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PAC-MAN - Pizza Parlor
Diposting oleh good reading on Senin, 31 Mei 2010
OR
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Inca Tomb
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You are a person of unusual craft. You travel to distant unexplored lands and learn there some immemorial ruins, gather ancient treasures and solve the long forgotten secrets.
Game Size 33MB
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Lilly Wu and the Terra Cotta Mystery
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Emperor Qin was the first Emperor of China whose lust for power and immortality ultimately led to his undoing. Credited with unifying the country and building The Great Wall, he died under mysterious circumstances. Was it an accident, or an assassination? Two thousand years later, the best forensic archaeologist around is about to investigate the biggest crime scene of her life, and find out what led to the Emperor's death.
Travel to China as the talented Lilly Wu to uncover the truth! Seek out evidence in the present and re-create the past. Form a mental picture through time and trace the steps of what must have happened. Look closely for clues, pick up valuable evidence and answer questions shrouded by years of decay. Can your inner explorer solve this ancient mystery?
Game Size 188MB
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Faded Reality
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Help Monica use her new abilities to decipher visions and solve the mystery of the Faded Reality! Find the clues to re-create the events of the past. Follow the steps of Monica’s cornea donor and find out what happened to him and other patients of a mysterious clinic.
Game Size 52MB
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A monstrous talent: Blue Velvet Studies in Memory of Dennis Hopper
Diposting oleh good reading on Minggu, 30 Mei 2010
"Why are there people like Frank?"
"A truly Bad Bad Guy is not believable and impossible to connect with. That is unless your whole story world is twisted and strange in itself; Like Dennis Hopper's truly Bad Bad Guy in David Lynch's Blue Velvet." Sune Liltop, 'Good Guy / Bad Guy', P.O.V. No.28, 2009
"...the conflict between smoothness and pent-up rage that defines Hopper's roles in films like David Lynch's Blue Velvet [1986]" Adrian Danks, "Nice 'N' Easy: Speaking Frankly about The Night We Called it a Day', Senses of Cinema, Issue 28, 2003
As Film Studies For Free is sure all of its readers will have learned by now, American movie actor, director and artist Dennis Hopper died yesterday. Some remarkable tributes to him have appeared in the last weeks, few if any better than those by filmmaker-critic Matt Zoller Seitz (see his video essay here; and a further written tribute here). Since the news of his death was made public, David Hudson has been collecting a full list of online tributes to Dennis Hopper here.
For FSFF's author, while she has a big soft spot for The Hot Spot (1990) as well as Easy Rider (1969), two films directed by Hopper, his most memorable contribution to the cinema was, in her view, his performance as the raging psychopath Frank Booth in David Lynch's 1986 film Blue Velvet. So this masterful film forms the (usually main) subject of each of the notable resources linked to in the scholarly webliography offered up today.
Rest in peace, Mr Hopper.
- Jenny Barrett, ''You've Made Mistress Very, Very Angry': Displeasure and Pleasure in Media Representations of BDSM'', Participations, Volume 4, Issue 1, 2003
- Barbara Creed, 'A Journey through Blue Velvet: Film, Fantasy and the Female Spectator', New Formations, Number 6 Winter I988
- Stephanie Lam, 'David Lynch’s Blue Velvet: The Use of Binary Oppositions and Space', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 10, 2009
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Does Red Wine Protect the Cardiovascular System?
Diposting oleh good reading on Sabtu, 29 Mei 2010
The 'French paradox' rears its ugly head again. The reasoning goes something like this: French people eat more saturated animal fat than any other affluent nation, and have the second-lowest rate of coronary heart disease (only after Japan, which has a much higher stroke rate than France). French people drink red wine. Therefore, red wine must be protecting them against the artery-clogging yogurt, beef and butter.
The latest study to fall into this myth was published in the AJCN recently (1). Investigators showed that 1/3 bottle of red wine per day for 21 days increased blood flow in forearm vessels of healthy volunteers, which they interpreted as "enhanced vascular endothelial function". The novel finding in this paper is that red wine consumption increases the migration of certain cells into blood vessels that are thought to maintain and repair the vessels. There were no control groups for comparison, neither abstainers nor a group drinking a different type of alcohol.
The investigators then went on to speculate that the various antioxidant polyphenols in red wine, such as the molecule resveratrol, could be involved. This could be true, but there's another possible mechanism here...
Ethanol-- plain old alcohol. You could drink a 40 oz bottle of malt liquor every night and it might do the same thing.
No matter what the source, alcohol consumption is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease out to about 3-4 drinks per day, after which the risk goes back up (2, 3)*. The association is not trivial-- up to a 62% lower risk associated with alcohol use. Controlled trials have shown that alcohol, regardless of the source, increases HDL cholesterol and reduces the tendency to clot (4).
Should we all start downing three drinks a day? Not so fast. Although alcohol does probably decrease heart attack risk, the effect on total mortality is equivocal. That's because it increases the risk of cancers and accidents. Alcohol is a drug, and my opinion is that like all drugs, overall it will not benefit the health of a person with an otherwise good diet and lifestyle. That being said, it's enjoyable, so I have no problem with drinking it in moderation. Just don't think you're doing it for your health.
So does red wine decrease the risk of having a heart attack? Probably, yes, just like malt liquor does. I do think it's interesting to speculate about why alcohol (probably) reduces heart attack risk. Could it be because it relaxes us? I'm going to ponder that over a glass of whiskey...
