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Jared Diamond lecture
Mar. 2nd, 2006 07:27 am...was quite enjoyable, and the place was packed, including an entire high school group that bussed in from Pittsburg, PA! My big frustration, though, is that he lectured so specifically on Collapse. Now, it took him 700 pages to make his arguments efficiently and succintly, and that just can't translate into an hour lecture and still maintain all of the power and wonder of his arguments and evidence. It just can't work. So it was a very brief overview that didn't really provide info that I hadn't already gotten from reading the book. It was fun to listen to him talk, and I'm hoping that it inspired people who were there and hadn't yet read the book to read it, but I think I would've prefered to hear him talk more about one specific sub-topic, or maybe about his experiences researching and writing the book itself.
Also, I'm having a horrid case of movius interruptus -- we made the mistake of putting MirrorMask in an hour before Lost started (which![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zodarzone watches religiously). So I was thinking about all sorts of things I wanted to say about my impressions of it, but I think most of them will wait until I've seen the last 1/2 hour (this was my first time seeing it). So far, I'm enjoying it immensely, especially in the way in which it manages to, at moments, really successfully capture the experience of dreaming (it reminded me of the moments when Fear and Loathing managed to really capture the experience of tripping). Not all the time -- I don't think anything that has that much plot and coherence and runs for an hour and a half can feel truly uniformly dreamlike (at least in comparison to my own dreams), but it does incline me to think that I'm unlikely to share the frustrations some expressed about the very thin plot or lack of meaningful connection to the 'real' world. Part of my very positive reaction to it is definitely tied to how strongly I feel about dreaming (also, the movie's mind-blowingly gorgeous, but that was to be expected). A movie that is largely about a dream is perfectly fulfilling to me in and of itself. I love dreaming, and I consider it an important part of my life. I intentionally set my alarm early in the mornings so I have time to doze and finish good dreams (actually, I have a tendency to try to finish most bad ones, too) before I have to jump out of bed, and I'd be horribly depressed if someone were to tell me I'd never again get to dream and remember the dreams (even if only briefly, as is often the case). They're adventures, chances to experience things I wouldn't any other way, chances to let my brain play with ideas that are bothering me, and they're beautifully, fascinating unpredictable.
Also, I'm having a horrid case of movius interruptus -- we made the mistake of putting MirrorMask in an hour before Lost started (which
zodarzone watches religiously). So I was thinking about all sorts of things I wanted to say about my impressions of it, but I think most of them will wait until I've seen the last 1/2 hour (this was my first time seeing it). So far, I'm enjoying it immensely, especially in the way in which it manages to, at moments, really successfully capture the experience of dreaming (it reminded me of the moments when Fear and Loathing managed to really capture the experience of tripping). Not all the time -- I don't think anything that has that much plot and coherence and runs for an hour and a half can feel truly uniformly dreamlike (at least in comparison to my own dreams), but it does incline me to think that I'm unlikely to share the frustrations some expressed about the very thin plot or lack of meaningful connection to the 'real' world. Part of my very positive reaction to it is definitely tied to how strongly I feel about dreaming (also, the movie's mind-blowingly gorgeous, but that was to be expected). A movie that is largely about a dream is perfectly fulfilling to me in and of itself. I love dreaming, and I consider it an important part of my life. I intentionally set my alarm early in the mornings so I have time to doze and finish good dreams (actually, I have a tendency to try to finish most bad ones, too) before I have to jump out of bed, and I'd be horribly depressed if someone were to tell me I'd never again get to dream and remember the dreams (even if only briefly, as is often the case). They're adventures, chances to experience things I wouldn't any other way, chances to let my brain play with ideas that are bothering me, and they're beautifully, fascinating unpredictable.
