Viraj's Weblog

I've been reading Almost Chimpanzee, a rather long book comparing humans to chimpanzees, and notably, their differences. Many books point out similarities, but this one takes a different approach. There are some interesting findings in it. For example, think the flatness of our face helped survival? Consider modern dentistry:

In the mouth, the chimpanzees and humans have the same "dental formula": thirty-two teeth at adulthood, with two incisors, one canine, two premolars, and three molars on each side, top, and bottom. In addition to the famously large canines, the last molars - the wisdom teeth that erupt at adulthood - get much more space in chimpanzees than in humans because chimps have an elongated face. "In humans, before modern dentistry, eruptions and the impaction of wisdom teeth followed by septicemia was a major cause of death," Gagneux said. "There's a huge cost to having shortened the face. You can kill yourself by trying to grow the tooth that defines you as an adult."

Also consider the baculum, which in modern times has been replaced by Viagra:

Gagneux, who specializes in reproduction, noted that chimpanzees have a tiny bone in the penis, the baculum, that is absent in humans. In the Selfish Gene, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins suggests that human males lost this bone in something akin to the Trench Coat theory of bipedalism. The baculum helps maintain an erection, which makes it useful especially as males age or develop mental problems, diabetes, or neurological complications. But for females selecting a mate, the baculum hides problems. "It is not implausible that, with natural selection refining their diagnostic skills, females could glean all sorts of clues about a male's health, and the robustness of his ability to deal with stress, from the tone and bearing of his penis," writes Dawkins. "But a bone would get in the way!"

Here's a new song I worked on today.

The OS X 10.5 Address Book application has a feature to import contacts from Gmail. However, this means all contacts, including ones without phone numbers. If you've had an email account for a long time, there are going to be all sorts of "contacts" in there, like mailing lists. So I needed to prune away all entries without phone numbers. Turns out in new OS X versions, you can restrict to a group of contacts, but not so in my version.

So I wrote a little AppleScript script to do it. Feel free to try it, but be sure to make an export/backup of your Address Book before you do.

This is a polarizing movie that you either love or hate. I tend to like it very much. It's long and drawn out, trippy in every sense, and will likely make you nauseous. The opening credits make it apparent that those prone to seizures should avoid watching. Much of the movie is filmed from behind someone's head, as if a camera is mounted there. One of Gaspar Noe's previous movies is Irreversible. That movie takes voyeurism to an extreme, and is widely known for a very long and difficult to watch rape scene. One thing about his movies is they are powerful and shocking. Enter the Void is no different. What better way to take voyeurism to another extreme by following someone after he dies.

The movie is set in seedy Japan, and the look is as irreligious as you can imagine. Japan is a world of stimulation and onslaught towards your senses. It's a world that is filled with so much color and neon lights that it looks almost fake. This movie blends a clearly fake set with reality, and sometimes you can't tell the difference. That's really how Japan is! The cinematography is just amazing. The camera flies through the sky and buildings to build up its story. It's a cartoon world with real people and real problems. It is portrays well what Japan looks like to a foreigner, especially the isolation between foreigners and society. But what is this movie about? IMDB's plotline is:

A drug-dealing teen is killed in Japan, after which he reappears as a ghost to watch over his sister.

Ok. Think of it as 2.5 hours of this minus the puking. There are various hints at the beginning of the movie as to what the rest of the movie is going to be about. I will spoil it because I doubt anyone reading this will actually watch the movie: it's about death and reincarnation. There is a dialogue at the beginning about the Tibetan Book of the Dead and 2 people talking about reincarnation. That sets the stage for everything else in the movie. The main character dies quite early. But he has a bond with his sister, and its told through flashbacks. The death of their parents is the one strong foothold in the movie, and it grabs you from the dreamy nature of the rest of the movie.

There is an amazing scene at the end that is a very interesting take on what things must be like just before reincarnation. The camera (and ghost) fly in and out of a Love Hotel. Of course, lots of sex is going on. You think, "wow such depravity". But what's unique is each sexual act gets a almost holy aura to it. It's as if each couple is a gateway into the real world and out of the ghost world. The flying soul chooses one couple to make his entrance. It may be an unwise choice if it ends in abortion. Otherwise, a new life is born. But what's one of the first thing that child experiences? The pain of getting his umbilical cord cut. All life is suffering.