* The first study is really interesting. For once, I see no evidence of "healthy user bias". Rates of healthy behaviors were virtually identical across quintiles of alcohol intake. This gives me a higher degree of confidence in the results.
More about → Does Red Wine Protect the Cardiovascular System?
The latest study to fall into this myth was published in the AJCN recently (1). Investigators showed that 1/3 bottle of red wine per day for 21 days increased blood flow in forearm vessels of healthy volunteers, which they interpreted as "enhanced vascular endothelial function". The novel finding in this paper is that red wine consumption increases the migration of certain cells into blood vessels that are thought to maintain and repair the vessels. There were no control groups for comparison, neither abstainers nor a group drinking a different type of alcohol.
The investigators then went on to speculate that the various antioxidant polyphenols in red wine, such as the molecule resveratrol, could be involved. This could be true, but there's another possible mechanism here...
Ethanol-- plain old alcohol. You could drink a 40 oz bottle of malt liquor every night and it might do the same thing.
No matter what the source, alcohol consumption is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease out to about 3-4 drinks per day, after which the risk goes back up (2, 3)*. The association is not trivial-- up to a 62% lower risk associated with alcohol use. Controlled trials have shown that alcohol, regardless of the source, increases HDL cholesterol and reduces the tendency to clot (4).
Should we all start downing three drinks a day? Not so fast. Although alcohol does probably decrease heart attack risk, the effect on total mortality is equivocal. That's because it increases the risk of cancers and accidents. Alcohol is a drug, and my opinion is that like all drugs, overall it will not benefit the health of a person with an otherwise good diet and lifestyle. That being said, it's enjoyable, so I have no problem with drinking it in moderation. Just don't think you're doing it for your health.
So does red wine decrease the risk of having a heart attack? Probably, yes, just like malt liquor does. I do think it's interesting to speculate about why alcohol (probably) reduces heart attack risk. Could it be because it relaxes us? I'm going to ponder that over a glass of whiskey...
* The first study is really interesting. For once, I see no evidence of "healthy user bias". Rates of healthy behaviors were virtually identical across quintiles of alcohol intake. This gives me a higher degree of confidence in the results.
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Love builds bridges: on the romantic comedy in transnational cinema
Diposting oleh good reading
Last updated June 1, 2010
Image of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn on the set of Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938). See Kartina Richardson's short video essay on this film at her new audio commentary website Mirror.
Film Studies For Free's author sensibly decided, on balance, that it was probably better to stay at home and draft the below list of links to good quality, openly accessible, and disciplinarily-diverse, scholarly studies of the transnational, transhistorical, romantic comedy film mode, than to haul herself out (in the rain) to the cinema to see Sex and the City 2.
Enough said, probably, but if you think she has made the wrong choice, please do leave a comment below... (More links should be added in the next few days - if you have any to suggest, please get in touch).
- Kimberly R. Johnson and Bjarne M. Holmes, 'Contradictory Messages: A Content Analysis of Hollywood-produced Romantic Comedy Feature Films', (draft article for Communication Quarterly, Volume 57, Issue 3 January 2009 , pages 352 - 373)
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Can you bake me some cookies?
Diposting oleh good reading on Jumat, 28 Mei 2010
It is rather unusual that blogging and baking were excluded from my daily activities for the past few weeks.
Besides all the tasks that a stay-at-home-mum got to do, I was preoccupied with a home-based job assignment (nothing to do with baking). After the assignment was completed, I spent the following week chasing after a Korean drama, 'Beethoven Virus' with my two boys. It was an instant hook for the three of us. We let ourselves being led into the world of classical music by the lead character Kang mae(maestro in short). For the whole week, we were so obsessed with the drama that we spent all our free time glued to the tv set. After watching the entire drama, we found ourselves spending time watching live orchestral performances on youtube! It also sent my elder child searching the internet for music scores, so that he could attempt to play to the melody of Beethoven Symphony no 5, Morricone's Nella Fantasia (better known as Gabriel's Oboe), and their favourite William Tell Overture by Rossini (thanks to this 'The Mom Song', a must see for all mothers!). Even my younger child is able to hum to the tune of Piazzola's Libertango, and he kept singing to the catchy melody of Radetzky March by Strauss; while I had Gabriel's Oboe ringing in my head for days! In case you are wondering, no, you don't need to have any music background to enjoy this drama! I know nothing about music and yet I was able to enjoy the music pieces as much as the brilliant plot, and of course the flawless performance by the male lead...who has won 6 awards for playing this role.
Well, that pretty much sums up my absence from the blogging world :) Just like the Chinese saying "山中方一日，人间已千年" (literally translated as: after spending one day in the mountain, one discovers that a thousand years has already gone past in the real world), things happen so fast in the cyberspace that being away for just one day is as though I'm a thousand years behind! I sure have lots of blog hopping to catch up!
I believe I would not have returned to blogging much earlier if not for this little request from my younger boy.
While we were sharing a quiet moment together, reading on our bed, he turned to me, at the same time, executing his puppydog eyes (one of his best weapons to get his way) and asked, "Mama, can you bake some cookies for me? There are no more cookies left." His request became my obligation right away. I promised I would make him those oatmeal cookies again.
