Second, they evoke human aggression and human perversion. A vampire looks like a man and yet it is an eater of men — here’s a hunt of cannibalism, our oldest taboo. That’s an internal fear, a fear of the Best Within.

Third, we fear transformation into the Best — a chance bite form a wolf can turn you into a bloodthirsty monster, Dr. Frankenstein can reanimate your corpse with a bolt of lightening, the right combination of chemicals can turn good Dr. Jekyll into evil Mr. Hyde. We fear the monster’s capacity for evil because we can recognize it in human hearts.

From Idlewild, by Nick Sagan.

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On average, three dollars is typically donated proving that humans are innately altruistic.

Let’s run the experiment one more time except this time let’s change the amount you are allowed to give from -$1 to $10, -1 being that you can now take one dollar from the next person. On average the number was zero for this experiment, proving that humans are not all that altruistic this time.

Now let’s run the experiment one last time but further change the amount you are allowed to give from -$10 to $10. So now you are able to take all ten dollars of the next person an and leave with twenty dollars if you so choose. What do you think the results of this experiment turned out to be?

On average, -$1.5 dollars was chosen; the participants anonymously stole $1.5 dollars from the next person.

This was just one of the stories told by Stephen Dubner at his guest lecture at UNCG on March 25. Although he does not proclaim himself to be an economist or even to know anything worthwhile in the field, he co-authored Freakonomics with Steven Levitt — who, incidentally, is an economist. Knowing that Dubner is not an economist but rather a journalist is important to realize beforehand as the book is a record of dozens of economic anomalies presented in a very easy to understand and enjoyable fashion (the Dubner aspect of the book, I suppose).

On the whole, the lecture proved to be very interesting. Dubner was able to just appear on stage and instantly dive into an hour long lecture as if it were a comfortable conversation piece. He easily segwayed from one economic topic on to another and made the audience forget that each topic, which was presented more like a story, was on the often-boring and mundane subject of economics, which is often called the dismal science as it tries to reduce the splendors of life down to mathematical equations.

The other interesting story of the lecture was the story of Yale economist Keith Chen and his idea of introducing the notion of bartering with money to capuchin monkeys. The purpose was to introduce the idea of exchanging money for food and see if the monkeys somehow exhibited some sort of behavior that we humans could learn from.

The enclosure was separated into two main cages, one where several capuchins lived and another which was empty where the assistants would interact with the monkeys. The two rooms were separated by a gate. Every day, Chen and his assistants would open the gate to let one monkey into the empty room and give him several small plastic discs. They would then take them out of the monkey’s hands as they gave him grapes. They repeated this process for several months until they monkeys began to understand that when they give the humans two discs they receive a bowl a grapes. This was the first phase of the experiment.

Chen then began to alter certain aspects of the monetary system. For instance, they raised the price of grapes to four discs while leaving the price of bananas to two. The capuchins picked up on the price hike and went without the more expensive but tastier grapes in favor of the bananas in order to save more discs. Another incident of the price hike was the robbery of several discs. One day when the capuchin was in the empty room and presented a tray full of discs he smashed the tray backwards so that the discs flew into the other room for everyone else. The monkeys exhibited a lot of the same behaviors that humans do with money, even in hard times.

It was during this time that Chen noticed something very unexpected. He watched one of the male capuchins gather several discs from his private stash, walk up to one of the females, give all of the discs to her, have sex with her and then walk away. Chen had witnessed capuchin prostitution.

One last interesting tidbit that I picked up from the lecture was that of the realtor and pimp and the value they bring to the table. If you’re trying to sell your house, hiring a realtor to sell it will yield a smaller return on investment than a prostitute who uses a pimp. Dubner calls this the “pimpact.”

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The main plot of Richard trying to get to Lord Rahl is the overarching plot of the series so far. Each episode is made up of a small side adventure like saving a village or child, with the last five minutes progressing the overall plot and leading slightly to the next episode. I understand how when a book is made for television certain elements need to be edited but this version has taken the original story and twisted and mangled it nearly beyond recognition losing all of the glamor and charisma found in the book. Random people from different books are inserted into the storyline at random places which are way off. Representations of some of the characters are way off. Important details in which the entire world revolved upon are left out. Any adult concepts found in the book is completely removed including any traces of bood from the fighting scenes, clearly aiming the show at a younger audience.

It often seems like the show was written based of off an oral summary of the books, with the writers not even having picked up the book. The actor playing Richard is just a scrawny boy without any charm or allure. When watching him I couldn’t help but to think that there would be no way I would follow him into battle and beyond. He certainly didn’t seem like the type who could inspire tens of thousands of people.

