Albanian border, the author’s main purpose is to rebuild her grandparents’ ruined house. Her efforts are beset with interesting challenges that provide us with much information on folk customs. For instance, due to the negative associations of the house, she is warned not to proceed with any renovation and her aunts tell her that if she does so she will “be killed by Albanians and eaten by wolves” (pp. 15 and 19). Here one can see that historically the word “Albanian” (Alvanos ) has had similar connotations to the word Arapis (a pejorative form of “Arab”) and was invoked as a phovitro, or bogeyman, especially to frighten children.

The author hires stonemasons to rebuild the house, and at each phase in the construction interesting customs are shared. For instance, before building can take place the old stone foundations are unearthed. As in other parts of Greece, a cock is killed and its head buried in the stonework, while its meat is fed to the builders (p. 116). However, we are also told of another custom seldom encountered elsewhere whereby “masons would place a coin on the cornerstones of a house to make it siderenio, strong as metal” (p. 67). On completion of the house “the owner adorns a wooden cross with oranges and money-filled handkerchiefs, then plants it like a flag on top of her new roof” for the builders to claim (p. 11). This flag ( flambouro ) is met throughout the Balkans in the context of wedding ritual, and apples may replace the oranges. Indeed, one wedding wish, kalorziko or “good roots,” is also made to someone on moving to a new home.

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Border-Crossing is a series of fifteen papers based on the proceedings of an international conference entitled “Mumming in Cross-Border and Cross-Community Contexts” held at the University of Ulster’s Academy of Irish Cultural Heritages in Derry, in 2003.

Three of the papers are directly concerned with mumming and rhyming in and around the border areas between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Taken together, these three papers build up a very vivid picture of how the mummers or rhymers of this area operated in the past and how the traditions have developed. In the 1930s and 1940s the mummers were not seen as a Catholic tradition. The houses of both Catholics and Protestants would be visited, and in some cases Protestants took part. The whole event would culminate in a mummers’ ball to which the whole community was invited, regardless of political and religious affiliations. After a decline during the troubles, there was a period when the mummers became a nationalistic expression. More recently, there has been an increase in groups of mummers in the area, and performances have moved from houses to community centres and pubs. Collections are made for charities, and the mummers’ dance has become a fundraiser. These performances may be in Catholic or Protestant venues, and cross-cultural charities are chosen to appeal to both sides of the community.

A fourth paper covers much of the same ground, but goes on to examine the apparent lack of texts in the Irish language. The author believes that although the main texts are of English origin, there are remnants of an Irish tradition within the ancillary characters. For instance, the doctor’s speech from the Antrim/West Tyrone/Armagh area has a series of impossible ingredients in the doctor’s cure. These can be closely matched to Irish texts of riddles for a cure for whooping cough. The author also hypothesises that the characters of Jack Straw and the Green Knight are actually two characters from an eighteenth-century Irish play (Sir Sopin and the Irish Chieftain, respectively). He surmises that an original Irish play has been supplanted by the English play, but that these independent characters have been retained.

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Perhaps nothing, other than tantalizing dinner smells, brings people to the same table as well as a jigsaw puzzle. Especially at holiday time, when after unwrapping presents, families and friends often welcome an activity that unifies the generations.

“Growing up, there was always a puzzle under our Christmas tree,” recalls Anne Williams of Lewiston, Maine, a leading jigsaw puzzle historian. “After we opened the presents, we’d get out the card tables. You can drift in and out; you can talk or not talk; you can compete a little bit if you want to see who will finish their section first. For most people, it’s a very relaxing, pleasant activity and you have the satisfaction of seeing a picture emerge as you continue your efforts.”

In the Williams household, the goal was to start a 1,000-piece puzzle at Christmas and complete it by New Year’s.

Stevanne Auerbach, an expert on child’s play known as Dr. Toy, considers jigsaw puzzles a group entertainment bargain.

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Last night I watched The Da Vinci Code on Blu-ray disc. I had already read before hand.

Firstly, the film was outstanding! I didn’t really know what to expect from it. In fact, I went expecting it to be rather mediocre. I was wrong; the film was perfect on all accounts.

Dan Brown’s story is thoroughly breathtaking and gripping. Whether you believe it or not, there is no doubt the storyline is fascinating. It is so cleverly written. The plot is complicated but, as with the book, it is explained perfectly.

Brown created some brilliant characters and the actors were perfect for their parts.

The film was long but I was gripped and it certainly did not feel too long and nor did it drag on.

I thoroughly recommend the film (and the book) to anyone.

Lately, IVe noticed that some games (such as Unreal Tournament 3 and Clive Barker’s Jericho) require you to install the software version of Ageia’s physics engine onto your system. It bathers me, because it’s wholly separate from the game and integrates itself into Windows as a service, and you also have to uninstall it separately from whatever game is using it. Why can’t this software be just part of the gaming code itself, like the Havok system (from Source games) or earlier physics engines? Ageia has already been all but laughed out of existence for its silty hardware “physics accelerator,” so is the engine worth the extra intrusiveness into my system?

This brings up a larger point: Lots of online games require other add-ons to facilitate matchmaking. Personally, I despise GameSpy and its ilk, and I wonder why more games can’t have their own integrated software that doesn’t need to be installed separately on your system. Is the industry just specializing? Are developers just outsourcing more and more of everything?

Am I the only person who gets annoyed by the intrusive third-party apps? What do you guys think of all this?

I just completed one of those personality tests. This one was quite thorough so I would imagine the results are accurate to some degree.

Here are my results:

Please note that in the following text, “you” refers to “me”. The text is simple copied from my results which can be found on the link at the bottom of this page.