If you happen to be a frequent visitor to my blog, I wonder whether you have noticed that I seldom strongly recommends a particular recipe that I have attempted. Taste is something so subjective that one man's meat is another man's poison, as such, unless it is something truly awesome, most of the time, I would rather leave it to readers to try out the recipe themselves. However, for these cookies, they are so so good that I can't help but to shout out loud that this is a must-try or at least put it down in your to-do list.
Just take a look at the ingredients list, I am sure you will be sold. These cookies are made with not-too-much butter, low sugar amount, half portion flour, half portion oatmeal (also known as rolled oats, I used baby oats, which are slighter smaller), walnuts, chocolate and chocolate chips. What a good balance of healthy and not-so-healthy ingredients ;) It certainly makes me feel that it is not a sinful thing to pop one cookie after another into my mouth. These cookies belong to the category of crisp on the outside and soft inside texture. Not only are they full of flavour, they have got stupendously good texture, thanks to the various ingredients. Plus, much to my delight, these cookies only have a slight chew to it as I have yet to acquire the taste of chewy, oatmeal cookies. I didn't get to find time to take photos when the cookies were made...two days later, I was left with only 4 to 'work on'. Even if I have failed to inspire you to rush to the kitchen to bake a batch right away, I hope you would be able to enjoy them from your screen right now :)
Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients:
(makes about 25~28 cookies)
90g butter, softened at room temperature
25g caster sugar
25g brown sugar
1 egg (weights about 60g with shell), lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
100g plain flour
100g oatmeal or roll oats (I used organic instant baby oat)
20g dark (semi-sweet) chocolate, finely chopped
50g walnuts, chopped
60g mini chocolate chips
Method:
Besides all the tasks that a stay-at-home-mum got to do, I was preoccupied with a home-based job assignment (nothing to do with baking). After the assignment was completed, I spent the following week chasing after a Korean drama, 'Beethoven Virus' with my two boys. It was an instant hook for the three of us. We let ourselves being led into the world of classical music by the lead character Kang mae(maestro in short). For the whole week, we were so obsessed with the drama that we spent all our free time glued to the tv set. After watching the entire drama, we found ourselves spending time watching live orchestral performances on youtube! It also sent my elder child searching the internet for music scores, so that he could attempt to play to the melody of Beethoven Symphony no 5, Morricone's Nella Fantasia (better known as Gabriel's Oboe), and their favourite William Tell Overture by Rossini (thanks to this 'The Mom Song', a must see for all mothers!). Even my younger child is able to hum to the tune of Piazzola's Libertango, and he kept singing to the catchy melody of Radetzky March by Strauss; while I had Gabriel's Oboe ringing in my head for days! In case you are wondering, no, you don't need to have any music background to enjoy this drama! I know nothing about music and yet I was able to enjoy the music pieces as much as the brilliant plot, and of course the flawless performance by the male lead...who has won 6 awards for playing this role.
Well, that pretty much sums up my absence from the blogging world :) Just like the Chinese saying "山中方一日，人间已千年" (literally translated as: after spending one day in the mountain, one discovers that a thousand years has already gone past in the real world), things happen so fast in the cyberspace that being away for just one day is as though I'm a thousand years behind! I sure have lots of blog hopping to catch up!
While we were sharing a quiet moment together, reading on our bed, he turned to me, at the same time, executing his puppydog eyes (one of his best weapons to get his way) and asked, "Mama, can you bake some cookies for me? There are no more cookies left." His request became my obligation right away. I promised I would make him those oatmeal cookies again.
Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients:
(makes about 25~28 cookies)
90g butter, softened at room temperature
25g caster sugar
25g brown sugar
1 egg (weights about 60g with shell), lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
100g plain flour
100g oatmeal or roll oats (I used organic instant baby oat)
20g dark (semi-sweet) chocolate, finely chopped
50g walnuts, chopped
60g mini chocolate chips
Method:
- Preheat oven to 190degC. Line baking trays with parchment paper.
- With a manual whisk, cream butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until the mixture turns pale and fluffy.
- Dribble in the egg gradually. Mix well after each addition. Add in salt and vanilla extract, mix to incorporate into the batter.
- Sift the flour over the batter, fold in with a spatula.
- Add oatmeal, chopped chocolate, walnuts and mini chocolate chips. Mix well with the spatula.
- Drop tablespoonfuls of the cookie dough onto the prepared baking tray. Leave some space between the cookies to allow for spreading. Flatten each cookie dough slightly with the back of a fork, keeping the shape as even as possible.
- Bake for 8~10 mins or until golden. If necessary, rotate the baking tray halfway through the cooking time to ensure even browning.Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in air-tight containers.
Recipe source: adapted from 好想为你亲手做出美味的甜点! 检见崎聡美
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Participations 7.1: on Slumdog Millionaire, The Wire, and The Sopranos
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Image from Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2008)
Film Studies For Free is happy to announce that the May 2010 edition of the Open Access e-journal Participations: online journal of audience and reception studies is now online
This edition contains Martin Barker's 'Editorial Introduction', as well as the following articles, not all of which situate themselves within film and television studies, but each of which is relevant to audience and reception studies in those disciplinary areas.
- Shakuntala Banaji: 'Seduced 'Outsiders' versus Sceptical 'Insiders'? Slumdog Millionaire Through its Re/Viewers'
- Nathalie Claessens & Alexander Dhoest: 'Comedy Taste: Highbrow/Lowbrow Comedy and Cultural Capital' [on Flemish TV audiences]
- Julian McDougall: 'Wiring the Audience' [on The Wire]
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Wait and See...
