Food animals are given substances to maximize weight-gain (or milk-production) per unit feed. How much of these substances comes through in our food, and affects us? Most food animals have miserable lives, with inevitable biochemical consequences. What substances produced by their stress-altered chemistry come through and affect us? Plants are bred but for easy harvesting, appearance, shelf life, and pest resistance––not nutrition and flavor. Pests too seek flavor and nutrition, so these are… read more →
Based on the book by Siddhartha Mukherjee. A fascinating and clear overview of the history of cancer, theories, and and its treatment.
Lewis tracks the history of the subprime mortgage meltdown and our continuing recession and inflation. His clear thinking and articulate writing are uniformly insightful and interesting. Most books today need editing, and begin well but deteriorate. This book is an exception.
Taxes: Bureaucrats want higher taxes to increase their salaries, pensions, and turf. Politicians want higher taxes so they’ll have more largesse to bestow and trade. Most citizens want tax money for education, research, welfare, etc., etc., etc. The few who pay more in taxes than they gain in benefits join the above or perish. This is why we can expect a fate like Rome’s.
Both the genteel British version (Ian Richardson) and crude American version (Kevin Spacey) are excellent, but crudity repels me. Scriptwriter Andrew Davies raised British verbal evasiveness to an art form, and wrote with a scalpel, whereas the American dialogue was written with a raised middle finger. And I was taken with Ian Richardson.
The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain, by John Kounios and Mark Beeman. NY, Random House, ©2015. The latest brain science corroborates what some of us have already discovered for ourselves about the creative process. The authors have many good suggestions. A book worth owning.
1. When a character walks out to his car, pulling the camera back to take in a wide angle tips us off, making the explosion anticlimactic. 2. When two characters talk in a car and you show road conditions, I am too nervous and worried ––keep your eyes on the road!––that what the characters say doesn’t register. 3. A criminal’s memory of his crime (Ian Richardson in House of Cards) or a victim’s flashback (Christina… read more →
An engaging movie about a sweet, shy girl, played by Christina Mauro, who is injured, and her effectst hereafter on each of the persons in her life. Well-orchestrated casting. Excellent acting and direction. It was irrelevant that I didn’t buy the premise because I understood and cared about each of the diverse, likable characters.
I didn’t expect to like this TV series because plots involving drugs bore me. However, the characters instantly engaged me, and the plot gripped me. Excellent casting, acting, direction, and photography. The most memorable moment: a roll of toilet paper is scooted across the floor. Congratulations to the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan.
1948, produced and directed by Carol Reed, story and screenplay by Graham Greene, starring Michèle Morgan, Ralph Richardson, and Sonia Dresdel. Cover blurb: ”Elegantly balancing suspense and farce, this tale of the fraught relationship between a boy and the beloved butler he suspects of murder is a delightfully macabre thriller of the first order and a visually and verbally dazzling knockout.”