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Last login: 3 hours agoStockTrader: StockTrader is a 46 year old guy from New York, New York, USA.; Likes 9,525 pages, 356 videos, 258 photos • 434 fans • Received 70 reviews; Member since Feb 24, 2006

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SAVE DARFUR: May 11, 3:41pm 4 reviews humanitarianism, africa, genocide, darfur
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/darfur/campaign.jsp?cam...; Help Stop the Genocide in Darfur

2.5 million people have already been driven from their homes in Darfur, Sudan. The refugees now face starvation, disease, and rape, while those who remain in Darfur risk displacement, torture, and murder. We must act quickly and decisively to end this genocide before hundreds of thousands more people are killed.

Click here to add your name to petition urging President Bush and the UN Secretary-General to take immediate steps to stop the killing in Darfur.

Nadia Boulanger: May 11, 3:39pm 1 review music-composition, music-theory, music, nadia-boulanger
http://www.nadiaboulanger.org/nb/galleryA.html; From the page: "One can never train a child carefully enough. If you take general education, one learns to recognize color, to recognize words, but not to recognize sound. So the eyes are trained, but the ears very little. ... But most people hear nothing because their ears have never been trained and many musicians hear very badly and very little." - Nadia Boulanger

YouTube - The Body In Question part 1 (1/6): May 2, 1:23pm 1 review medical-science, video, jonathan-miller
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=A_SUFdqUsDI; The Body in Question by Jonathan Miller Part 1/1, Part 1/2, Part 1/3, Part 1/4, Part 1/5, Part 1/6.

Part 2/1, Part2/2, Part 2/3, Part 2/4, Part 2/5, Part 2/6.

Part 3/1, Part 3/2, Part 3/3, Part 3/4, Part 3/5, Part 3/6.

Sloan Science and Film / Short Films / Semmelweis: May 1, 12:34pm 1 review pregnancy, ignaz-semmelweis
http://scienceandfilm.org/films.php?film_id=23; This is a superb 17 minute film on the life and work of the 19th-century physician Ignaz Semmelweis.

The New York Times & Log In: Apr 30, 9:15pm 1 review philosophy, aj-ayer
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/24/reviews/001224.24spurlit.html?_r=1&oref...; Mike Tyson and A. J. Ayer
From the page: "One of the last of the many legendary contests won by the British philosopher A. J. Ayer was his encounter with Mike Tyson in 1987. As related by Ben Rogers in ''A. J. Ayer: A Life,'' Ayer -- small, frail, slight as a sparrow and then 77 years old -- was entertaining a group of models at a New York party when a girl ran in screaming that her friend was being assaulted in a bedroom. The parties involved turned out to be Tyson and Naomi Campbell. ''Do you know who . . . I am?'' Tyson asked in disbelief when Ayer urged him to desist: ''I'm the heavyweight champion of the world.'' ''And I am the former Wykeham professor of logic,'' Ayer answered politely. ''We are both pre-eminent in our field. I suggest that we talk about this like rational men.''

So they did, while Campbell slipped away. There are endless stories like this about Ayer's charm, nerve and dazzling powers of improvisation. He was famous for responding clearly and directly without showing off or talking down, whether it was to a television audience, an overconfident student or a boxing titleholder."

Thought crime | Media | The Guardian: Apr 30, 1:11pm 1 review philosophy, tv, isaiah-berlin, aj-ayer, jb-priestley
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/nov/01/broadcasting.arts; From the page: "In 1964 the BBC broadcast Conversations for Tomorrow, a discussion programme with JB Priestley, Isaiah Berlin and AJ Ayer. Berlin and Ayer were probably the best-known intellectuals in Britain at the time and both were at the height of their careers.

The programme was everything that today's TV executives object to. It was very blokey: three middle-aged men talking round a table. It was old-fashioned, even then: all port and cigars, suits and plummy accents. And it was very excluding; the whole atmosphere oozed senior common room.