Diposting oleh good reading on Kamis, 27 Mei 2010
Not much new here. I'm feeling pretty good all things considered. My heart rate is back down to normal this week, so I'm chocking up the racing heart rate I was having to the chemo (or even more likely the steriods I get around the chemo time) not the Herceptin. What a relief!
Keith and I went to see the breast surgeon today. He showed us pictures of the two CT scans of my liver and the change is really pretty impressive. We had only read the report, we hadn't seen the pictures before. I hoped to get a better feel for what is to come, but didn't really learn much. He seemed reluctant to speculate before he sees the scans I will get after my 6th round of TCH (the chemo cocktail). So I guess there isn't much to do but wait and see how things look at the beginning of July. I'm not really a fan of "wait and see", I'm a planner and this is putting a real crimp in my style.
Back when Keith first came out here and we were looking for a place to rent, we looked at a place in Berkeley owned by a woman named Lily. I liked her; she was quirky and she would have been a difficult land lady, but she told me I was a "life surfer". I didn't really feel like one at the time, but I do these days. I'm just riding this wave, not sure where I'll end up, but trying my bestest to enjoy the trip.
The long weekend means no chemo for me until Tuesday. Hopefully that will go easily (fingers crossed by blood counts are good enough to go ahead with it!!). It will be a busy day over there with all the Monday folks squished in with the Tuesday folks.
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Amsterdam fine links!
Diposting oleh good reading
Image from Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972), based on Stanisław Lem's 1961 novel. Read BC Biermann's film-philosophical PhD Thesis chapter on this film adaptation
A little window of opportunity for Film Studies For Free's author to bring you one of this site's regular features today: a report (or, more accurately, a labour-intensive links-harvest) from a University research repository, one of those online archives in which, on occasion, academics choose not only to store references to their published film studies work, but also to provide Open Access to that work.
The repository in question today is that of the University of Amsterdam/Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA), home to one of the best Film and Media Studies departments in the world. Below is a list of links to an amazing spread of very high quality film research accessible there, most of it in the form of full-length PhD theses.
- Mieke Bal, 'Exhibition as film', in: (Re)visualizing national history: museums and national identities in Europe in the new millennium, ed. R. Ostow (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2008), p. 15-43
- M. Behlil , Home away from home: global directors of new Hollywood, PhD Thesis, UvA, 2007
- B.C. Biermann, Travelling philosophy: from literature to film [on A Clockwork Orange, Fight Club, Solaris], PhD Thesis, UvA, 2006
- C.J. Birdsall, Between Noise and Silence: Sound, Technology and Urban Space during Nazi Germany, PhD Thesis, UvA (2010)
- L.T. Copier, Preposterous revelations: visions of apocalypse and martyrdom in Hollywood cinema 1980 – 2000, PhD Thesis, UvA, 2009
- S Dasgupta, 'Art is going elsewhere: and politics has to catch it : an interview with Jacques Rancière', Krisis, 9.1, 2008
- K. van Driel, Psychology of entertainment, PhD Thesis, UvA, 2003
- JJ Ebbers, Organizational dynamics in social networks : contracts and reputations in the film industry, PhD Thesis, UvA, 2009
- Thomas Elsaesser, 'Constructive Instability, or The Life of Things as the Cinema's Afterlife', Video Vortex: Responses to Youtube, eds. G. Lovink, S. Niederer (Amsterdam: Institute for Network Cultures, 2008)
- C.J. Forceville, 'The source-path-goal schema in the autobiographical journey documentary: McElwee, Van der Keuken, Cole', The New Review of Film and Television Studies, Vol. 4 (2006), p. 241-261
- Malte Hagener, Avant-garde culture and media strategies: the networks and discourses of the European film avant-garde, 1919-39, PhD Thesis, UvA, 2005
- EM Kedem, The kibbutz and Israeli cinema : deterritorializing representation and ideology, PhD Thesis, UvA 2007
- J de Kloet, 'Cosmopatriot contamination', Cosmopatriots: on distant belongings and close encounters, eds E. Jurriëns, J. de Kloet (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007)
- S. Loist, M. de Valck, 'Film festivals/Film festival research: thematic, annotated bibliography', 2nd ed. (Hamburg: Universität Hamburg, Institut für Germanistik II, 2010)
- J. Noordegraaf, "'Facing Forward' with found footage: displacing colonial footage in 'Mother Dao' and the work of Fiona Tan", in: Technologies of memory in the arts (2009), eds Liedeke Plate and Anneke Smelik , p. 172-187 (author's original manuscript)
- F Paalman, 'The Cheetah of Cinema', Mind the screen: media concepts according to Thomas Elsaesser, eds. J. Kooijman, P. Pisters, W. Strauven (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008)
- F. Paalman, 'Harbor, architecture, film: Rotterdam 1925-1935', in: Films that work: industrial film and the productivity of media, eds V. Hediger, P. Vonderau (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), p. 391-404
- MJ Punt, Early Cinema and the Technological Imaginary, PhD Thesis, UvA, 2000
- Laura Schuster, “What does a scanner see?” Techno-fascination and unreliability in the mind-game film", Conference paper: Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberpunk and Science Fiction, Oxford, Inter-Disciplinary.Net, July 1-3, 2008
- D.W. Russell, A multifaceted multi-methodological examination of the global movie industry, PhD Thesis, UvA, 2006
- E Thanouli, Post-classical narration: a new paradigm in contemporary world cinema, PhD Thesis, UvA, 2005
- S Vojkovic, Subjectivity in the New Hollywood Cinema: Fathers, Sons and Other Ghosts, PhD Thesis, UvA, 2001
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"Mix-Tape Cinema": studies of Wes Anderson's films
Diposting oleh good reading on Rabu, 26 Mei 2010
Links added May 27, 2010
Fantastic Mr. Fox: Wes Anderson at the New York Public Library (Fora.tv)
On the occasion of today's publication by Fora.tv of the above entertaining and informative video, Film Studies For Free presents a (rather) small but (almost) perfectly formed compendium of links to freely accessible studies of the joyous/poignant/whimsical/arch/'scavenger' films of US writer/director Wes Anderson. As usual, if readers know of any other good online material to add to the below list, do please get in touch.
