Attraction

Yeah I remember Bela, during my first divorce I was living in a flat with my then manager of all people. He was going through a bust up too and was learning to play the saxophone, he was a big Bela fan, good old Jon, he's retired now (although not from playing the sax - he's in at least two bands!) Married with kids.

I didn't know about FutureMan though. I like the rationale he's used to create his piano-like instrument, I imagine it might sound vaguely eastern, as eastern music often uses notes outside of the chromatic scale (but still within a simple mathematical ratio of a tone or semitone).

His method of taking two of the constants found to naturally occur in the universe reminds me of the immortal line from Jodi Foster in the movie "Contact", when they first pick up the alien broadcast. Commenting on the frequency of the broadcast the Foster character (Ellie) said:

"4.4623 Gigahertz. Hydrogen times Pi. Told ya."

My kind of woman.

Note: In the DVD bonus features section for this movie, Foster revealed that she had in actual fact no idea what the script meant during this scene. Ah well :-)

Which brings me onto attraction; what is it that encourages two people to be attracted to eachother? Is it the Cher/Olympia thing from Moonstruck ...

Rose: Do you love him, Loretta?
Loretta: Aw, ma, I love him awful.
Rose: Oh, that's too bad.

Do opposites attract? Is it that us fallen humans want things that are necessarily bad for ourselves?

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Thank you so much for the HAL-9000 chess game link. Frank Poole was such an awful player. Awesome that Kubrick would throw in a misquoted move by HAL as an indication of some problem with the comp. That's what I wish to believe anyway. Question: what's the relationship between HAL and IBM and was it merely a Clarke coincidence? (Well I know he claims it was).

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My New Years resolution is to try to bring my left leg back to life. I have an exercise regime and I'm going to stick to it. If it's still numb by the end of the year, well I'll be thankful that I'm here to try again next year :-)