To begin with:

(This image has nothing to do with the recommended movie below. The image is from another movie, The Promise , and my reason for posting it is, simply, I couldn’t find a beautiful image for the movie suggested by Annie Wagner.The Death of Mr Lazarescu might be a great work of art but nothing in the look of its main characters offers something that the object-hungry eyes can devour)

The Death of Mr Lazarescu
(FILM) This two-and-a-half-hour movie, winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes in 2005, is about headaches, stomach pain, liver damage, solicitous yet unhelpful neighbors, quince jam, incompetence, inefficiency, cats, proper use of prepositions, young and gorgeous Eastern European lady doctors, turf wars between various ranks of medical professionals, and the decrepit state of the Romanian health-care system. Sounds irritating, yes? But it’s also beautifully, suddenly, unexpectedly sad. (Varsity, all shows $6.25, see Movie Times for details.) ANNIE WAGNER

The end with:

a) Universal Studios reactivates the Universal Mammy.

b) Our man in Portland writes: “The pleasure of a small museum is that there is so little to look at.”

c) Finally, in this PDF file, political philosopher Sang Yil Kim of Hanshin University uses Zadeh’s fuzzy logic to challenge Hegel’s absolute logic. The abstact:

Overcoming Dualism and Unifying Korea: A Process View Sang Yil Kim (Hanshin University) 1. Introduction The primary philosophical and religious reason why Korea is divided is the dualism that originated from a Newtonian and Cartesian paradigm. This dualism, which divides the world into matter and mind, is deeply rooted in western philosophical and religious traditions. Marxist materialism and Hegelian idealism have become two major streams in philosophical and political history. Korea is the only country still divided by such a dualistic ideology. I will attempt to overcome this dualism by introducing “fuzzy logic” and Han philosophy. Fuzzy logic was founded in 1965 by F. Zadeh. I believe it to be the best tool to overcome reductionism and dualism. Han philosophy is a unique, nondualistic, and ancient Korean belief system.

Speaking of belief system, I just learned that the genius Burial (whose recently released self-titled album transformed my inner being, my categories for experiencing time, space, and others) has been in existence for 26 years. Admittedly, I thought he was much younger, a child even, a boy wonder—so fresh and exciting is his music.