"'The Hobbit' looks really, really strange."

"At least it does when projected in 3-D, at the 48 frames per second rate (known as high-frame rate, or HFR) that Jackson intends as the preferred format...."

It’s not easy to describe the hyperreal, ultra-clear, sharp-edged look of the 48fps image, except by way of analogy. As one critic was heard to say on the sidewalk outside a Manhattan screening, “I turned that setting off on my TV.” Some viewers have said that “The Hobbit” has the harsh video shimmer of a 1980s soap opera, with, of course, many times the resolution. Another guy I know said the whole movie looked like a cutting-edge screen saver from the early days of digital imaging, around 2000 or so. That’s getting close. To me, “The Hobbit” looked like a prototype of some new computer game, or a demonstration video that some dude at Best Buy was using to sell a $1,700 HDTV monitor while murmuring, “Someday, man, all movies will look like this.”

So... it's some kind of sharpness beyond what the eye sees in real life, causing it to seem unreal? I'd be curious to check that out, but perhaps not willing to sit through it.

Prof "assaulted by employees of a McDonald’s in Paris who objected to his wearing a cyborg-style eyepiece while eating dinner with his family."

McDonald's claims its people were respectful but concerned that he was secretly filming customers and invading their privacy (under French law). So he shows up looking like this:



What do you think? Should the restaurant be required to leave him alone, though his looks upset the other customers? Should we get used to the future with its “computerized vision systems"? Or should we preserve our instincts about dangers?

This — from the man's blog — may seem irrelevant, but it affected me:

On the evening of 2012 July 1st, my wife and children and I went to McDonalds at 140, Avenue Champs Elysees, Paris, France, after a day of sightseeing (8 museums and other landmark sights, as part of a boat cruise package)....

We ordered two Ranch Wraps, one burger, and one mango McFlurry....

Is this the right way to be in Paris? Obviously not, but freedom matters, and I'd like the French to care about freedom.

"It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye."

"No one knows what it's like to be the bad fish, to be the sad fish, behind blue eye."

"Jokes about an eyeball washing up from the sea? Now that's what I call... *sunglasses* ...aqueous humor."

Let's see... what tags do I put on this post? So wrong and yet so right: fisheye.

"Supersonic Skydive's 5 Biggest Risks: Boiling Blood, Deadly Spins & Worse."

Could this guy please not do this?

The highest risk during descent is a flat spin, where Baumgartner would lose control of his free fall and begin to spin laterally, his head and feet rotating around his center.

A flat spin draws blood into the jumper's head and feet. At a speed exceeding 600 miles (970 kilometers) an hour, a flat spin could spin a jumper at 180 to 250 rotations a minute, creating a situation of extreme negative G's....

Then pressure builds up, "blood and spinal fluid are forced outward, and their main escape routes are through the ocular cavities."

The flat-spin risk can be mediated with... a stabilization parachute to prevent further increase in rotation, deployed on command, or automatically if -3.5 G's are achieved.

In 1960 Kittinger's stabilization parachute was designed to deploy automatically shortly after he jumped, to prevent a flat spin. But Baumgartner has his eyes on a new speed record....

His eyes... which might burst.

Everyone's winking at Drudge right now.

Here's the archived page, so you can click all the links. Here's Drudge itself.

Now, let's analyze the winkage. The main headline is Hillary, acknowledging her recent dissembling about Libya. She was just bullshitting before. Meanwhile, Obama's "GETTING SERIOUS," planning a 3-day debate prep. And Putin wants Obama to win. What's Michelle winking about? If the kids feel hungry after the lunches she's skimpified, let them eat cake snack.

"It's not surprising that some youngsters will in the middle of the day be hungry," [Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said]... "We understand that change is difficult... Some folks love it, some folks have had questions about it, but that's to be expected..."

Under the new regulations, cafeterias are required to serve twice as many fruits and vegetables while limiting proteins and carbohydrates. For an average high school student, that means two baked fish nuggets, a cup of vegetables, half a cup of mashed potatoes, one whole grain roll and 8 ounces of fat free milk is the fuel that served to get them through their last four hours of classes.

Regardless of how tall you are, whether you're in a growth spurt, and whether you're active and athletic. Everyone must pay — with their own bodies, as they are trapped in compulsory schooling — for the subset of kids who eat more than their bodies need. One size fits all. Uniformity. 

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. The main topic is: Everyone's winking. That means: It's all bullshit now, don't you know?

