"Cheating"

Today, a few minutes after I had taken the photo below, I ran into a fella from the local photo club (who is a great guy). I told him about how I am making art, drawings on the computer, on a special screen you can draw on (Wacom Cintiq). Jeff, who was out photographing with a thirty-five year old camera (Minolta SRT 101), told me that this was "cheating". :) And he wasn't kidding. For some reason he regards the feel of the paper to be essential to art. Well, like Scott McCloud points out, if you remove the text or picture from the paper, all you have left is dead trees.
I pointed out to him that when photography was invented, landscape photographers thought that *it* was "cheating"!

Culture clash

Found objects

I forget who observed this, but: everything anybody desires is a found object. Nobody every desires anything before they have seen it.
This is interesting to the artist: you don't have to fit your art into what you, or people, expect, because don't know what they desire before they see it.

Swirldance

Art by Eolake Stobblehouse.
Museum grade prints available, 40x50 cm, pigment on fine art paper.
Signed and numbered, limited edition ten prints only. US$ 95 + s/h.

The Philadelphia Story

"No mean Machiavelli is smiling, cynical Sidney Kidd. The world is his oyster, with an R in every month."
- C.K. Dexter Haven, The Philadelphia Story

What does it mean? I have no idea, but I like it! Like poetry.
And I love the film. It is that rare work which just has that je ne sais quoi which makes is a masterpiece. (More about it later, I am still watching it.)

On people's power

Great comment from Pascal on my law/people piece.

Peanuts quotes

"Just a little humor there to keep you at ease."
- Peppermint Patty after firing a pun at her doctor.

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"Bonk! Now *that's* funny!"
- Snoopy, after throwing his typewriter at the head of Lucy, who has just been critcizing his stories as being "sort-of-funny-considering-they-were-written-by-a-dog."

David Pogue

Nice post by David Pogue about Bill Gates' new philanthropy.
The last comment he quotes (about Charlie Brown) was mine! :) (I have a head full of quotes from Peanuts cartoons.)

David also mentions this great video. The world is doing a lot better than we are led to believe!

Growth

French

Quite unexpectedly and inexplicably, I am starting to have a bit of interest in French. Technically I had it in school, but it was the first subject where I did not do well. So I have a long way to go to get to any half-assed level of decency.

Who knows a good online French course (with sound obviously)?

Who can recommend good French films? Comedies are preferred, or other big canvas typie thingies, as mentioned I am not much for "human drama" stories. ("Subway" is one of my old favorites.)

"Walk the Line"

Am I really the only person on the planet who found Walk the Line to be boring? I was so looking forward to it because everybody is raving about it. But I have tried three times to watch it now, and it just doesn't keep my interest.

I am wondering if it not about this specific film, but just because I am getting less and less interested in "human drama" stories.

About censorship, laws, and agreements

(The first film they wanted to ban, Edison's The Kiss.)

Here is very interesting article about censorship in movies. Please read it.
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Have you ever thought about that laws are simply written rules of what the majority thinks is right? When we have laws about theft and murder, which maybe 99% of the population agree is wrong (at least when it happens to themselves), then they are not disputed. But when we have laws which a sizeable minority disagree with, such as laws about abortion, drugs, or censorship, then we have ongoing fighting about it.

But this is only an issue of agreements and majorities. What the majority can agree is wrong in the USA is a very different story to what they can agree is wrong in Denmark. (I doubt they would ever consider outlawing abotion in DK for instance.) And this is again a world apart from what they agree on in Lebanon or in Singapore.

I think many people, including sometimes myself, have this idea of laws as being natural law and immutable, because they feel so real. But they are nothing of the sort, they are just solidified agreements. And the greater the majority, the more solid the agreement seems, but it is still just an agreement.

One might for instance imagine a society where even theft is not illegal. This could be (in a very rough society) because criminality is so overwhelming that it can't be fought. Or it could be in a utopia where everything can be manufactured by machines (like nanotechnology) instantly and for free, so there is no reason to be upset by losing anything, and no reason to steal anything. (Such a society might even be less than a century away, but very hard for us to imagine.)

Update:
Some people challenge my idea that laws are from the people, saying that laws are made by small minorities. See, I stopped believing in this a while ago. I think that apparent rulers (dictators or not) are not at all masters, but puppets of the collective mind of the people. The funny part is that neither the "rulers" or the people realize it! The people rule themselves with an iron fist, and complain about their plight!