The Substance of Style, Pt 1Wes Anderson and his pantheon of heroes (Schulz, Welles, Truffaut) by Matt Zoller Seitz posted March 30, 2009
The above video is the first in a five-part series of video essays analyzing the key influences on Wes Anderson’s style. Part 2 covers Martin Scorsese, Richard Lester, and Mike Nichols. Part 3 covers Hal Ashby. Part 4 covers J.D. Salinger. Part 5 is an annotated version of the prologue to The Royal Tenenbaums.
'The Films of Wes Anderson' (great clip 'mix-tape'/montage) by Paul Proulx
"A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, I watched a film called Bottle Rocket. I knew nothing about it, and the movie really took me by surprise. Here was a picture without a trace of cynicism, that obviously grew out of its director's affection for his characters in particular and for people in general. A rarity. And the central idea of the film is so delicate, so human: A group of young guys think that their lives have to be filled with risk and danger in order to be real. They don't know that it's okay simply to be who they are." Martin Scorsese, 'Wes Anderson', Esquire, March 1, 2000
"Whenever I am getting ready to make a movie I look at other movies I love in order to answer the same recurring question: How is this done, again? I can never seem to remember, and I don’t mean that to be glib. I also hope people don’t throw it back in my face. Making a movie is very complicated, and it seems like kind of a miracle when it actually works out. Hal Ashby made five or six great movies in a row, and that seems to be practically unheard of." 'Wes Anderson on [Hal Ashby's] The Last Detail' in 'The Director's Director', by Jennifer Wachtel, GOOD, June 18, 2008
"In narrative, whimsy emphasizes the unexpected links that connect disparate ideas or events, but the connections must be meaningful. Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991) is not whimsical because it never proposes that the links between its scenes are anything more than incidental. It embraces insignificance and ponders the possibility of elevating apathy into anarchy. Wes Anderson’s films are whimsical because their unexpected juxtapositions are imbued with sentimental significance. As a visual mode, whimsy favours busy frames and compositions that distract viewers from the centre. It rewards those willing to explore the edges with jokes buried in marginalia or Dalmatian mice sniffing around in the corner of an elaborately composed shot. In all cases whimsy values the ability to appreciate the aesthetic harmony possible among myriad incongruent objects. It draws attention to the act of perception and the sensibility of the perceiver." Charlotte Taylor, 'The Importance of Being Earnest', Frieze Magazine, Issue 92, June-August 2005
'...[S]tuff like Wes Anderson mix-tape cinema...', Michael Sicinski, 'Songs Sung Blue: The Films of Michael Robinson', Cinema-scope, 33
- Joseph Aisenberg, 'Wes's World:Riding Wes Anderson's Vision Limited', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 59, February 2008
- Nandana Bose, 'The Darjeeling Limited: Critiquing Orientalism on the Train to Nowhere', Mediascape, Spring 2008
- Kirk Boyle, 'Reading the Dialectical Ontology of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou Against the Ontological Monism of Adaptation', Film-Philosophy, Volume 11.1, June 2007
- Elena Gorfinkel, 'The Future of Anachronism: Todd Haynes and the Magnificent Andersons', Cinephilia Movies, Love and Memory, Edited by Marijke de Valck and Malte Hagener (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005 - large PDF: scroll to p. 153)
- Brannon M. Hancock, 'A Community of Characters: the Narrative Self in the Films of Wes Anderson', Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 9, No.2, October 2005
- Steven Hyden, Noel Murray, Keith Phipps, Nathan Rabin, and Scott Tobias, '16 Films Without Which Wes Anderson Couldn't Have Happened', AV Club, October 8, 2007
- Deanna K Kreisel, 'What Maxie Knew: The Gift and Oedipus in What Maisie Knew and Rushmore', Mosaic (Winnipeg), 38/2, June 2005
- Christian Lorentzen, 'Captain Neato: Wes Anderson and the Problem with Hipsters; Or, What Happens When a Generation Refuses to Grow Up', N+1, April 23, 2010
- James MacDowell, 'The "Quirky" New Wave', Alternate Takes, July 21, 2005
- Suzy Mackenzie, 'Into the Deep', The Guardian, February 12, 2005
- Emily J. May, 'The Darjeeling Limited and The New American Traveller', Senses of Cinema, Issue 49, 2008
- Volker Pantenburg, 'Essay 1: Notes on Matt Zoller Seitz’ ”Wes Anderson: The Substance Of Style”', trans. Kevin B Lee, Shooting Down Pictures, April 23, 2009
- Carole Lyn Piechota, 'Give Me a Second Grace: Music as Absolution in The Royal Tenenbaums', Senses of Cinema, Issue 38, 2006
- Lee Weston Sabo, 'Inimitable Charm: Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 67, February 2010
- Herbert Schwaarb, 'Buddies that Matter. Philosophical Reflections on the Genre of the New Buddy Film', International Conference on Gender, Laughter, Media: Comic Genres and Strategies“ at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, August 2005
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Tiger Eye - Part I - Curse of the Riddle Box
Diposting oleh good reading
Game Size 285MB
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Special Enquiry Detail - The Hand that Feeds
Diposting oleh good reading
Help the Special Enquiry Detail cr*ck the case, and catch a criminal, in this fun and exciting Hidden Object game! Join Detectives Turino and Lamonte, who have just been transferred to the Special Enquiry Detail unit. Their first case is the shocking death of the daughter of a wealthy family of benefactors. Dive into Special Enquiry Detail: The Hand that Feeds and become a New York City detective pursuing justice.