Drudge goes black-and-white with Rahm, Brad Pitt, Uncle Sam, and Obama.

Look. Only Pitt and Rahm are photographs. Obama — like Uncle Sam — is done with artwork. Pretty bad artwork. It looks like a bad drawing, and I'm guessing it was done by computer-processing of a photo. It's funny the way the photographiness of a photo shows through when a drawing is made. Something more timeless and grand is found when the artist draws from life. Of course, there's the usual risk that it won't look like the person. But that's why you need a good artist. Or stick with a regular photo-photo.

Unless you're looking for an odd effect. Perhaps Drudge is trying to say that Obama is drained of life. It might have something to do with the big drained-of-color idea, which does unify the 4 images. There's another processed photo further down on the page: Hugo Chavez. His image has been subjected to posterization — where all shades of gray have been eliminated.

Ah! I said it: shades of grey. Is Drudge hinting that these men have some kind of Christian Grey sadistic power over us? Speaking of photoprocessing, there was this article in the Daily Mail yesterday, imagining Christian Grey as a composite — depicted in shades of gray — of various famous guys, including Brad Pitt (but not Rahm, Uncle Sam, Obama, and Chavez).



Also on the Drudge page, in column 1, under Brad Pitt, is Vladimir Putin. Putin and Pitt are both wearing sunglasses. The Pitt image pushes "Brad Pitt's mom in fear after slamming Obama..." and the Putin image goes to "West is on decline." Chavez is positioned under Uncle Sam, and both of those images include hands — Sam pointing at us (over a warning about taxes and Obama) and Chavez with his hand to his forehead in the position Drudge showed Obama 3 days ago. Obama had his hand like that along with the headline "Barack and Bones: I've Been Eating," and today's Chavez image goes along with an assertion that Chavez is "totally free" of cancer (a likely lie).

The main story, about Rahm ("the Godfather") is about the murder rate spiking in Chicago.  Rahm's picture is centered over Uncle Sam and Hugo Chavez, and Rahm's hand is holding his chin in a manner that implies thinking and judgment especially given the intensity of his eyes, looking off to his right. Uncle Sam's eyes are also intense, staring right at us in that accusatory way. As noted above, Pitt and Putin have their eyes covered with sunglasses — shades (Shades of Grey?!). So what might we say about Obama's eyes? I'd say they look up slightly, conveying vague confusion or dreaminess.

Obama tops the third column, which has no other faces, but 2 other images: of solar flares ("getting stronger") and of NYC ("Bloomberg asks developers to test tiny apartments...").  The Obama image has "$0$" under it, which links to a story about how Romney raised much more money than Obama in June ($106 million, compared to $71 million).

What does it all mean?  The easy explanation is that black-and-white imposes unity over the diverse images, and the similarities and differences are mostly by chance, aided by a bit of conscious design (putting the sunglasses pictures in one column and the hands pictures in another). Black-and-white was a big move by Drudge, but it too is likely meaningless. Just another way to get attention. Maybe he thought going black-and-white with the Rahm picture made him look more like a gangster (even though the "Godfather" movies are in color), and that led to the idea of making the whole page black-and-white, just to get the webfolk thinking, making stuff up.

But the only interesting lead I thought of is "50 Shades of Grey." Maybe Drudge is trying to say that government and crime are whipping us into submission. Government and crime... and solar flares. Wear sunglasses!

Why did Bob Dylan wear sunglasses to the White House?

Caitlin McDevitt (at Politico) simply notes that he did, but we watched the video (over there), and this was the dialogue at Meadhouse:

ME: Look how emotional he is. That's why he's wearing sunglasses...

MEADE: He doesn't want people scrutinizing him...

ME: He's crying. He doesn't want people to see him cry. Oh, jeez, look at Obama. That smug look on his face... compared to Dylan... who is shaking and crying... [Blogging the conversation:] Did you say he didn't want people peering into his soul?

MEADE: No, I said he doesn't want people scrutinizing him. He's very expressive. He doesn't want people to be able to see that.

ME: Oh, I'm mixing it up with Bush and Putin. [Bush said: "I looked the man in the eye... I was able to get a sense of his soul..."]

MEADE: "Please don’t put a price on my soul... I know you’ve suffered much/But in this you are not so unique.... And if you don’t underestimate me/I won’t underestimate you..."

ADDED: And if you don’t misunderestimate me, I won’t misunderestimate you...

ALSO: What Bob Dylan said about Barack Obama in June 2008.