About You
Your attention to detail, confidence, sense of order, and focus on functionality combine to make you an ANALYST.
You are very curious about how things work, delving into the mechanics behind things.
Along those lines, how well something works is usually more important to you than what it looks like.
You find beauty and wonder mainly in concrete, functional, earthly things.
You are very aware of your own abilities, and you believe that you will find the best way of doing things.
Accordingly, problems do not intimidate you, as you believe in yourself.
You trust yourself to find solutions within the boundaries of your knowledge.
You don’t spend a lot of time imagining how things could be different—you’re well-grounded in the here-and-now.
It is important for you to follow a routine, and you prefer the familiar to the unknown.
You much prefer to have time to plan for things, feeling better with a schedule than with keeping plans up in the air until the last minute. Your decisions are well thought out, and you’re not the least bit impulsive.

How you relate to others
Your outgoing nature, understanding of others, and directness make you ENCOURAGING.
You want others to do well for themselves, and you generally believe in their abilities.
You often know what’s good for people because of your caring nature and your worldview.
When you care about someone, you don’t keep it to yourself: you are good at letting people know that you’re thinking of them.
Because you trust people, you take violations of that trust very seriously.
You thrive in social situations, and even though you know who you like and who you don’t like, you can interact well with many different types of people.
You have a healthy respect for people who have earned what they have, and you strive to be similar to successful others.
You are a loyal friend and a good listener.
You much prefer to have time to plan for things, feeling better with a schedule than with keeping plans up in the air until the last minute. Your decisions are well thought out, and you’re not the least bit impulsive.

Let me know what you think of my results or even try the test yourself.

My Personal DNA Report - Take the Test

Traditionally, one of the factors driving Western society has been the fact that women prefer successful, affluent men over men who are less successful. Because men understood that women would be reluctant to marry men who couldn’t comfortably support a wife and children, men were motivated to be successful. That simple mechanism has suffered a double whammy in the past forty years. First, sex has been divorced from marriage. Second—and here’s what’s really disturbing to those of us in the over-thirty crowd—sexual satisfaction has been divorced from women altogether. If you don’t work with today’s teenage boys on a regular basis, you may not understand the extent to which pornographic images of women have replaced the real thing. In the general population, the best estimates are that roughly 70 percent of college-age men now use pornography regularly. Among those men, use of pornography can readily escalate from an occasional diversion to a daily pastime and finally, to becoming the preferred sexual outlet. In one Harvard study, 69 percent of men who sought help for sexual problems were experiencing “compulsive masturbation”—meaning that they were masturbating more than they thought they should be, and/or they were sometimes masturbating in inappropriate places or at inappropriate times. Fifty percent of the men in the same study were described as being “pornography-dependent,” meaning that they could not achieve an erection without pornography. More and more boys are discovering that they prefer a sexy image on a computer screen to a real live woman with expectations, a woman who has her own agenda, a woman who may say things that the boy doesn’t want to hear.

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To say that the late Alan Dundes (1934–2005) was a monument in folklore studies is to state the obvious. Almost more than any other figure in the discipline, Dundes helped to define the academic trends of research and analysis for two generations of American folklorists. He was a prolific writer, often publishing in hard-to-obtain journals, with material frequently being out of print soon after publication. Although Dundes wrote several books, his primary means for disseminating his ideas was through the essay or article. Therefore, it is a suitable tribute to such an important scholar that his colleague Simon J. Bronner should have taken up the task of retrieving and assembling a goodly body of Dundes’s work, and publishing it in this collection of essays. In The Meaning of Folklore, Bronner has brought together twenty articles assembled under two rubrics, “Structure and Analysis” and “Worldview and Identity.” These articles cover the whole of the forty-year period of Dundes’s research and thus constitute a general overview of and introduction to his thinking. Suitably, Bronner has placed first the early article “Folklore as a Mirror of Culture” (1969), which stresses Dundes’s argument about the relationship between folklore and culture and how his view differs from that of the great American anthropologist Franz Boas and his school. The ensuing wide range of articles cover subjects such as structuralism as an analytical method, psychological analyses—especially relating to subliminal sexual innuendo, analyses of discreet folklore subjects both verbal and behavioural, comparative analyses of non-western (European) materials, and a great deal more. This book is a rich treasury that will repay re-reading several times.

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This quirky, involving video enters the home and mind of Newbery winner Nancy Willard, who creates bizarre art works out of soda cans, cat whiskers, stones, and discarded objects. Gentle music plays as the camera examines Willard’s oddly beautiful puppets and statues, which sometimes come to life in weird puppet sequences designed by Ken Robinson. Willard discusses her immigrant grandmother, chemist father, and bibliophile mother. The latter inspired Nancy to tell stories and to embrace her artistic side. Actresses portray some of her childhood memories in the video’s opening scenes. Jane Yolen appears in an interview, discussing how Willard lives in a world of ideas. Literary critic Walter Mayes also appears singing Willard’s praises. Willard does a great job reading from her book, The Moon & Riddles Diner and the Sunnyside Cafe (Harcourt, 2001). She also contributes a song (”Shoe Fly Sally”) co-written with Cliff Sussman (who in turn co-wrote the lovely score with Richard Kosinsky). The best sequence shows Willard creating one of her elaborate characters, a bird carrying the moon, out of shells, bones, and paint. This sequence might inspire young artists to create art inspired by their dreams and imagination. The video is not perfect though. A segment with Willard speaking at a conference is marred by bad sound, and some of the technical aspects (e.g., the lighting) are uneven. Also, “Newbery” is misspelled on the video’s package. However, Uncommon Sense does a wonderful job of capturing the personality and spirit of Nancy Willard. This video is for larger collections, and for libraries serving fans of Nancy Willard. It could be used in art classes because it shows, up close and personal, an artist creating unusual works out of ordinary objects.