Movies

[zendancer]

I saw "Particle Fever" last night at a special showing, which was followed by a short talk by a Vanderbilt physicist who works on the data processing and interpretation. He took questions from the audience and there were numerous other physicists there who also work on the data processing and theoretical work. The documentary was fair (too much eye candy and not enough explanatory stuff about how the machine functions), but it did give a sense of how large and complex the hadron collider is (by far the largest machine in the world). I knew that electromagnetic force fields focus the beams of lead protons and hold them in orbit, but I doubt that non-scientists would know that, and the movie never explained how they get the protons up to speed, how they control them, how they bring them together, or anything about the collisions. The data is sent all over the world to hundreds of processing centers where hundreds of thousands of computers crunch the numbers.

There were several interesting questions from the audience and the last question (concerning non-duality and the Einstein/Poderovsky speculation) gave me a laugh. The physicist who tried to answer it basically replied, "I don't know what to think about it." Ha ha.

Afterwards, a friend said, "Okay, one beam is going one direction at .95 the speed of light and the other beam is going the other direction at .95 the speed of light, so when they bring the two beams together, doesn't the collision occur at 1.9 times the speed of light?" We didn't even know what his question meant or what it implied. Ha ha.

My takeaway is that the complexity of whatever will follow the "standard model" will likely exceed the capacity of the human intellect to understand--even the math. There will be numbers, but no one will really know what they are pointing to. The physicists in the movie claimed that the value of the Higgs Boson was 125 gev, halfway between what is called for via the "super symmetry" model and what is called for via the "multiverse" model. It was unclear what that meant, but I think it meant that things are going to get a lot more complicated.

It was fascinating to hear that dark matter and energy compose 95% of the universe, and no one has any idea what it is. It is apparently the propulsive force behind the expanding universe, and the only down-to-earth explanation about it came from a physicist who answered a lady like this," Well, its like when you bake blueberry muffins in the oven. The blueberries get farther apart as the yeast in the dough makes the muffin expand, but we don't know what the yeast is that is making the stars move away from each other."

[laughter]

Thanks for the review ZD.

Mar 15, 2014 17:53:22 GMT -5 zendancer said:

There were several interesting questions from the audience and the last question (concerning non-duality and the Einstein/Poderovsky speculation) gave me a laugh. The physicist who tried to answer it basically replied, "I don't know what to think about it." Ha ha.

That's almost exactly the question that Einstein started with that led him to invent G.R.

[runstill]

Mar 15, 2014 20:21:00 GMT -5 laughter said:

Thanks for the review ZD.

Mar 15, 2014 17:53:22 GMT -5 zendancer said:

There were several interesting questions from the audience and the last question (concerning non-duality and the Einstein/Poderovsky speculation) gave me a laugh. The physicist who tried to answer it basically replied, "I don't know what to think about it." Ha ha.

That's almost exactly the question that Einstein started with that led him to invent G.R.

Its perplexing that these smart minds see their experiments pointing to consciousness being primary but they have a dearth of compulsion to put forth any theory from that perspective .

[stardustpilgrim]

I just thought of a movie that might be worth seeing if you haven't seen, The Men Who Stare At Goats. It's loosely based on a government program exploring the use of ESP for military purposes. It's a comedy....actually pretty funny.....sort of semi-serious, but not really. George Clooney is the main character.

sdp ...........

[stardustpilgrim]

I just saw the preview for a new film coming out April 18, Transcendence. Johnny Depp plays a dying scientist whose consciousness is transferred to a computer. Looks very interesting.......Another one I'm looking forward to Edge of Tomorrow (I love time travel movies).

sdp

[laughter]

Ride the Whirlwind came up in conversation here.

[Deleted]

Apr 7, 2014 16:56:21 GMT -5 laughter said:

Ride the Whirlwind came up in conversation here.

seen this one?

am downloading as we speak..

heard it was good, will comment later perhaps

Apr 7, 2014 17:17:06 GMT -5 @popee said:

heard it was good, will comment later perhaps

welp, this user from IMDB must have liked it anyways..


Life-altering. The greatest film of all time.

I first saw this film almost fifteen years ago and thought about almost nothing else for at least a month. I have never seen a film before or since that presents the extremes of love, pain, and loss with such immediacy and ruthless candor. Watching this film with openness, identifying with the characters, made me wince and writhe in sympathetic agony. I didn't cry; rather, I was reminded of all the times I have wept in my life, and why.

Perhaps each person person has a film -- usually a masterpiece -- which affects him or her so strongly that it is beyond description. This is mine.



hmmm, high praise, I guess. I almost hate reviews like that, cuz then I almost feel compelled to watch the d@mn thing, and if it doesn't live up to the hype... well..

[laughter]

Apr 7, 2014 17:17:06 GMT -5 @popee said:

Apr 7, 2014 16:56:21 GMT -5 laughter said:

Ride the Whirlwind came up in conversation here.

seen this one?

am downloading as we speak..

heard it was good, will comment later perhaps

I've got a vague recollection of it yeah, but it was an age ago at this point ... looks like it's worth rewatching ... alot of stuff that I saw or read or heard before 2009 has all sorts of new meaning to it these days.

