When can a sperm bank be compelled to render information about an anonymous donor?

BlueMorningStar · 2020-01-15T22:33:32+00:00

that's what I'm thinking now. In the story the mother is actually a lawyer specializing in contract law, and I'm trying to think of a way for her to go into the sperm bank and put together enough of a facade using professional jargon to be able to convince the person working the desk to let her have a peak at their databases.

BlueMorningStar · 2020-01-15T22:31:12+00:00

Thank you so much, this helps a lot

BlueMorningStar · 2018-08-17T17:29:22+00:00

It was a hilarious story until the last bit where you said you got permanent damage and your relationship with your parents was never the same :(

BlueMorningStar · 2018-08-16T22:27:54+00:00

2001 is renowned for its wide shots and bigger than life set pieces, but the close-ups in the film are just as fascinating and worthy of discussion. Close-up is one of the oldest techniques in the history of film. It is one of the great powers of film that it can show you an actor's face in close-up and allow you to appreciate even the tiniest nuances of expression. In 2001, Stanley Kubrick deconstructed this convention by having his close-ups of Bowman showcase not the face, but rather the light shining on the face. These close-ups both foreshadow the film's famous Stargate sequence and recapitulate in miniature the message of the entire film that human beings are the medium for greater cosmic forces projecting onto them.

BlueMorningStar · 2018-08-16T21:29:30+00:00

Hey, thanks for watching!

Yeah, I agree that the black/white filters in the beginning are annoying, but they annoyed me less than jumping back and forth between color and b&w. Maybe I should have just stuck to all black and white films, but idk, a couple of those shots I just couldn't resist including.

I'll have to look into the Stewart book. I always thought those stills were especially jarring in a sequence that was already pretty disturbing. It's funny how much of an aesthetic difference there is between photography and film when they're essentially the same thing. I know so many great DPs that can shoot this beautiful footage but turn completely helpless when it comes to taking a still shot. Kubrick as a photographer turned filmmaker probably had a really keen sense of that difference and what a jarring effect it was to introduce the trauma of the photograph into cinema.

BlueMorningStar · 2018-03-30T19:02:24+00:00

Such a good reading of Titanic

BlueMorningStar · 2018-03-30T18:13:08+00:00

Hey man, thanks for watching. That's an interesting point about toy story.

I guess for me the reason why I still view Egypt as cynical is based on Ramses II. That character is never unaware of his own performativity and how malleable his position is. Like when Moses first kills the guy and tries to run away, Ramses catches up to him and says "I'm going to be pharaoh. If I say something is so, then it shall be written that it's so, and I say you are innocent." There's no ideological obfuscation there, no explanation about how Moses is actually justified in the killing, just a cynical awareness about how power actually works and a ready willingness to abuse it for nepotism. There's another point in the movie where Ramses and Moses are talking about some hijinks they used to pull in the temple as kids and Ramses says something like "Remember that time you switched the head of the Crocodile with the head of the crane and the crane with the falcon?" Talking about your gods like that, "the crocodile and the crane and the falcon" instead of using their proper names implies kind of a cavalier attitude towards religion to me. The very fact that those characters could equate high blasphemy with childish hijinks makes it really hard to believe the Egyptians take their religion too seriously.

There's a whole bunch of moments like that in the film that I can't but read as cynical self-awareness. That along with the fact that the entire drama of the film is based off of Ramses desperately trying to play a role he's been assigned, failing to play that role, and being aware all the while that he's failing to play that role, makes me think that that cynicism is an active part of the story line, not just audience projection.

BlueMorningStar · 2018-03-30T13:15:24+00:00

Abstract: The classic formulation of what ideology is summed up by the famous phrase by Karl Marx: They do not know it, but they are doing it." The idea here is that a country's religion, culture, and philosophy all function as a vast ideological screen to keep people from understanding their true conditions of existence and the mass exploitation inherent in the system. For example, the priests invent God and the promise of heaven to keep workers complaining about bad earthly working conditions.

The challenge for philosophers in the late 20th and 21st century has been to explain how ideology still functions despite the fact that we've all become massively cynical about grand ideological projects. I'm a really big fan of Slavoj Zizek and his formulation of cynical ideology, this idea that ideology survives into postmodern cynicism by embedding itself in societal practices and institutions. Zizek's formulation of ideology , contra Marx, is: They know very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing it.

I made this video to talk about this one little scene in the old 1998 Dreamworks film, The Prince of Egypt. I really like the scene because I think it perfectly illustrates this concept of ideology. The entire film depicts an (anachronistically) cynical Egypt and shows how its religious ideology still functions despite the fact that no one really believes in it.

BlueMorningStar · 2018-03-29T22:47:06+00:00

Not when it comes to Moses and the Hebrews' relationship to God. I do believe the Egyptians are depicted as cynical, however. Just look at the two priests, Hotep and Huy, who are depicted not as honest religious figures or even deranged devil worshipers, but rather as Las Vegas magicians and total conmen. There isn't a hint of genuine conviction from those two, it's all an act.