I know that you have to keep an open mind when viewing book to TV adaptations and many times there is really no point in comparing, but this series doesn’t have any of the elements that make the book so compelling and will most surely not draw anywhere near as large of an audience as the book. This whole thing is my fault, really, for getting the books made into a TV series. Many years ago when I had started reading the books I said aloud that it has all of the elements to make a great movie. Someone must have heard; they obviously didn’t read the books though.

You can watch the series as it airs on Hulu for free.

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Some interesting things:

• My girlfriend is coming to hang out for a while in about a month.
• At work, I finally got Vim installed on nearly all of the machines! I had to compile it myself and roll out a package to do it, but now I can work with color!
• I passed all my classes this semester ― not in flying colors or anything but that’s my fault.
• I’ve started reading Terry Goodkind’s last book Phantom. I’m nearly a third of the way through it and it’s blatantly obvious much of it is filler. The next and last book in the Sword of Truth series, Confessor, is scheduled for release this November. Please end it Terry! Stop milking it already and let Richard and Kahlan live in peace.

This has also been my first English post in some time as well. Just goes to prove that I haven’t forgotten English ― only become a “Japanese snob” as my significant other would say to me.

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“A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar” by Seiichi Makino and Michio Tsutsui to suppliment the book of “Basic Japanese Grammar” that I already have. 750 pages of fun! As well as “The Stories of the Kosoado Woods” by Jun Okada.

牧野成一・筒井通雄「日本語文法辞典【中級編】」の参考図書だ。この本は、もう「日本語基本文法辞典」を持っている補足だ。750 枚の読む喜び。

岡田淳「ふしぎな木の実の料理法 ～ こそあどの森の物語」だ。話は何かいいの？同じ読書力だと思うので、この本を書いた。本の漢字や文法はあんまり難しくないを願う……。

やっぱり、「窓ぎわのトットちゃん」を読むことはちょっとあんまり難しくないになると思っているんだ。

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I’ve started reading “窓ぎわのトットちゃん” (The Little Girl at the Window) by 黒柳徹子 (Tetsuko Kuroyanagi) more than a week ago. It’s the original Japanese version of the book, so it’s a bit of a slow read for me at this point, but the story is entertaining so far. School is starting this week so I hope to read a lot more of this book in the labs and library after/before class.

When I finish that book, I’ll begin “ずっと、ずっと、あなたのそばに” (Forever by Your Side) by 若月かおり (Kaori Wakatsuki).

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何てばかげた映画なんだろう、「メモワーズ・オブ・ア・ゲイシャ」。

Okay, my biggest grip about this move: just about all of the actors are Chinese! Are there no talented actors/actresses in Japan that could have been cast as geisha?? Of course not, obviously by this movie.

The movie takes place in Japan (actually mostly filmed in California). Everybody spoke English in the movie. Although, to add a sense of “real Japan,” random characters at seemingly random and non-important times would blurt out something in Japanese for no reason. Without any subtitles, though, this is lost on the American audience because sometimes they would say something important. For example, Sayuri calls Mameha throughout the movie “onee-chan” (sister). It’s important in the storyline development to realize that Sayuri is calling Mameha sister but unless you’re familiar with Japanese, you have no clue what Sayuri’s calling her. At another time Mother tells Chiyo that it’s cold in her room, “Close the window, hayaku hayaku (hurry up)!” In neither of these two examples does throwing in Japanese add anything. Oh, and nearly everybody speaks with a very thick Chinese accent, their Japanese, too, was with an accent.
This story was originally a book of the same title written by Arthur Golden. If you’ve read the book, you’re going to be sorely disappointed at the Hollywood translation; if you haven’t read the book, you’re going to be lost. The story is told so quickly and without any details as to why certain things are important to the geisha that you don’t have a reason to connect with any of the characters or their problems. In the theater, I heard many people laugh throughout the movie at unfunny moments. Entirely too much of the story from the book was glossed over and the bits and pieces that were used for the movie were entirely bland.
The movie was pretty to look at, nothing even close to “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” or “House of Flying Daggers” or “Hero.” This movie is what you get when you take an American director and tell him to make something “Asian-like:” all wrong.

公式サイト：http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/memoirsofageisha/

「SAYURI」オフィシャルサイト：http://www.movies.co.jp/sayuri/

The actors are hamstrung from the very beginning by the Westernized material — everyone speaks English at all times — and by the bland direction from Rob Marshall.

Jeffrey M. Anderson

…the world of the film is so narrow that pre-occupation Japan looks like a feudal Disneyland, where everybody knew their place and the cherry blossoms were always falling…”

Chris Barsanti

In essence Chicago comes closer to capturing that life of artists and performance; Memoirs is just whoring for a little prestige known as the Oscars.

Erik Childress

An Eastern movie made to resemble the most unchallenging Western ideal of what the East is.

Jeffrey Chen

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