Read More...
Game Size 116MB
OR
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Last Heroes 3
Diposting oleh good reading
Updated!
Game Size 54 MB
OR
OR
Have fun and feel free to leave your comments!
Recommended for free users: Use Jdownloader to increase download speed!
Recommended for free users: Use Jdownloader to increase download speed!
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Sweet Potatoes
Diposting oleh good reading on Selasa, 25 Mei 2010
We can debate the nutritional qualities of a food until we're blue in the face, but in the end, we still may not have a very accurate prediction of the health effects of that food. The question we need to answer is this one: has this food sustained healthy traditional cultures?
I'm currently reading a great book edited by Drs. Hugh Trowell and Denis Burkitt, titled Western Diseases: Their Emergence and Prevention. It's a compilation of chapters describing the diet and health of traditional populations around the world as they modernize.
The book contains a chapter on Papua New Guinea highlanders. Here's a description of their diet:
How was their health? Like many non-industrial societies, they had a high infant/child mortality rate, such that 43 percent of children died before growing old enough to marry. Surprisingly, protein deficiency was rare. No obvious malnutrition was observed in this population, although iodine-deficiency cretinism occurs in some highlands populations:
There was no evidence of coronary heart disease or diabetes. Average blood pressure was on the high side, but did not increase with age. Investigators administered 100 gram glucose tolerance tests and only 3.8 percent of the population had glucose readings above 160 mg/dL, compared to 21 percent of Americans. A study of 7,512 Papuans from several regions with minimal European contact indicated a diabetes prevalence of 0.1 percent, a strikingly low rate. For comparison, in 2007, 10.7 percent of American adults had diabetes (1).
I'm not claiming it's optimal to eat nothing but sweet potatoes. But this is the strongest evidence we're going to come by that sweet potatoes can be eaten in quantity as part of a healthy diet. However, I wish I knew more about the varieties this group ate. Sweet potatoes aren't necessarily sweet. Caribbean 'boniato' sweet potatoes are dry, starchy and off-white. In the US, I prefer the yellow sweet potatoes to the orange variety of sweet potato labeled 'yams', because the former are starchier and less sweet. If I could get my hands on locally grown boniatos here, I'd eat those, but boniatos are decidedly tropical.
Instead, I eat potatoes, but I'm reluctant to recommend them whole-heartedly because I don't know enough about the traditional cultures that consumed them. I believe there are some low-CHD, low-obesity African populations that eat potatoes as part of a starch-based diet, but I haven't looked into it closely enough to make any broad statements. Potatoes have some nutritional advantages over sweet potatoes (higher protein content, better amino acid profile), but also some disadvantages (lower fiber, lower in most micronutrients, toxic glycoalkaloids).
More about → Sweet Potatoes
I'm currently reading a great book edited by Drs. Hugh Trowell and Denis Burkitt, titled Western Diseases: Their Emergence and Prevention. It's a compilation of chapters describing the diet and health of traditional populations around the world as they modernize.
The book contains a chapter on Papua New Guinea highlanders. Here's a description of their diet:
A diet survey was undertaken involving 90 subjects, in which all food consumed by each individual was weighed over a period of seven consecutive days. Sweet potato supplied over 90 percent of their total food intake, while non-tuberous vegetables accounted for less than 5 percent of the food consumed and the intake of meat was negligible... Extensive herds of pigs are maintained and, during exchange ceremonies, large amounts of pork are consumed.They ate no salt. Their calories were almost entirely supplied by sweet potatoes, with occasional feasts on pork.
How was their health? Like many non-industrial societies, they had a high infant/child mortality rate, such that 43 percent of children died before growing old enough to marry. Surprisingly, protein deficiency was rare. No obvious malnutrition was observed in this population, although iodine-deficiency cretinism occurs in some highlands populations:
Young adults were well built and physically fit and had normal levels of haemoglobin and serum albumin. Further, adult females showed no evidence of malnutrition in spite of the demands by repeated cycles of pregnancy and lactation. On the basis of American standards (Society of Actuaries, 1959), both sexes were close to 100 percent standard weight in their twenties.
The Harvard Pack Test carried out on 152 consecutive subjects demonstrated a high level of physical fitness which was maintained well into middle-age. Use of a bicycle ergometer gave an estimated maximum oxygen uptake of 45.2 ml per kilogram per minute and thus confirmed the high level of cardiopulmonary fitness in this group.Body weight decreased with age, which is typical of many non-industrial cultures and reflects declining muscle mass but continued leanness.
