Everything is heritable:
Politics/religion:
Statistics/AI/meta-science:
Technology:
Economics:
disability, immigration, globalization, and technological unemployment:
Lives up to its fame (as long as you watch with subtitles), more than 12 years later. Satisfyingly intricate and intelligent police drama delving into the War on Drugs from a realistic point of view not blinded by idealism or unfounded confidence in police, courts, or governments like so many other shows which are based more on what writers think the audience wants to be true. Better than any other cop show I've watched. The filming on location in Baltimore helps realism for me, since I've wandered around Baltimore more than once. The downside is that the ~60 hours demands to be marathoned, and ate my month.
The first season is perfect in its taut narrative from start to finish and illustrating the theme of The Wire: it's the incentives, stupid.
There's a lot of discussion of The Wire and praise for how it deals with racial themes, but this misses the mark - race is almost entirely irrelevant in the series, except occasionally as something fools are blinded by and can be manipulated with (such as how Clay Davis gulls voters and jurymen with racial rhetoric). What is important is how, black or white, male or female, everyone faces pressure from the system & realit
The Origins of Political Order and Political Order and Political Decay, by Francis Fukuyama.
The project is like "Guns, Germs, and Steel", but with a focus on institutions. Basically, it's an overview of all the different routes political development has taken. It mostly presents historical examples. This overview of the first book is decent, which covers autonomous states in China, India, the Middle East (so early Islam, Mamluk slave-military-rulers (!), and Europe (he focuses on the balance of powers between Church/aristocracy/monarchy in France, Spain+Early Spanish Colonies, Denmark, UK, Hungary and Russia) up to the French Revolution. The second volume covers modern democracy (contrasting early American and European democracy, and contemporary Italy/Greece v Northern Europe), colonial and post-colonial states (contrasting Latin America and African, and then the different paths within each area), and bureaucracies (a lot of German stuff; a surprisingly interesting discussion of the US Forest Service). He makes some nods to contemporary issues at the end of the last book, but probably not in a way that will trigger any particular tribal reflexes; he talks about why he t...
Film:
TV (putting The Wire in a separate comment due to length):
Live-action Japanese TV series, 11 half-hour episodes: quasi-autobiographical account of the manga artist Kazuhiko Shimamoto's university years as he flailed around, drew manga, and finally got a break in a magazine's contest. The mangaka himself isn't particularly notable - he did the Blazing Transfer Student manga and apparently the Anime Tenchou commercials, which are "hot blooded youth" bombastic fun heavy on sketchy art to convey intensity & drama & speed, but I had to look up his WP entry to realize that he was involved in those.
The series is heavy on exaggerated emotion and facial reactions as the protagonist lurches from extremes of high and low, and draws on cringe-humor - you're laughing at the follies of his youth, not laughing with him. Tastes will vary for this kind of humor. Personally, I find some bathos is fine, but sustained over a series is a bit too much. The romantic subplots are also a misstep as they wind up being irrelevant, and inflicting a character on us whose voice is best described as a nasal whine.
The real interest of Blue Blazes is in the otaku culture depicted; it is stuffed with cameos (Hiroyuki Yamaga is the bartender in the scene about him forgetting to breathe; Toshio Okada plays Osamu Tezuka after Daicon; several manga editors have small parts), allusions and in-jokes, many of which I didn't even get (the episode intros are based on kyodai hero poses from Ultraman & other franchises, but I've never seen enough of them to recognize them) but some of which were hysterical (to me) - the manga club character dominates every scene he is in, eg after crushing the protagonist's dreams by critiquing his draft, remarks "One does not care to recall the mistakes of youth!" and rides away on his pink bicycle, declaring, "it's three times as fast!" (Char Aznable/Mobile Suit Gundam). In particular, I was surprised to learn that he had gone to the same university at the same time with some of the founders of Gainax, and it is depicting Hideaki Anno, Hiroyuki Yamaga, and the run-up to the DAICON films where it shines for me as it gives another perspective on early Gainax beyond The Notenki Memoirs. He apparently competed with them but was crushed; eg ep3 has Anno doing the Gendo pose after crushing everyone in animation (as expected from the master!). The character sketches are dead-on: when a room-mate's sister visits and Anno learns she has not seen Mobile Suit Gundam and shows his hospitality by marathoning 12 episodes with her, one senses this is something that really happened and which his friends have never let him live it down. Other incidents are interestingly reflective of the times: getting a new VCR to allow stepping through home-videos of animated series frame by frame, to better understand them; visiting an animation supply shop just to watch a loop of anime series intros on their TV; passing out slowly and dramatically, imitating a tokusatsu; re-enacting a sea fight in the baths. The student films shown seem to either be the originals or shot-by-shot remakes. Other aspects are... odd. If episode 8 is remotely accurate, Toshio Okada was crazier than a bag of honey-roasted peanuts and his nouveau-riche family (with terrible decorating taste) made their money off blatantly counterfeiting money, which undermines my generally positive impression of him.
Overall: a must-watch for anyone interested in Gainax; probably a good watch for anyone who liked Bakuman or Genshiken; maybe a watch for anime fans; probably better skipped by anyone else.
This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.
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