Copyright notice
All text and original images in this blog © 1990-2010 by William P. Coleman. Some rights reserved. You may reuse only as specified in the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License or by written permission.About me
If you'd like to know more about me, please see the About page. My qualifications for the scientific entries are in my CV.
I see no reason to segregate scientific and technical posts from humanistic ones. In my life, scientific concerns mix with ethical ones, and they shade into a philosophical interest in the nature of cognition and the nature of people. Doing science is as creative as writing fiction, and I get inspiration for both from the same gods.
You will find little here on current politics. I'm an activist, but not in symptoms. Experience in martial arts shows me that the sure way to lose is reactivity; but if you stay cool and remember your training and what you're there for then you achieve goals and, when conflict is unavoidable, you fight and win. The idea of the liberal arts I was brought up in is that broad understanding of cultures and ideas gives you deeper, better goals -- making success more likely and more satisfying. Negatively, the hysteria since 9/11 shows how a country frightened and reactive can destroy itself more than an enemy can. I'm trying to contribute by changing the terms of discourse. . . . As Allen Ginsberg wrote, "America, I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel."
One fact shouldn't require special mention, but it sometimes does: namely that I'm gay. This blog is not primarily about being gay, but the topic sometimes comes up. I'm proud of being gay and do not hide. Muse
Category Archives: Movies
Star Wars (the original: is there any other?)
This post continues my Story Structure series. In an earlier post Two Frescoes, by Giotto and by Taddeo Gaddi, I questioned how many famous movies really are most usefully analyzed as having “3-act structure” — despite the claims of the … Continue reading
Heroes — Luchino Visconti
Count Don Luchino Visconti di Modrone Here’s a sampling of my favorite Luchino Visconti films.
Heroes — Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky on the set of Stalker
Heroes — Vittorio de Sica
Vittorio de Sica, shown above with one of the stars of Umberto D.
Heroes — Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
Heroes — Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Heroes — Satyajit Ray
This post, the first in a series of seven, is unabashed hero worship. A few years ago, making up an earlier version of this page, I decided that among all the filmmakers I’ve liked, there were seven who really especially … Continue reading
Sherlock Holmes — on imagination
On my About page, I present quotations and images that—like the ones at the top of the sidebar to the left—suggest the importance of imagination, inspiration, imagery, art. There is some dialogue in the film of The Hound of the … Continue reading
William P. Coleman 