A Considerable Speck

Check out this wonderful review of The Incredible Hulk from The Guardian. It is a masterpiece (which is more than you can say for the movie!):

“Hulk. Smash!” Yes. Hulk. Smash. Yes. Smash. Big Hulk smash. Smash cars. Buildings. Army tanks. Hulk not just smash. Hulk also go rarrr! Then smash again. Smash important, obviously. Smash Hulk’s USP. What Hulk smash most? Hulk smash all hope of interesting time in cinema. Hulk take all effort of cinema, effort getting babysitter, effort finding parking, and Hulk put great green fist right through it. Hulk crush all hopes of entertainment. Hulk in boring film.

…Hulk not scary. Hulk look like Shrek. Wait. Critic have … second thought. Hulk look like Shrek when Shrek turn handsome, in Shrek 2. Like Gordon Brown. Hulk rubbish. Hulk not look powerful. Especially when Hulk do jumpy bouncy floaty thing. Over New York buildings. Then Hulk look wussy. Big. Yet wussy. Not good combination.

The NZ Herald reports that according to the recent 2008 Mercer Quality of Living survey, Auckland ranks 5th worldwide and Wellington ranks 13th. Auckland (according to the survey) has the best quality of living of any city in the Asia Pacific region.

The study by global consulting firm Mercer checked each city against a list of criteria including personal safety, schools and education, and climate. Factors like political stability and personal freedom were also taken into account. Each city was given a score compared to New York, the benchmark city, with a base score of 100. Auckland had the best quality of living of any city in the Asia Pacific region, followed by Sydney and Wellington. - NZ Herald

Not surprisingly, it seems the Aussies are not all that happy with the findings of this survey.

All this has got me thinking about how we measure and define quality of living, mainly because I think that would provide some interesting discussion. However, a post around all that is going to have to wait until I have a little time.

On a slightly different note, I watched extracts of David Lange’s speech at the Oxford Union debating the proposition that “Nuclear Weapons are Morally Indefensible” on YouTube.

Most New Zealanders watched David Lange contest and win the 1985 Oxford Union debate, arguing the proposition that “nuclear weapons are morally indefensible” with a mixture of pride and astonishment. After decades of knowing our place, and several years of government by homunculus, suddenly we had a Prime Minister who could stride the international stage with insouciance. And briefly, we seemed to matter.

Although New Zealand’s nuclear-free policy did not become law until 1987, it was integral to early years of the fourth Labour government. The 1984 snap election that made Lange Prime Minister was called by Robert Muldoon when National MP Marilyn Waring withdrew her support for her party over the issue of nuclear ship visits. Labour won the election with a nuclear ban as a flagship policy.

The policy was popular among New Zealanders, but not without cost. Our relationship with the US deteriorated in the early weeks of 1985. On the same journey that took him to Oxford, Lange, four days before the debate, met with a US State Department official who outlined the retaliatory measures that the US would be taking against New Zealand. The ANZUS alliance of which New Zealand had been part since 1951 was effectively cancelled at that meeting.

The entire speech can be heard here and the transcript can be read here.

A great moment in history, a great politician, a great orator and a great man. The world needs more politicians like Lange!

An interesting interview on NPR recently with Steve Lopez, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times about his new book, The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music. The book is about Lopez’s friendship with a homeless musician he met three years ago on the streets of Los Angeles and chronicles his story. The man, Nathaniel Ayers, had been a promising musician, a violinist, who had studied at Juilliard and had been forced to leave because of his battle with schizophrenia. Lopez talks about his developing friendship with Ayers and the ongoing process of getting him off the street and finding treatment for his mental illness.

I haven’t read the book as yet…it’s on my list. However, the interview was interesting. You can listen to the interview here.

In this interview and in a couple of others I have read, Lopez talks about the ways in which music has the power to redeem:

I think of redemption, in this sense, not as atonement but as deliverance. Nathaniel was in some ways destroyed, his career halted and his dreams snuffed. But also, music saved and sustained him, as if it were a spiritual, healing force. I’d have to admit, as well, that I had never adopted a cause in my life. One of Nathaniel’s many gifts to me was to get me outside of my own head, so I could experience the humility that comes from trying to help someone.

Music has the power to get us outside of our own heads, to transcend the ordinary and become aware of something bigger and to become aware of our connectedness to the world around us. As we are lifted out of our own petty concerns and worries, we become able to connect with the lives, the stories and the music of another’s soul. Lopez talks about the ways in which his life was changed by his encounter with this man:

He took an impatient man and taught him patience. He helped me appreciate, and feel inspired by, a kind of music I knew nothing about. His passion for his mission rekindled my passion for my own. My life is much busier now, richer, more challenging, more rewarding. And I picked up a guitar I had long ago abandoned.

I find the story moving and fascinating because I have a strong belief that music does have the power to heal and redeem and connect. More importantly, though, this story resonates with me because I also have a firm belief that our lives are changed (often in surprising and unexpected ways) by the people we encounter on the journey…those strangers who become friends. I never cease to be amazed how, for me at least, music is often an important part of those encounters on the road.

For another fascinating look at music and the brain, check out Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.

Here’s the proof….

Thanks to Bob Carlton for pointing out this link.