[Deleted]

Apr 7, 2014 17:19:31 GMT -5 laughter said:

I've got a vague recollection of it yeah, but it was an age ago at this point ... looks like it's worth rewatching ... alot of stuff that I saw or read or heard before 2009 has all sorts of new meaning to it these days.

I know, right?

This place is like a cornucopia of suggestions about this or that... ;-)

[silver]

I just got through watching Paprika, an anime movie about a 'dream machine' -- here's the link to many reviews on www.rottentomatoes.com/m/paprika/

[zendancer]

Carol and I just returned from watching a great documentary--"Walking the Camino, Six Ways to Santiago." The photography and scenery is wonderful, and the stories about the people are fascinating. For 1200 years Christian pilgrims and others have walked 500+ miles across Spain to a well-known cathedral. A few of them have continued on to the coast, about 60 miles farther.

This movie is pretty cosmic in its outlook and approach, and the various comments by Catholic priests and other Spaniards familiar with the pilgrimage say things similar to what Tolle or Adya might say. The movie follows six people who make the journey, and all of them are changed interiorly by the experience. The exterior journey is mirrored by an interior journey as they get out of their heads and begin to see the world in a different way. I can highly recommend the film.

[laughter]

Apr 13, 2014 16:52:38 GMT -5 zendancer said:

Carol and I just returned from watching a great documentary--"Walking the Camino, Six Ways to Santiago." The photography and scenery is wonderful, and the stories about the people are fascinating. For 1200 years Christian pilgrims and others have walked 500+ miles across Spain to a well-known cathedral. A few of them have continued on to the coast, about 60 miles farther.

This movie is pretty cosmic in its outlook and approach, and the various comments by Catholic priests and other Spaniards familiar with the pilgrimage say things similar to what Tolle or Adya might say. The movie follows six people who make the journey, and all of them are changed interiorly by the experience. The exterior journey is mirrored by an interior journey as they get out of their heads and begin to see the world in a different way. I can highly recommend the film.

Martin Sheen, in The Way, plays a grieving father who walks the Camino as a sort of substitute for his son, who died before he could.

[Deleted]

Apr 13, 2014 16:52:38 GMT -5 zendancer said:

Carol and I just returned from watching a great documentary--"Walking the Camino, Six Ways to Santiago." The photography and scenery is wonderful, and the stories about the people are fascinating. For 1200 years Christian pilgrims and others have walked 500+ miles across Spain to a well-known cathedral. A few of them have continued on to the coast, about 60 miles farther.

This movie is pretty cosmic in its outlook and approach, and the various comments by Catholic priests and other Spaniards familiar with the pilgrimage say things similar to what Tolle or Adya might say. The movie follows six people who make the journey, and all of them are changed interiorly by the experience. The exterior journey is mirrored by an interior journey as they get out of their heads and begin to see the world in a different way. I can highly recommend the film.

Some say that the thought of a separate entity is by definition itself a seeking entity. The byproduct of seeing through the illusion of a separate entity collapses the seeking entity.  How wonderful would that be for a movie to generate such a realization.

[earnest]

Apr 13, 2014 16:52:38 GMT -5 zendancer said:

Carol and I just returned from watching a great documentary--"Walking the Camino, Six Ways to Santiago." The photography and scenery is wonderful, and the stories about the people are fascinating. For 1200 years Christian pilgrims and others have walked 500+ miles across Spain to a well-known cathedral. A few of them have continued on to the coast, about 60 miles farther.

This movie is pretty cosmic in its outlook and approach, and the various comments by Catholic priests and other Spaniards familiar with the pilgrimage say things similar to what Tolle or Adya might say. The movie follows six people who make the journey, and all of them are changed interiorly by the experience. The exterior journey is mirrored by an interior journey as they get out of their heads and begin to see the world in a different way. I can highly recommend the film.

Thanks ZD, another for the list

I walked the Camino back in 2000 (started at the Spanish/French border). Happy days indeed.

[laughter]

Apr 14, 2014 3:26:18 GMT -5 earnest said:

Apr 13, 2014 16:52:38 GMT -5 zendancer said:

Carol and I just returned from watching a great documentary--"Walking the Camino, Six Ways to Santiago." The photography and scenery is wonderful, and the stories about the people are fascinating. For 1200 years Christian pilgrims and others have walked 500+ miles across Spain to a well-known cathedral. A few of them have continued on to the coast, about 60 miles farther.

This movie is pretty cosmic in its outlook and approach, and the various comments by Catholic priests and other Spaniards familiar with the pilgrimage say things similar to what Tolle or Adya might say. The movie follows six people who make the journey, and all of them are changed interiorly by the experience. The exterior journey is mirrored by an interior journey as they get out of their heads and begin to see the world in a different way. I can highly recommend the film.

Thanks ZD, another for the list

I walked the Camino back in 2000 (started at the Spanish/French border). Happy days indeed.

That would be pretty cool to hear about on a thread of it's own right.