16 February 2016
So Mikaela recommended this movie called I Origins and well … I didn’t like it. At all. It got me thinking though, so here is a long rant about it.
You know these movies where so called rational scientists get exposed to unlikely events and at the same time meet some religious person who is not rational but somehow sees things clearly and understand from some sixth sense everything going around them when these unlikely events begin to occur? Suddenly the scientists stand dumbfounded and chocked and begin saying extremely stupid things and acting really weirdly. It’s probably my favorite hate genre and this film steps into all of these clichés with the overwhelming stupidity that follows. Just listen to this conversation between the two scientists in the film (It’s not their exact quotes, but it’s very close):
Woman: “This could potentially be the biggest scientific discovery that the world has ever seen. This is bigger than you. It’s bigger than me.”
Man: “It’s a false positive. It’s an error. It has to be an error. It’s a statistically impossible data point.”
Woman: “If I dropped this phone a thousand times, a million times and one time it doesn’t fall. Just once, it hovers, in the air. That is an error that is worth looking at.”
Man: “You’re so fucking stubborn.”
And then they kiss. I mean wow, just wow, isn’t that the worst load of crap you have ever heard? It’s also so expected that the woman is the first one to accept the unlikely magical world that they live in, since she is of the more spiritual gender (that’s right, I just accused the movie of being sexist as well). Finally she realizes that the world is a magical place where phones can fly, sadly the man is not as clever.
In this film the main protagonist wants to prove evolution (again I guess) by studying eyes (from which he wants to somehow prove that god does not exist). And this is were I get really annoyed. First of all, I strongly disagree that the motivation for a scientists is to disprove god, because how could you ever do that? Since you can’t prove or disprove god you don’t really get involved at all, and why should you? The important thing is to as clearly as possible describe the world that we live in. And historically speaking that has required a few of the most original concepts ever from the most creative people that have ever walked this earth.
Just imagine coming up with the idea that time is relative, that we all come from much more primitive animals, the concept of abstract forces and some mystic invisible power called energy that is always conserved. Later it turns out that this energy and all matter is really the same thing and that they can transform from one to the other. We have particles that can be at different places at the same time described by a very solid mathematical framework. I could go on forever with this argument, but the point is that scientists are very open minded people, oftentimes exceptionally good at adapting to new world views and ideas; much better I would say than people in general. Still they are often portrayed in movies either as these old fashioned people that can’t accept unexpected results or as crazy maniacs doing these extremely reckless experiments that endanger the whole planet.
It is, of course, just a movie that is perhaps not meant to be realistic (and you could argue that there are people being treated worse than scientists). But my problem is that I am on the scientists side here and that I take it as a personal insult when they are portrayed as idiots, eventually ruining the film for me. I want to emphasize here that I don’t think religion is stupid at all and I have no problem with unrealistic movies. Heck, I’m a huge fantasy, sci-fi and superhero fan, but the difference there is that the characters in these movies (at least in the good ones) don’t act as complete idiots, at least not if they are not supposed to be idiots (Deadpool I’m looking at you).
Alright, now I think it’s time for another conversation from the movie (once again altered slightly):
Another woman: “A scientist once asked Dalai Lama what he would do if something scientific disproved his religious beliefs. And he answered after much thought, that he would read through all of the papers and really try to understand things. And in the end if it was clear to him that his beliefs were disproved, he would change his beliefs.”
The man from before: “That’s a good answer.”
The woman again: “Ian … What would you do if something spiritual disproved your scientific beliefs?”
To this our scientist stand dumbfounded, which I have to say is surprising, since he according to the movie is a spokesman for atheists. Obviously the writers find this quote clever and powerful, but it’s really both stupid and hollow. Because let’s think for a second about how something spiritual could disprove scientific beliefs? First of all, what is a scientific belief? In science you don’t really believe at all, because believing is not science. All agree that the work of science is not complete, meaning that things are disproved, or at least altered and improved all of the time. Of course not by spiritual beliefs, but by science itself.
Next it is interesting to think about how something spiritual could disprove science. In the film they are implying reincarnation, which I guess the writers mean disprove his scientific beliefs. But science is completely agnostic to reincarnation, since we don’t have any evidence towards or against it whatsoever. Also, reincarnation is not proved because people are reborn with the same eyes (spoiler alert). I guess that there is a difference in world view here, since a scientific person would not settle until the newfound reincarnation process is given a detailed description, while a spiritual person would settle with a spiritual proof, which is of course not a proof at all. And in the end the people who would give the full explanation would be scientists (if we play with the thought that this was really true).
You can hear me preaching for the science team here, which is really sad. Because there really should be no conflict here at all. Science deal with hard proofs and detailed descriptions of the physical world, while religion and spirituality deal with something equally important, namely to give people hope and meaning to this world. The fields could not be more different and they should not be mixed at all I think. But the movie continues to present this science vs. religion thing and it’s so damn annoying when the writers speak for the scientific world so incredibly poorly.
