MentalPolyphonics
Where have all the plumbers gone?
One thing that was sad was people emphasizing...Isabella Rossellini has done a series of [internet?] shorts called Seduce Me — “green porno”. They employ simple, low-tech mise, clever crafty costumes and hyper-real, stylized highbrow-hardcore pornlish, art-film styles.
As seen in last night’s Daily Show, here is Isabella Rossellini in Seduce Me‘s “Bedbugs”:
The ‘Tube’s related features are equally surreal — and all are explicitly animal-themed.
No Comments // Tagged: Movies, Surreal
[mp3]
3 Comments // Tagged: Country, Hip Hop, Music
According to Google, generating random sentences from a CFG is a common computer science homework problem, which means there are no solutions online. Here is a solution in VisualBasic for Applications (VBA):
Function GenerateSentence(productor As String) As String
Dim rule As Range
' Get list of rules for productor:
Dim rules As Collection
Set rules = New Collection
With Sheet1.Range("A1:A99")
Set rule = .Find(productor, LookAt:=xlWhole) ' Match whole cell
Do
rules.Add (rule.Address)
Set rule = .FindNext(rule)
Loop While rule.Address <> rules(1) ' Until FindNext loops around
End With
' Choose a random item from rules (VBA must do by reference):
Set rule = Sheet1.Range(CStr(rules.Item(Int(rules.Count * Rnd() + 1))))
' Evaluate right-hand side of rule:
Dim production As String
Dim i As Integer ' i = 0
Do
i = i + 1
production = rule.Offset(0, i).Value
If left(production, 1) = Chr(34) Then ' Chr(34) = Double quote
' Evaluate terminal by stripping quotes:
GenerateSentence = GenerateSentence & Mid(production, 2, Len(production) - 2)
ElseIf Len(production) <> 0 Then
' Evaluate non-terminal recursively:
GenerateSentence = GenerateSentence & GenerateSentence(production)
End If
Loop While Len(production) > 0 ' Until empty column
End Function
Error handling is left as an exercise for the reader.
Sheet1 contains one production rule per row. Column A is the left-hand side of the production rule and each cell to the right contains a terminal enclosed in double-quotes or a non-terminal that matches other cells in column A. For Example 5 in Wikipedia’s article on CFGs, Sheet1 would look like:
| A | B | C | D | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | S | "x" | ||
| 2 | S | "y" | ||
| 3 | S | "z" | ||
| 4 | S | S | " + " | S |
| 5 | S | S | " – " | S |
| 6 | S | S | " * " | S |
| 7 | S | S | " / " | S |
| 8 | S | "(" | S | ")" |
Create a macro that initializes the random number generator (Randomize) and then calls GenerateSentence with the start symbol as input. GenerateSentence returns a string that can be put in the Value of a cell.
No Comments // Tagged: code, Programming
The school I’m going to was built on the former grounds of The London Asylum for the Insane. The buildings are still standing, and it might be a good place to film.
First, from Heritage London’s whitepaper, as a reason to preserve: “Impressive scale and architecture of Victorian period public buildings and landscape.”
Next, here are some notes from an MA thesis on the asylum:
“[Dr. Burke prescribed] opium, not alcohol, although it was found to be addictive, [lowered] appetite, and caused nausea. He prescribed cannabis for sleep.”
“Masturbation was seen as the cause of insanity. The theory was that during sex blood rushed to the head causing damage to nerves in the brain. Masturbation [at a young age] was worse.”
From an urban exploration site (warning: has music), this tidbit:
“A more contraversial [sic] treatment method that [Dr. Burke] used was his gynecological surgeries, performed on over 200 women between 1895 and 1901. The theory at the time was that a women’s [sic] mental health was intimately linked to her reproductive system.”
Last, here’s a photoset from an urban explorer who was resourceful enough to get inside. There are some great, eerie shots there.
There’s definitely a scenario hiding there. Weird surgeries and patient gardens — they even built a chapel — all under the haze of opiates, cannabis, and insanity in Victorian Upper Canada.
1 Comment // Tagged: Cannabis, Drugs, Movies, sex
Here’s one of my baby cousins’ summer projects, Armed Robbery:
The ending is perfect.
No Comments // Tagged: Movies
This trailer makes The Mechanic (renamed terribly in the trailer below “Killer of Killers“) look like it’s about a dude fighting for justice. Really, it’s another one of those existentialist films.
Spoilers follow. (more…)
No Comments // Tagged: Movies
I’ve been working through Maison d’Être’s existentialist film list, which includes this picture. Tarantino, via Zoë Bell in Death Proof, called Vanishing Point (1970) “one of the best American films ever made”.
The film is a character study of Kowalski, a man who lives completely on his own terms — including a sense of morality and compassion derived from his own experiences.
Kowalski lives to drive — his only remaining passion after everything else is stripped from him by the Vicissitudes. The police — outback Nazi law enforcement — chase him because he rejects social authority. Eventually even his allies amongst the people betray him.
In the end the blue meanies force him to stop, but, spoiler alert, Kowalski lives to drive.
The photography jackknifes between amazing and awful — real plane-of-focus / depth of field issues within staggering shots of peyote country.
No Comments // Tagged: Movies
Natural languages are ones that humans naturally speak. Constructed languages like Klingon, Esperanto and computer programming languages are not natural. Languages are how people do speak, not how some experts think a proper person should speak.
There’s a theory that the grammatical rules of natural languages only take local sentence context into account. For example subject and verb must agree in a clause, but if an independent clause is grammatically correct, then it can’t become grammatically incorrect in a compound sentence.
A number of counter-examples have been given over the years. From what I can find in Google Scholar, the argument ended in 1985 in a draw. Many contemporary linguistics and computer science textbooks say in passing that English has non-local grammatical rules. But all the examples of non-local rules I can find seem to have one of two flaws:
Languages with only local grammatical rules are known as “context-free” and they can be formally specified using a context-free grammar. Computer scientists use formal grammars to program computers to understand languages. Processing constructed langauges like programming languages, mark-up languages (eg: HTML) and domain-specific languages (eg: mailing addresses) is a big part of what computers do. And it would be nice if computers could also understand natural languages.
5 Comments // Tagged: language, Programming
Why are we being such dicks to the Tamils? Let’s stop with all the “terrorist human smugglers” talk and, you know, treat them as peeps.
1 Comment // Tagged: canada, Politics
Monday
2pm-4pm — Documentary Film Theory: “examine how innovative films have contested and expanded the documentary canon and the evolving theories and practices of documentary filmmaking.”
4pm-6pm — Production: “During the second half of this course the students will complete a documentary production.”
Tuesday
8am-5pm — Production.
Wednesday
No class.
Thursday
9am-11am — Creative Resourcing: “Tasks such as casting, sourcing crews, hiring talent, scheduling, arranging permits, site surveys and many others will be taught and discussed.”
12pm-2pm — The Business of Media: “Budgeting, contracts, copyright, funding, licensing, Canadian content, tax credits and union agreements”.
3pm-7pm — Cinematography: “Aesthetic and technical aspects of the craft will be learnt, with an emphasis on how all of this applies to the creation of documentary films.”
Friday
8am-11am — Editing: “Creativity, organization, a comprehension of digital video technical issues, editing terminology and theory”.
12pm-3pm — Writing: “Each student will complete several script writing exercises as well as pitch a documentary and narrative film concept to the class.”
—
Now I need a job to fit that schedule. McDonalds? Also: time for yoga and psychotherapy.