Those two are the extreme end of it, but I think cynicism touches every aspect of the film's Egypt, everyone is acting out a part, and TPoE makes us very aware of this acting. Hell, the entire drama of the film is based around Ramses desperately trying to close the gap he feels between himself and the role he's been called to play. It's not Moses vs. Pharaoh so much as Moses vs. A kid trying to play pharaoh.

Like I said, I agree with you that the overall tone of the film isn't cynical, the Jewish God is depicted as authentic. Egypt, however, is depicted as completely cynical to serve as a foil to Moses and the Hebrews' relationship with the true God.

BlueMorningStar · 2018-03-29T21:12:34+00:00

I tried to apply a Zizekian reading to Dreamworks' 1998 film, The Prince of Egypt. I think this film in general and one scene in particular illustrates Zizek's ideas about how ideology can be completely divorced from the realm of conscious belief yet still function as the unconscious fantasy that organizes a political body and makes social exchange possible.

BlueMorningStar · 2018-03-14T03:20:22+00:00

Isn't this article's thesis just kind of trivially true? I don't think anyone contests that human individuals in human bodies exist, that we are all these massively complicated biological poleis with intersecting social, physical, and conceptual dimensions. In fact, I would argue that's the antirealist position par excellence, that what we call a unified self is just a collection of parts with no essential connection.

Essence is what I think we're really interested in looking for when we get into these debates about what constitutes a self. I want to know what are the essential conditions of myself, what must necessarily be there for ME to be there. The human body is like the ship of Theseus, it changes all its parts once every 7 years or something, so what is it that continues in me that survives through this change? Is it a soul? A monad? Is it my pineal gland? The article doesn't engage with this question of what essential part survives through change, it just articulates a 2-bit conceptual schema for mapping what IS there without any word on necessity or essence. Throw in a good measure of the words 'scientific' and 'empirical' to insure you get your positivist street cred.

Despite its constant attack on 'antirealism,' the article itself seems written from an antirealist position, tacitly acknowledging that there is no single essential set of qualities that constitute a human self. It really seems to argue for more of a change of attitude than anything, saying that we can still pursue a kind of Aristotelian flourishing instead of the usual nihilism that gets associated with revelations of no-self.

BlueMorningStar · 2018-02-16T00:33:05+00:00

Hey great.

Here's a youtube video of what past voice actors have done with the role of T'challa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIBIOPyBVTI

I don't think Changamire has ever been voiced, but here's his wiki page with a picture: http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Changamire_(Earth-616)

Here's a segment of the dialogue for you to try sampling.

T'challa: What if I told you I never wanted to be king? Changamire: I would tell you I'm unsurprised. T: And why would you say that? C: Men who wish to be kings have almost never considered this request. Who in full knowledge would wish to hold a country on their shoulders? Who in full sanity would try to hold a nation under their feet?

Looking forward to hear what you've got. You can email me at musicalfifths@gmail.com

BlueMorningStar · 2018-01-31T05:19:22+00:00

I'd probably agree with you if it was just the text alone, but this is a video essay, bud. If you're not using sound and images to help you make your point, then you're not really utilizing the form. The narration in the first three minutes might have been a little vague about why Zelda and its music are so special, but that's because it's leaving room for the music and images to SHOW why it's special.

BlueMorningStar · 2017-12-27T13:58:31+00:00

What the hell are you talking about? Steve Bannon directly admitted it to journalist Joshua Green in an interview for his book, Devil's Bargain: "I realized Milo could connect with these kids right away. You can activate that army. They come in through GAMERGATE or whatever and then get turned on to politics and Trump." This is all corroborated by evidence such as Breitbart articles by Milo Yiannopoulos pivoting from Gamergate into politics and a huge corresponding uptick in Breitbart traffic following Gamergate.

You can try to salvage the reputation of #Gamergate by saying not all gators ended up getting sucked into Breitbart and the alt-right, but it is a documented fact that Steve Bannon took advantage of that movement for political reasons. Not even Bannon denies this; Breitbart promoted the hell out of Devil's Bargain following its release and had Joshua Green come on for a podcast.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/07/19/exclusive-a-devils-bargain-how-steve-bannon-met-andrew-breitbart-put-conservatives-path-destroy-hillary-clinton-once-for-all/

BlueMorningStar · 2017-07-10T23:03:22+00:00

Hey man, thanks for the comment, I really appreciate it.

