Otway Adventures, Complexity, Films

[tcpip]

The past weekend I spent down in the Great Otways National Park. It's the fourth time I have had reason to visit, and each has reminded me that I should have done so more often, given its fairly close proximity to Melbourne. The cool rainforest produces a remarkable density of foilage, with emergent and canopy layers of eucalyptus, beech, and blackwood to the dense ferns and fungi of the forest floor. At dusk one witnesses the play of black wallabies, the grumpy howls of koalas, as a cool mist roll in. There is the rugged coastline of the Great Ocean Road, the 1848 Cape Otway lighthouse, and the very accessible Erskine Falls near Lorne. It is certainly a place where my naturalistic pantheism feels at home. Remarkably, and this will leave me somewhat in awe for a while, little of the journey was of my own making, courtesy of the organisation and company of my special friend lei_loo, whose brother had gifted us the weekend cabin.

I recently 'blogged about the installation process and structure for Eazy-Photoz, "a photometric redshift code designed to produce high-quality redshifts for situations where complete spectroscopic calibration samples are not available". It's a good project, but the authors haven't thought out the software in terms of operating environments. I have also written a piece for The Isocracy Network, A Political Economy for Libertarian Socialism, which I take a difficult elaboration on government and state, public and private, factors of production, class analysis, etc. It is in hindsight that I realised that both were examples of complexity, of attention to detail. The latter concluded with the remark, "a complex truth is preferable to a simple lie", despite the enticements of the former.

Courtesy of a visit to Brendan E., on Australia's tragic excuse for a holiday watched a couple of films last week both in a historical high-fantasy genre; Dracula Untold (2014) and The Great Wall (2016), neither of which were terrible although the "high fantasy" component is a little strong for my tastes in a historical setting. I find myself too influenced by a more graduated disenchantment that suggests a more subtle, "low fantasy" approach for the post-mythic age. Apropos, last night finally watched Sunshine (2007), which really is quite close to being brilliant in terms of characterisation, development, and setting, but marred with a few flaws, or rather questions, that need filling in.

Comments

[leecetheartist]

I was pleasantly surprised yesterday as I watered out the front in my mask that everyone I saw outside their yards was masked up. Cyclists, dog walkers, pram pushers. One guy over the road in his front yard wasn't but he was only out there briefly.

[tcpip]

Was this a mis-post? I'm trying to work out the context.

[leecetheartist]

Yes, my apologies, I'd posted it in quite the wrong place! Thanks!

[motg]

I have done every one of those walks out the back of Lorne. They are all wonderful therapy. One which isn't too demanding and which I would recommend is parking your car at Blanket Leaf picnic ground, and following the path to Erskine Falls from there; and back. But they are all excellent. Humans need wilderness more than we often realize. Enjoy!

[tcpip]

Entirely agreed. I shall make more of an effort to spend time there again. Four times in more tham 25 years is a fairly poor record, given the closeness! But of course, I do live next to a forest, of sorts, as it is.

[garote]

Aaah sunshine. Flawed, yes. Physics are pure hogwash, yes. But a great “mission to nowhere” horror flick in the grand naval tradition.

Pair that with “Pandorum”.

[tcpip]

There are numerous gaffes that shouldn't have happened, and the physics does engage in "some speculation". But damn, that plot development had some great moments.

[tcpip]

OK, now I've fallen into Pandorum reading :)

[garote]

Aww but you need to watch it without spoilers!! oh well

[tcpip]

Not to worry, I'm OK with spoilers. :)

[nextworstthing]

I still don’t understand socialism, just that it can’t be worse than capitalism.

High fantasy can be good. Is there even a “low fantasy”???

[tcpip]

> I still don’t understand socialism, just that it can’t be worse than capitalism.<

Heh. Quite often capitalism is the best advertisement for socialism.

The basic difference is that socialism is about ownership by the public, whereas capaitalism is ownership by capital.

A more nuanced version notes a continuum, and argues that personal property and small business are good candidates for private ownership, whereas the larger the organisation the better it is under public ownership.

> High fantasy can be good. Is there even a “low fantasy”???<

Sure, plenty of low-fantasy examples out there, starting from magical realism where events seems magical but it could have non-magical explanations (e.g., in the film "Pan's Labyrinth" the magical scenes could be escapist delusions by Ofelia). A lot of fairy-tales that require a step into an isolated location where there is some magic are low fantasy.

An interesting novella is "The Magic Goes Away" which has both, because magic is a natural resource that is being used up!