The really sad thing here is that a lot of things in the movie are really good. The acting is superb, the camerawork is solid and the overall concept with eyes is intriguing and in large well presented. But in the end none of that matters when a scientist about to uncover “the biggest scientific discovery that the world has ever seen” suddenly becomes stupider than an annoying, horny teenager in a bad horror movie.
I have actually not been this upset since Lucy, for the very same reasons I now realize. This really is the kind of movie that makes me most annoyed it seems.
End of rant.
2/10.
14 February 2016
This weekend me and Vidar decided to go to a basketball game at Maples Pavilion on campus. On Saturday Stanford played against Oregon and the game turned out to be very interesting (beware of spoilers in the link). First of all we found out that it’s free for Stanford students and once we got inside, we quickly noticed that we got really good seats (well, kind of seats) close to the basketball court. I grabbed a free t-shirt, Vidar grabbed lunch and then we watched the game.
Most of the time both teams had similar scores and about a minute from the end both teams were at 72 points. Then at the last minute Stanford scored two points, followed by another two points leading to them winning the game. The whole arena shouted and cheered loudly. It was actually quite powerful and memorable. Oh, and also I tried to take a few photos during the game, but I clearly had problems focusing (pun intended). I guess some of the pictures are ok, mostly because I was so close to the game.
At the evening a couple of us decided to attend a graduate student party at the Stanford campus, meaning free beer, chips, snacks, glow sticks, plastic necklaces and of course some dance music and a DJ. It was all nice and of course exotic for a Swede. I couldn’t handle all of the free stuff, so I ate chips all the time and went back and forth for more glow sticks. I was lots of fun to finally experience an American student party.
Sunday has been pretty calm and nice. I had a few video meetings with my beloved Swedes and edited some pictures. But we had to do something, so Vidar and I decided to go see the Deadpool movie at the cinema in Mountain View.
And while we were at it we stopped by a Vietnamese restaurant serving really good fast food. I think fast food is lots of fun, but it seems like only the crappy food chains make it to Sweden. So basically fast food in Sweden sucks, with the exception of Stockholm’s upcoming and nowadays quite numerous food trucks and burger restaurants. Anyway, I love how places that don’t look like much serve this high quality food from all over the world. The prices are very reasonable since all focus is on the food (we had these fantastic dishes served on paper plates, which I actually think is kind of cool). So what we usually do is to search for food on Google Maps, powered by Yelp to find a nearby restaurant serving some fast food. And the amazing thing with this area is that you’ll always find something great.
After that we were ready for the movie, which turned out to be really funny. If you don’t mind violence and childish and sexist jokes you’ll probably like it. And if you have seen a lot of action movies in general and superhero movies in particular I’d be very surprised if you wouldn’t laugh a lot to this movie, since it makes so many jokes about genre conventions and stereotypes. Not that it particularly often deviates from these conventions; in fact it is almost more generic than most superhero movies, but in some way that just makes it more funny. The movie is so stupid that it somehow feels smart, but most of all it’s just really funny, which I don’t say often at all about movies. So this is a definite recommendation if you’re up for it (not for you mom, obviously).
I also have to say something about the theater. It’s so great that you’d expect to pay twice as much for it (which you’ll definitely do if you buy anything from the snack bar). I mean, just look at these chairs. The screen is huge and everything feels so premium that I just wanna see movies here all of the time. That’s basically it for this weekend, tomorrow we’ll dive right back into the geophysics.
7 February 2016
Another weekend in the Bay Area and this Saturday we decided to revisit San Francisco to see the Golden Gate Bridge. We brought the bicycles onto the Caltrain and cycled around the city, which was really nice. This weekend the huge football event Super Bowl is taking place right here in the Bay Area, so there were lots of things going around in San Francisco.
We cycled from the train station around the coast towards the Golden Gate Bridge, while passing hundreds of posters for the 50th anniversary of Super Bowl, small airplanes with posters in the air, devoted Christians presenting (or sometimes shouting) their love to god and his goodness for the people interested in the Super Bowl event. There were drunk and overweight Americans with football shirts, beggars, all kinds of street artists, lots of runners and cyclists going past the cars. All this was quite amazing to watch on this great, sunny day and I was entertained all of the way to the red bridge.
Before arriving at the Golden Gate Bridge we had lunch at Super Duper Burgers and we both agreed that it was really good. I would still rate Shake Shack from the New York area higher, but the burgers were perfectly grilled and the meat was fantastic. And of course we were so full that I wasn’t hungry for most of the rest of the day. After that we visited some stored but could only find womens clothes. Vidar bought a copy of the excellent book American Gods by Neil Gaiman and then we were on our way.
