Around the World and Into the Psyche
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The New York Film Festival, thirty-eight years in the running, continues to command respect as a showcase for eminent filmmakers and up-and-coming masters.
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How Paxil arrived in Tokyo and redefined the way the Japanese think about melancholy.
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For the past 30 years scientists have scoured the most inhospitable environments or life. Just about everywhere they look, they find it thriving in microscopic form.
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Psychologists and neuroscientists have spent several decades producing theoretical models of the mental processes and neural networks that might  be involved in the kaleidoscopic state of psychosis. Largely concerned with simulating the nuts-and-bolts of the mind and brain, these  computer models generate results that tend only to be of interest to researchers and their scientific colleagues. More recently, scientists have decided to harness the power of virtual reality, in an attempt to move beyond the confines of theory, to simulate the experience of psychosis itself.
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Mamoru Oshii's hallucinatory meditation on life unfolds in a swirl of film-noir intrigue, philosophical speculation, eye-popping images and serious science-fiction cool.
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I met an old friend for coffee in San Francisco yesterday afternoon, and had a few hours to kill before stopping in at the Wired reunion party. I didn't want to drive back to Berkeley because the weather was so crummy, and I was just across teh street from a movie theater and was just in time for the start of a movie that lots of people had been telling me to see. So I went. The movie -- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, I had no idea what it was about until the movie started, then I remembered hearing a Fresh Air show about it and finding it too painful to listen to. Now here I was in the theater, not just being asked to listen to it, but being asked to live it. Through some very wonderful film-making, you feel as if what is happening to the main character is happening to you. Or more accurately, probably, you get the slightest hint of what it's like to be this person. My immediate impulse, one which I gave serious consideration to, was to pack up my things and leave. Anything would be better than spending three hours living this guy's life.  Two things happen over time: 1. You get over it. 2. They change perspective, and instead of being inside his body, you move outside it.  I think those two things are the story we all live as we mature and learn to live inside our own bodies, with their limits. You learn to step outside and see the humor in your predicament. The main character says he lives in a diving bell because it's as hard for him to communicate with other people as it would be at the bottom of the ocean inside a diving bell. The movie teaches that it's not much easier for the rest of us, even though we can manipulate symbols better. On the other hand, of course it is. The film develops a relationship between the hero and his father, between the hero and his own children, his ex-wife, his lover.  We strive for deeper understanding of ourselves and each other. But it may be ridiculously easy to find the only meaning that exists, without language, without intellect, by just being. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly should probably be the picture of the year for 2007, it's that good. But like all great art it shows you something truthful about yourself, and you may or may not want to see it.
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Gideon Mendel's pictures of flooding in east and west reveal striking contrasts and unexpected resonances
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Global politics, seniors in love, fantastical fairy tales, technical glitches and the Weinstein brothers
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Get to know the world - its people, food, interests, music and spirit - all in a day.
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Scientists figure out why too much marijuana sometimes causes feelings of paranoia. It involves the geography of the brain.
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"The Complete Stories" (Pantheon Books, 528 pages, $27.50), by David Malouf: Australia is often a backpacker's destination of choice when otherwise lost. Its Ayers Rock and glittering Sydney are so far away and seasonally upside down that it must be the place to find a sense of purpose in the unsure time between adolescence and age.
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Are you a blue state American who has the blues? Think Bush is Hitler, and want to burn your American passport ASAP to escape the New American Police State? You sense a disturbance in your aura while sitting in the lotus position meditating upon your healing crystals? Here's a few countries for you to think about: Panama, Costa Rica, and Canada.
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Step beyond America's borders and invest globally.
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We left Quebec City at 6 AM on our way to New York City via Montreal. It was my first train ride. I've been traveling by plane in the US for 30 years, and have seen the food go from reasonable to horrible, airline employees go from happy to surly, airport security go from somewhat inconvenient to completely ridiculous and the overall experience of plane travel go from enjoyable to barely endurable. That's really what airline travel has become, a barely endurable way to get from point A to point B. It is my hope that train travel will be a "eureka" experience.
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As explorers investigated the world in centuries past they began pondering a puzzle called the "latitudinal diversity gradient." That's science talk for: The farther you go from the tropics, the fewer different kinds of plants and animals there are.
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Travel: Sean Dodson: Look beyond the 'Wild East' reputation and you'll discover a thriving cultural underbelly.
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Locales that are not always where you want to be but are always fascinating