But - and here's the rub - it still makes fascinating viewing 40 years on. Ayer and Berlin thought and talked at unbelievable speed, leaving Priestley in their wake, like a hopeless teacher trying to run a lesson with two high-octane sixth formers. Licence payers were certainly getting their money's worth.

The contrast with today's television is revealing. When was the last time you saw the equivalents of Berlin and Ayer on television? It's not that they don't exist. There is no shortage of interesting philosophers, scientists, historians and cultural critics. Just listen to Start the Week or In Our Time on Radio 4, read the review sections of any broadsheet or peer through the piles of bestselling new books on consciousness, Darwinism or the second world war.

There is a considerable audience for exciting ideas discussed by top thinkers. It's not the viewers who have lost interest, but the TV executives. But why? Whatever happened to intellectuals on television? "

YouTube - Ayer on Logical Positivism: Section 1: Apr 30, 12:50pm 1 review philosophy, video, bryan-magee, aj-ayer, logical-positivism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMlXmLbGKJY; The philosopher A.J. Ayer discusses logical positivism and its legacy with Bryan Magee. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

These videos were part of the BBC television series Contemporary Philosophy; they can be purchased from Films for Humanities and Sciences at the Films Media Group. Alas, they are prohibitively expensive.

The New York Times & Log In: Apr 25, 10:38am 1 review philosophy, slavoj-zizek
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/movies/15lim.html?n=Top/Reference/Times%20T...; From the page: "The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has been the star of three documentaries in recent years -- which is three more than your average Marxist-Lacanian psychoanalytic theorist -- but he claims not to have seen more than a snippet of any of them. ... "It is just too traumatic," he said in a recent phone interview from Warsaw, where he was attending a conference. The problem has much to do with the larger-than-life image that he has cultivated and seems now to both relish and resent. A disheveled, bearlike presence, Mr. Zizek, 58, is part mad professor, part bumbling clown dispensing ideas at breakneck speed and in a loud sibilant staccato.

"I am too emphatic," he said emphatically. "Too expressive. I don't think this works on screen. Even if I state something totally obvious, I say it with this intensity, as if I am saying the last truth."

While he has no plans to sit through it, Mr. Zizek's latest documentary, "The Pervert's Guide to Cinema," ... is his favorite of the bunch. "At least it is not about me," he said. (The two earlier movies, "Zizek!" and "The Reality of the Virtual," were, respectively, a tour documentary and a filmed lecture.) ... The project came about when the British filmmaker Sophie Fiennes (sister of the actors Ralph and Joseph) proposed a documentary structured around film clips, one that would allow Mr. Zizek to riff on a pet topic: the workings of cinematic fantasy. He eagerly agreed to conduct what is in essence an illustrated film-studies lecture. The title springs from his assertion that cinema is "the ultimate pervert art." As he puts it: "It doesn't give you what you desire. It tells you how to desire." ...

In the course of this two-and-a-half-hour film Mr. Zizek appears in famous locations like Isabella Rossellini's shadowy apartment in "Blue Velvet," the neon-lighted hotel room of "Vertigo" and the dank basement in "Psycho." Ms. Fiennes also used a few actual sites, sending her garrulous collaborator on a motorboat ride on Bodega Bay (site of an avian attack in "The Birds") and for a drive through the hilly streets of San Francisco (to induce "Vertigo").

In keeping with the psychosexual theme, many of Mr. Zizek's sacred texts are by Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch. The documentary effectively casts its subject as a lurking "pervert" hovering at the edge of the action, and he fills the role with good-natured aplomb.

In one sequence that redefines bathroom humor, Mr. Zizek connects the shower drain in "Psycho" with the backed-up toilet in "The Conversation" and compares the experience of looking up at a blank screen before a movie to that of staring into a toilet bowl. (Toilets are something of a Zizek fixation. One of his most notorious arguments traces geopolitical differences to variations in toilet design.) Through April 28 MoMA is also showing a selection of films featured in the documentary. Mr. Zizek will introduce "Pervert's Guide" on Wednesday and the Marx Brothers satire "Duck Soup" on Thursday. (In Mr. Zizek's Freudian formulation Groucho is superego, Chico ego and Harpo id.