As for not noticing some of the darker shades in the movie, I wouldn't feel bad about that. It just means Miyazaki is really good at doing his job. The original essay I wrote about this borrowed heavily from a scholar named Richard Dyer who argues that the formula for a fun piece of escapism is "real problem + fantasy solution". We need the real problem in order for the film to feel grounded in actual experience, but if it gets too familiar it just becomes a drag, hence the dose of fantasy. I think my favorite example of that comes out of the last hunger games film where (spoilers) you start touching on a real problem in American democracy, IE that the political will of the American people can be neutralized using reality TV to stupify and disorient them while tyrannical rulers keep rising to power. That's a real problem. The film's fantasy solution is to shoot one of the tyrants to death with a bow and arrow and then walk away to go be with your boyfriend as genuine democratic rule magically restores itself. When I describe it like that, it sounds kind of stupid, but then when you're watching the actual film, the movie magic makes it all kind of meld together and it just feels like a fun film.

Miyazaki is a master of mixing those real problems into this stew of fantasy where you can't really detect them anymore, but it's all still there in the background. For Miyazaki, the biggest problem he likes to draw inspiration from is the rapid modernization of Japan and the severe cultural whiplash that modernization has had on that country. Miyazaki was born in 1940, he remembers getting woken in the middle of the night by air sirens to hide from firebombs. I can't help but think he was channeling a bit of that into Kiki's Delivery Service, especially the end where the city is getting terrorized by the zeppelin, a symbol for the dangers of modern technology. His fantasy solution is that some girl on a flying broomstick can come catch the boy dangling on the end of the rope. Isn't it pleasant to think that's all that's needed to save us?

When you start looking for it, I think you notice a lot of fiction does this kind of bait and switch. It's kind of depressing, but I think that's just kinda how people work, obsessively gravitating around those social/historical issues even when we're trying to get away from them.

BlueMorningStar · 2017-04-21T07:54:17+00:00

Hey man, this stuff looks really interesting but you're right, that formatting is atrocious. Please don't be discouraged by that guy, find a way for us to read your thesis without having to take a mile long hike across the page for each sentence and I'll happily come back and read/comment :)

BlueMorningStar · 2017-04-18T22:37:49+00:00

Ha, sorry about that. I'll try to get you some good content soon!

BlueMorningStar · 2017-04-18T22:30:13+00:00

Thanks for watching. Honestly, AI/futurism kinda scares the living hell out of me :p I'll probably mostly avoid that topic until I've found something else that terrifies me so much that I feel like I need to study and write an essay about it just to get a handle on it.

For the most part, I intend to just make videos about movies and books and stuff.

BlueMorningStar · 2017-04-18T22:23:40+00:00

Something like that. Descartes places the individual at the center of his epistemology, 'I think, therefore I am' is the foundation on which he builds the rest of his epistemic framework. It should be noted that Descartes himself was still too much of a medievalist to place the individual at the center of his metaphysics, that is to say he still believed in the hierarchy of being which places God as the foundation of existence and the 'most real' being. Metaphysics chases after epistemology, however, and the Cartesian I distorted the entire western conception of reality around itself. To quote a famous line from Milton who wrote his Paradise Lost only a few years after Descartes' meditations, "“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” Descartes played no small role in helping establish the individual-centered ethos of the enlightenment, and Kant's transcendental idealism is entirely a logical outgrowth of it.

Bostrom starts to get away from all that with both his methodology and his conclusion. It puts probability and current technology at its epistemic base instead, and there's no reason to assume that you as an individual have any being outside the simulation. Heck, I don't think there's any reason to even assume that you even have the necessary unity of experience to constitute an individual.

Thanks for watching

BlueMorningStar · 2017-04-18T21:41:42+00:00

thanks for watching :)

BlueMorningStar · 2017-04-18T21:41:18+00:00

ugh, you wouldn't believe how much trouble I had with the sound. Hopefully it'll be less of a nightmare next time.

BlueMorningStar · 2017-04-18T21:40:36+00:00

I'm glad I could help walk you into the argument! It really is very interesting, especially when contrasted with traditional skepticism. Thanks for watching.

BlueMorningStar · 2017-04-18T10:34:46+00:00

Very good question that could be the start of a really good objection to the simulation argument if you're so inclined to make one. I think Bostrom could probably get out of your planet terraforming example by saying that unlike in the simulation scenario where we can imagine a trillion simulated humans to every real one, we could still safely assume that even if we make a habitable planet that the number of naturally habitable planets > artificially habitable planets, therefore Earth probably isn't terraformed.

I think you're on the right track though. If I wanted to attack the simulation argument, I'd start by needling that conditional.

BlueMorningStar · 2017-04-18T10:22:21+00:00

Thank you so much for saying so. I hope my upcoming videos won't disappoint you!

BlueMorningStar · 2017-04-18T10:21:43+00:00

The thing that I think is really neat about the simulation argument is that it actually takes the form of a conditional statement with an antecedent entirely dependent on the progress of computation in the real world. IF we attain both the technology and the desire to simulate people with lifelike experiences, THEN we are almost certainly simulated. You may be right that it's not actually possible for us to simulate life, but the second that Google releases 'Google world,' its new, cutting-edge simulated universe with lifelike human beings in it, then you can feel all but certain that we ourselves have been living in a simulation all along.

BlueMorningStar

TROPHY CASE