There was no evidence of coronary heart disease or diabetes. Average blood pressure was on the high side, but did not increase with age. Investigators administered 100 gram glucose tolerance tests and only 3.8 percent of the population had glucose readings above 160 mg/dL, compared to 21 percent of Americans. A study of 7,512 Papuans from several regions with minimal European contact indicated a diabetes prevalence of 0.1 percent, a strikingly low rate. For comparison, in 2007, 10.7 percent of American adults had diabetes (1).
I'm not claiming it's optimal to eat nothing but sweet potatoes. But this is the strongest evidence we're going to come by that sweet potatoes can be eaten in quantity as part of a healthy diet. However, I wish I knew more about the varieties this group ate. Sweet potatoes aren't necessarily sweet. Caribbean 'boniato' sweet potatoes are dry, starchy and off-white. In the US, I prefer the yellow sweet potatoes to the orange variety of sweet potato labeled 'yams', because the former are starchier and less sweet. If I could get my hands on locally grown boniatos here, I'd eat those, but boniatos are decidedly tropical.
Instead, I eat potatoes, but I'm reluctant to recommend them whole-heartedly because I don't know enough about the traditional cultures that consumed them. I believe there are some low-CHD, low-obesity African populations that eat potatoes as part of a starch-based diet, but I haven't looked into it closely enough to make any broad statements. Potatoes have some nutritional advantages over sweet potatoes (higher protein content, better amino acid profile), but also some disadvantages (lower fiber, lower in most micronutrients, toxic glycoalkaloids).
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Escape Whisper Valley
Diposting oleh good reading
Game Size 40 MB
OR
OR
Screenshots:
Games Of This Series:
Have fun and feel free to leave your comments!
Recommended for free users: Use Jdownloader to increase download speed!
Recommended for free users: Use Jdownloader to increase download speed!
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Pastured Dairy may Prevent Heart Attacks
Diposting oleh good reading on Sabtu, 22 Mei 2010
Not all dairy is created equal. Dairy from grain-fed and pasture-fed cows differs in a number of ways. Pastured dairy contains more fat-soluble nutrients such as vitamin K2, vitamin A, vitamin E, carotenes and omega-3 fatty acids. It also contains more conjugated linoleic acid, a fat-soluble molecule that has been under intense study due to its ability to inhibit obesity and cancer in animals. The findings in human supplementation trials have been mixed, some confirming the animal studies and others not. In feeding experiments in cows, Dr. T. R. Dhiman and colleagues found the following (1):
In a recent article from the AJCN, Dr. Liesbeth Smit and colleagues examined the level of CLA in the body fat of Costa Rican adults who had suffered a heart attack, and compared it to another group who had not (a case-control study, for the aficionados). People with the highest level of CLA in their body fat were 49% less likely to have had a heart attack, compared to those with the lowest level (2).
Since dairy was the main source of CLA in this population, the association between CLA and heart attack risk is inextricable from the other components in pastured dairy fat. In other words, CLA is simply a marker of pastured dairy fat intake in this population, and the (possible) benefit could just as easily have come from vitamin K2 or something else in the fat.
This study isn't the first one to suggest that pastured dairy fat may be uniquely protective. The Rotterdam and EPIC studies found that a higher vitamin K2 intake is associated with a lower risk of heart attack, cancer and overall mortality (3, 4, 5). In the 1940s, Dr. Weston Price estimated that pastured dairy contains up to 50 times more vitamin K2 than grain-fed dairy. He summarized his findings in the classic book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. This finding has not been repeated in recent times, but I have a little hunch that may change soon...
Vitamin K2
Cardiovascular Disease and Vitamin K2
Can Vitamin K2 Reverse Arterial Calcification?
More about → Pastured Dairy may Prevent Heart Attacks
Cows grazing pasture and receiving no supplemental feed had 500% more conjugated linoleic acid in milk fat than cows fed typical dairy diets.Fat from ruminants such as cows, sheep and goats is the main source of CLA in the human diet. CLA is fat-soluble. Therefore, skim milk doesn't contain any. It's also present in human body fat in proportion to dietary intake. This can come from dairy or flesh.
In a recent article from the AJCN, Dr. Liesbeth Smit and colleagues examined the level of CLA in the body fat of Costa Rican adults who had suffered a heart attack, and compared it to another group who had not (a case-control study, for the aficionados). People with the highest level of CLA in their body fat were 49% less likely to have had a heart attack, compared to those with the lowest level (2).
Since dairy was the main source of CLA in this population, the association between CLA and heart attack risk is inextricable from the other components in pastured dairy fat. In other words, CLA is simply a marker of pastured dairy fat intake in this population, and the (possible) benefit could just as easily have come from vitamin K2 or something else in the fat.
This study isn't the first one to suggest that pastured dairy fat may be uniquely protective. The Rotterdam and EPIC studies found that a higher vitamin K2 intake is associated with a lower risk of heart attack, cancer and overall mortality (3, 4, 5). In the 1940s, Dr. Weston Price estimated that pastured dairy contains up to 50 times more vitamin K2 than grain-fed dairy. He summarized his findings in the classic book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. This finding has not been repeated in recent times, but I have a little hunch that may change soon...