What watching porn does to a woman's brain.

A study "showed that far less blood was sent to the primary visual cortex, while the women were watching the most explicit porn."

The same thing happens in the brain when a human conducts a non-visual task—like memorizing a list of words—while being shown some sort of visual "distractor" stimuli. Interestingly, when watching normal, non-smut films, extra blood is sent to the visual cortex.

Now, why would this be? Sex is nonvisual for women — that seems like the working theory. If so, porn movies don't make sense: watching causes not watching.

"The gradual yellowing of the lens and the narrowing of the pupil that occur with age disturb the body’s circadian rhythm..."

With age, it becomes more important to open our eyes to bright sunlight.

Leave the sunglasses off, and you will sleep better, think better, and feel better.

"As the testimony proceeded, Mr. Loughner rarely made eye contact with others in the courtroom, sometimes peering at the witness out of the corner of his eye."

"For the most part, he remained stone-faced and still in his seat. Every now and then, his eyes would close for extended periods, then pop open when he heard his name mentioned. Dr. Pietz said the defendant was devastated when doctors told him that he was mentally ill. He did not want to believe it, she said."

"The Reagan library is the way presidential libraries have been in the past... The Nixon library represents the new kind of museum that presents more of an historic view, warts and all."

Said history prof Jon Wiener.

That would have been a spiffier sound bite if he'd said "The Nixon library represents the new kind of museum that presents more of an historic view, 5 o'clock shadow and all."

Or has 5 o'clock shadow lost the sinister connotation it had back in the days when Nixon lost the TV debate with JFK (but won on the radio)?

Or maybe Wiener should have said: "The Nixon library represents the new kind of museum that presents more of an historic view, shifty eyes and all."

Newsweek gets "crazy eyes" to appear on Michelle Bachmann's face.

And it drives Michelle Malkin — who's been crazy-eyed herself — crazy.

This reminds me of why I wouldn't let Isthmus photograph me when it did a cover story about me. I figured they'd take a lot of shots and pick one that made me look crazy or bad in some other way.

But I wasn't striving for media coverage, and Bachmann is. She's got to take what she can get. The media is (mostly) liberal. Deal with it. You've got to manage your face if you want to get elected.

Now, the truth is — I've heard this from a friendly professional photographer — that you should make an effort to open your eyes really wide. It's usually the drooping eyelids that make you look bad. I said I thought it would look weird, and he was all: Trust me. It won't. But he was committed to getting a good photograph, and I'm sure he discarded the shots where I took the eye-wide advice too far.

"How well do you see color?"

Test yourself.

(Via Drawn.)

"Top Tweets: Jonah Goldberg Rides a Plane Edition."

Well tweeted, I'd say.

Today's Drudgedy... Drudge comedy.

Eyes... bucks... Not sure what Drudge is driving at here. Some strange coded message to Ohio? And why show the front and not the back of the dollar bill?

"The Writer Who Couldn't Read."

"[Howard] Engel couldn't see words with his eyes. His visual cortex was broken. But he could 'see' when he used the motor part of his brain, first by tracing letters on a page, then by 'writing' those same letters in the air, and then, strangely, when he shifted to copying letters with his tongue on the roof of his mouth. Tongue-copying was the fastest."

Stare into the tree's eye.

Will it ever blink?

AND: Keep staring:



(Thanks, Chip.)

Mouths-for-eyes pictures.

Example:



View all: here.

The prairie reverie.

There was a snowman the warm weather had made disproportionate:



And evil trees:



This one attempted to claw out my eyeball:



But these are all trivial details. In the end, it was mostly like this, which I consider essence of prairie...



... because, as you can see, there were no bees and no clover.

"At an age at which I should be putting on a wedding dress, I am asking for someone's eyes to be dripped with acid."

An eye for an eye, in Iran.

[A] spurned suitor poured a bucket of sulfuric acid over [Ameneh Bahrami's] head, leaving her blind and disfigured....

Courts usually order families of the accused to pay "blood money" for the crimes. But Bahrami insisted on the punishment. She had several meetings with the head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, who tends to favor less strict interpretations of Islamic law.

"Shahroudi really pressed me to demand blood money instead of retribution. He explained that such a sentence would cause lots of bad publicity for Iran. But I refused," she said.

ADDED: Surely, Shahroudi must know that Iran gets bad publicity for these "blood money" punishments -- which look more like our tort remedies. It's a crime. Put that man in prison for a long, long time if you want our respect.