After that it was pretty much all the Golden Gate Bridge from a million angles, but I think I finally got a really good shot of it. We also crossed the bridge on bicycle, which I would recommend for anyone visiting San Francisco, because the view was magnificent. I would probably rate this as one of my best nature experiences (I’m not sure that’s an expression in English, but it is in Swedish so there you go).
After the bridge it was getting dark so we found a nerdy store where I bought Pride of Baghdad, a graphic novel I’ve had my eyes one for some time. After that we found a Thai restaurant where I had the classic Pad Thai. Vidar was more daring and took some kind of fish soup. After this we went straight towards the train station with all of the other people visiting San Francisco this crazy weekend. We barely managed to get on to the train and it felt so good to finally return home after a very long day.
Sunday was Super Bowl day and Brent was kind and invited me, Vidar and Ossian to his really nice place close to the Stanford University. Honestly I didn’t understand that much of the game (but I got the basic concept explained to me). That wasn’t too bad though, since there was so much else going on. I’d say that the event was in some ways more similar to Eurovision Song Contest than to say for example the world cup in Football (not American Football of course, the other one). It’s kind of telling that at least half of us were more exited for the commercials.
Super Bowl was a really nice final to a pretty amazing weekend. I’m getting used to California and feel more and more at home with every passing day. I have to say though, that I’ll probably never become a fan of football (the American one I mean).
31 January 2016
After two weeks in Silicon Valley it was high time to check out some of the famous tech places in the area. This Saturday me and Vidar checked out the Google HQ in Mountain View. Mostly the area is just a couple of locked buildings of course, but I still think it’s really cool to be so close to where some of the most significant inventions in the resent years were built. And in addition to this the area was beautiful, with lots of parks and playful designs. The colorful Google Bikes were very cool and of course we borrowed two to use for getting around in the area.
We biked around, visited the park with the Android lawn statues and tried to get into the visitor center, but currently you need to be escorted by an Google employee. The campus is also known to have extremely good food, but like with the visitor center you have to know an employee to get to it. Instead we found a small Pakistani and Indian restaurant (using Google Maps), which was popular and crowded. The food was amazing and after that we were ready to continue to the next stop, the Computer History Museum.
And it turned out to be one of the more interesting museums I’ve ever visited. One of my favorite aspects of it was that they went way back. Instead of starting when the first analogue computers were invented they had a section even before that. This makes sense since people of course made calculations long before the modern computer. They had a demonstration of one of Charles Babbage’s machines he never finished building (the one that they demonstrated was built long after his lifetime to check whether it would actually work) and it was absolutely fascinating to see how the complex mechanical design worked. It made me think that in some ways it’s a shame that we have lost so much of that. I’m a big fan of the minimalistic Apple design, but perhaps there is room somewhere for a bit of steam punk as well.
I also enjoyed the story of the birth of video games, the beginning of the Internet and of course everything related to Steve Jobs. The Apple II was there along with the original Machintosh. Perhaps the museum was a bit bias when telling their story about the development of computers over the years, but it’s definitely true that a lot (probably most) of modern computing was invented in this area and it’s so cool to be able to live here for a little while.
Today (Sunday) we didn’t do too much, but we decided to pay a visit to Facebook HQ at the pretty amazing address 1 Hacker Way (still doesn’t beat Apple Campus at One Infinite Loop though). The offices weren’t as cool as Google HQ from Saturday, but at least we got some photos in front of the facebook sign. And speaking of photos, be sure to check them out below. I always write something about each photo.
24 January 2016
When I still was in Sweden about a week ago me and Mikaela saw the second season of Fargo by the Coen Brothers. The series, based on the same events as depicted in the 1996 movie (also by the Coen brothers) is one of the best tv-series I have ever seen. I am fascinated by the cold and lonely towns up in Minnesota and I absolutely love the strange accents and the Swedish-inspired names of the citizens. It’s a unique setting that you don’t often see in mainstream movies. What makes it so great is how quite ordinary people make really bad choices in extremely dangerous situations that they don’t fully understand.
Then all of a sudden at the end credits of some episode, I immediately recognize the soft voice of Justin Vernon (most famous for Bon Iver) singing a beautiful song that I don’t recognize. I google for a bit since I really want to listen to the song in it’s entirety and find out that the song is from an album by The Chaiftains, an Irish folk band I’ve never heard of. It turns out that their latest album called Voice of Ages feature a couple of really amazing musicians, like The Civil Wars, The Decemberists and Lisa Hannigan among many others.
I find Justin’s song and really like it, but the best song of the album is really another song; a cover of Bob Dylan’s When The Ship Comes In performed by the Decemberists (and the Chieftains). It’s funny when you start somewhere and then all of a sudden end up in some other seemingly completely unrelated place. Makes me think of my situation right now actually, but let’s not get into that right now.
Anyway, below is a Youtube video with the song. I’m sure you’ll all love it and like most other Bob Dylan songs the lyrics are amazing as well.