Vitamin K2
Cardiovascular Disease and Vitamin K2
Can Vitamin K2 Reverse Arterial Calcification?
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Malocclusion Posts Translated into German
Diposting oleh good reading on Kamis, 20 Mei 2010
It's nice to see on my website statistics program that Whole Health Source has a solid international following. As commonly as English is spoken throughout the world however, there are many people who do not have access to this blog due to a language barrier.
A gentleman by the name of Bertram has translated/summarized my series on the causes and prevention of malocclusion (misaligned teeth) into German. His site is OriginalHealth.net, and you can find the first post here, with links to the subsequent 8. It looks like an interesting site-- I wish I could read German. Thanks Bertram!
More about → Malocclusion Posts Translated into German
A gentleman by the name of Bertram has translated/summarized my series on the causes and prevention of malocclusion (misaligned teeth) into German. His site is OriginalHealth.net, and you can find the first post here, with links to the subsequent 8. It looks like an interesting site-- I wish I could read German. Thanks Bertram!
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Mystic Gallery
Diposting oleh good reading on Rabu, 19 Mei 2010
Find Hidden Objects on great paintings and train your artistic skills to become the master restorer of a Mystic Gallery! Use a unique device, the Wheel of Skill, to play marvellous minigames and earn your diploma from a fantastic art school. Repair some of the most famous paintings of all times as you work towards success. Can you breathe new life into these damaged masterpieces? Give it your best shot in Mystic Gallery!
Game Size 60MB
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Three Lovely Years!
Diposting oleh good reading on Selasa, 18 Mei 2010
Three years ago Keith and I got married and I love him more now than ever! Despite this cancer crap I'm a lucky fucker (well at least in some ways).
I'm feeling really pretty good after the last round. I started taking an iron supplement and it is making a huge difference (that and all that beef broth I've been forcing down). Red (the dog) and I went for a 3.5 mile walk today. I usually get between 2 and 3 miles in, but when I'm tired we do several short walks. Doing a "full pull" is something that I haven't felt energetic enough to commit to in a while.
There are however, a lot of little niggley side effects. I have crazy twitching muscles (right now it is a little muscle right below my right eye), hot flashes (hello chemical menopause), taste buds that don't taste much (therefore I eat more, urgh), my GI tract is always messed up in some way no matter what I do. Now, none of these are terrible (somedays the hot flashes are really intense - I'm trying to find a pattern there, but no luck so far) but they are pretty annoying. The reality is, if these are my only problems, I'm doing pretty well.
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Intervew with Chris Kresser of The Healthy Skeptic
Diposting oleh good reading
Last week, I did an audio interview with Chris Kresser of The Healthy Skeptic, on the topic of obesity. We put some preparation into it, and I think it's my best interview yet. Chris was a gracious host. We covered some interesting ground, including (list copied from Chris's post):
More about → Intervew with Chris Kresser of The Healthy Skeptic
- The little known causes of the obesity epidemic
- Why the common weight loss advice to “eat less and exercise more” isn’t effective
- The long-term results of various weight loss diets (low-carb, low-fat, etc.)
- The body-fat setpoint and its relevance to weight regulation
- The importance of gut flora in weight regulation
- The role of industrial seed oils in the obesity epidemic
- Obesity as immunological and inflammatory disease
- Strategies for preventing weight gain and promoting weight loss
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Bazinian, Neo-Bazinian, and Post-Bazinian Film Studies
Diposting oleh good reading
Film Studies For Free decided to round up some classy links today to studies either by the hugely influential film critic André Bazin (1918-1958), co-founder of the film magazine Cahiers du cinéma, or by those who use or comment upon his work in their own contributions to film studies. As the below, openly accessible works more than amply show, even in this the digital film age, Bazin is an earlier generation film theorist who keeps on giving to the discipline that he, as much as anyone else, helped to found.
Online Baziniana:
- André Bazin, 'The Ontology of the Photographic Image', translated by Hugh Gray, Film Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 4. (Summer, 1960), pp. 4-9
- Cahiers du Cinéma Interview with Orson Welles by André Bazin and Charles Bitsch (at Senses of Cinema) translated and annotated by Sally Shafto
Post/Neo-Baziniana:
- Michael J Anderson, ''What is Cinema? More than Cinema: The Ontological Discourse of Abbas Kiarostami's Through the Olive Trees (1994)'', Tativille, March 30, 2009
- Jan Holmberg, "Ideals of Immersion in Early Cinema", Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, vol. 14, n° 1, 2003, p. 129- 147
- Wijnand Ijsselsteijn, 'Presence in the Past: what can we learn from Media History?', in Being There: Concepts, effects and measurement of user presence in synthetic environments G. Riva, F. Davide, W.A IJsselsteijn (eds.) ( Amsterdam: Ios Press, 2003)
- Frank Kessler, 'What you get is what you see: Digital images and the claim on the real', Digital Material, Edited by Marianne van den Boomen, Sybille Lammes, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Joost Raessens, and Mirko Tobias Schäfer (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009) Scroll to p. 187
- Ohad Landesman, 'In and out of this world: digital video and the aesthetics of realism in the new hybrid documentary', Studies in Documentary Film, Volume 2, Number 1, 2008
- Jonathan Rosenbaum,'What is Cinema? (and, if you know what that is, What is Film Study?) JonathanRosenbaum,com, May 4, 2009
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