Cybernethics / Cybernéthique

A quoi ça sert l'amour? (Cám ơn, Tamu) [Aussi là: 1, 2, 3 -- voir aussi ces autres courts-métrages.]

I can but recommend the beautiful animation movie Howl's moving castle, by Hayao Miyazaki's studio Ghibli, based on a story by Diana Wynne Jones, which I recently had the pleasure to see. The movie tells of individuals striving to live for their own purpose, against collectivist calls to sacrifice for the sake of others. It is about learning to be free despite the curses cast by meddling aggressors who want to impose their will by force, most prominently including the government. It is about the power to create, versus the power to destroy. It is about genuine love, as opposed to cheap plastic imitations thereof.

A great libertarian movie.

On se souvient rarement d'un rêve, et rarement des détails, sauf à la rigueur de vagues détails, juste après s'être réveillé. Celui-là m'a donné envie de vous le raconter en brodant un peu pour recréer tous les détails et supposés implicites, qui semblent évidents durant le rêve, et indicibles après. C'est l'histoire d'un jeune couple glamour qui a tout pour être heureux mais ne l'est pas.

House of Fools. The greater madness takes place outside the walls. Made me laugh. Made me cry. What a movie.

"un seul être vous manque, et tout est ..."

1. "... dépeuplé" (Lamartine, L'isolement)
2. "... repeuplé" (Giraudoux, La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu)

In my series of ideological analyses of popular shows, here is one about Troy, the latest movie, which I saw a few weeks ago, right before breaking up (Brad Pitt is a difficult rival to beat). Just like an earlier Troy movie, it takes sides with the Troyans, and strips the godly quarrel from the story, to make it kind of a realist and romantic war film. My friend David already did a nice review of the movie (in French; beware: spoilers), so I'll only add my opinion and a few more spoilers.

Sometimes, I think I have got a life. And you don't hear much from me. But to make a woman happy takes more than I currently know how to give. She can feel it, though she can't (or won't) tell exactly why (to me, probably to herself neither). Then I can feel she can feel it, yet I don't know what to do. And finally we part.

Yes, it's very personal, but in case you didn't notice yet, I'm an exhibitionist indeed. L: non, je ne suis pas sage. But naughty as I may be, at least I don't waste my soul and money in hostess bars.

So as to fill my blog, I salvaged this old unpublished draft from my dustbin; I'm not sure I agree with all of it, but maybe it's food for thought for you, and you may come up with something better -- and maybe even something better that's well known for a long time by in evopsy circles.

Amongst humans, like in most species, (and particularly so in days of welfare state,) children can survive without high paternal involvement: indeed, female genes have already chosen the high parental investment strategy before birth, so that rearing of children after birth is but an extension of their strategy, whereas it goes opposite to the initial male strategy of small gamets. There are exceptions, of course, and paternal parental investment is rather high in humans as compared to other species; in any case, what matters is that there is high potential for lack of paternal involvement in children rearing, whereas there is little such potential for maternal involvement.

mood: hungry

music: Sammy Davis, Jr. - What Kind Of Fool Am I

Among the many reasons that make it so difficult to translate a song between French and English, there is of course the inevitable mismatch in the way that words rhyme and have various connotations. But with some imagination and re-creation, you can usually cope with that. However, what you can't escape is the difference in information density per syllable between French and English.