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 →