Star Wars Episode VII‘s script apparently is still being heavily doctored but the film will start shooting in 2014. Casting news thus far has been slim; but actor Ian McDiarmid has been confirmed recast as Senator Palpatine despite that characters untimely demise. Palapatine did have an apprentice however, which many think will serve as one of the main villains in the film. The 7th installment will focus on the offspring of Han Solo and Princess Leia.
I have many memories of him, some early memories have that misty, but warm quality, of the fifties, an age of innocence.
You kinda of realize things slowly. Kids must learn. Things emerge into your consciousness.
I remember when I realized he was just a man around the time I was a young teenager, he wasn’t all powerful, he was human. And later I realized what a man. A Rational Man, just like me. And his ideas have changed many lives for the better.
And of course, he is of the Greatest Generation. An American marine fighter pilot, who at one time was sitting on a carrier off the coast of Japan, ready to invade their homeland. Not thinking of a future. Then there was the news.. Atomic Bomb. He now had a future, he could go home.
He returned, married my mother, went to school on the GI bill, and embarked on career as a psychologist. School psychologist. Helping troubled and troublesome kids.
And he was Maverick, in ideas.
Dr. David West Keirsey with self portrait.
He was “Just like me..” — Oh, what a lucky person I am.
What did “just like me” mean?
As it turned out this situation was unusual, although I did not know it at time and it took me a few years to realize it. And as a father myself, I understand it much more as time goes on. Your friends and family are rarely “just like you”.
The Father-Son relationship is complicated, whether or not you are a chip off the old block.
Being “A Chip Off the Old Block” — is not the usual situation, in life, as I was to learn from my father.
We both were interested in ideas. As it turned out he would name our type of person as “an Architect Rational” (and lastly a “Designer Rational” he was always tinkering with his theory) — but that is much a later in life. We both loved to examine and debate ideas, he respecting my thoughts despite my youth and naivety.
He was a great listener. But he was always willing to debate ideas, and question the conventional.
My most vivid memory, and recurring memory of him was when I was about 12 years old, I came back from school and he had asked me what I learned and queried me about my new found knowledge. Can a set be a subset of itself? That is the question my father put to me when I was about twelve years old, when I was being taught “new math” in junior high school and trying to explain to him math. I said “Yes, a set can be a subset of itself.” My answer at the time was less than satisfactory for my father, for he understood things much more than I did. A lively debate about this question ensued for many years between us and this question morphed to many other questions. The ensuing life-long dialog and debate between the two of us has covered a wide range of issues about life, both in the physical and behavioral sciences. My father spoke more of the behavioral sciences, I, more of the physical and computer sciences, and all the while both of us spoke of how words best be used.
He was well read in philosophy and psychology — and he loved history, particularly Civil War and WWII history, given that he was in the WWII. But ultimately he considered himself a “wordmeister.” He studied words. And he studied persons. He considered himself a personologist.
Beginning at an early age, my father would talk about the works of Oswald Spengler, Herbert Spencer, Will Durant, Charles Darwin, Adam Smith, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ayn Rand, Georg Hegel, Maurice Merlau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Wolfgang Kohler, William James, John Dewey, Ernst Cassirer, Isabel Myers-Briggs, Milton Erickson, Jay Haley to name a few.
In the last years he had physical ails that dimmed and slowed his brilliant mind, as the impromptu video below shows. But he still retained an intelligence and humor far beyond the ordinary, up to his last few days.
By the by. Yes, I contended with my father on the ideas. He needed someone to bounce his ideas off. And, in the last few years he kept forgetting that I did put up some of his publishable work on madness (after trying to get him agree to let some of it out for about the last 10 years), here. — David Mark Keirsey.
Albert Einstein himself plans on bringing depth and meaning to his Batman/Superman team up-film, so he titled the film: Superman vs. Batman. The guy’s clearly a genius. Why Warner Bros. keeps hiring a man who’s “best film” garnered a 56% on rottentomatoes, is baffling. As a matter of fact, the guy’s LAST THREE FILMS averaged a blunderous 43% on the oft-referenced meta-critic-website. Now, I’m no rocket scientist. To be certain. But words like fail, and baddie; spring to mind.
Thrones is back and thank the gods. Ok. That was a bluff. I went all-in, and I folded. Wasn’t my best poker play. Throne’s presence at San Diego Comic-Con kicked off with a tribute to the many casualties of the beloved series:
HBO parent company Time Warner has released their latest quarterly earnings report and within it are the latest viewer numbers for Game of Thrones. HBO is now reporting that Game of Thrones averaged 14.2 million viewers per episode last season. This is a 20% increase over season 2′s viewership number and is a significant jump from the last reported number of 13.6 million. (You can download the full report here.)
What does this mean? It means that even well into season 3 Thrones‘ viewership is still climbing. Which is pretty unprecedented for a drama like this. I suspect the Red Wedding may have had something to do with the late season jump as people got caught up on the show to see what all the fuss is about.
This also means that Game of Thrones is very, very close to becoming HBO’s most-watched show of all-time. The Sopranos is currently tops with an average of 14.4 million viewers per episode.Game of Thrones may very well break that next season.
The coveted franchise will be trying to shake off X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and X-Men 3: The Last Stand: both films having been absolute garbage, garnering an average 47.5% rottentomatoes score. While X-men: First Class did some damage-control, Singerwill probably be looking to make some headway on the many fans of the franchise. As a matter of fact, with Sentinel’s running around, Singer could totally swing some Magneto/JFK”magic-bullet” action into the mix. Let’s just hope,assume and pray that the guy isn’t going to pull some sort of Zack Snyder. Because that would be bad. Like reallybad. Speaking of the man-himself, Snyderwill direct a Man of Steel sequel, featuring none other than a rebooted Caped Crusader. Does lowly gruntish simpleton Zack Snyder have sufficient enough intellectual-capacity and talent to do justice to the Justice League? NO. No he absolutely does not. Any other questions?
Marvel’s promise to “keep taking risks” ended them up with an Ant-Man film. How pumped were YOU when you saw “Ant-Man“? You weren’t. Disney recently announced that Marvel Studios’ Phase Three will kick off in the summer of 2016: releasing films on — July8 2016, May 62016, and May 5 2017. Ant-Man and Doctor Strange will be two of those films, and have yet to cast lead roles. Having recently reacquired intellectual property Blade, Daredevil, The Punisher, and Ghostrider: Marvelhas requested a meeting with Vin Diesel. Opening the door for a whole lot of nerd speculation.
There comes a time in contracts where, if a studio is done making the movies, [the characters] come home,” he explained. “That doesn’t mean we’re going to make another movie. But it means they’re back in the fold, which is where we want them to be. — Kevin Feige
The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. In 1972, the US prison population was 300,000 people. Today it’s 2.3 million.
This includes 3,000 kids serving life sentences.
“I started representing children on death row 20 years ago, and I was struck by how desperately they wanted and needed mentoring, parenting, guidance.
They were in every sense of the word “kids,” and that surprised me initially. . . . What I saw was that not only were they vulnerable and disabled and exposed in ways that adult clients weren’t, but they were also responsive in ways that adult clients weren’t. . . . The second thing was just seeing how exposed kids are in the adult system, how victimised, how brutalised. The biggest problem we have is the profound absence of hope” The opportunities that were given to me I want to give to other people who are disadvantaged and disfavored and marginalised. And in my generation, I think the place where those needs are most compelling and most dramatic is in the criminal justice system. One out of three young black men is in jail or in prison. I go into communities where half of the young men of color are under criminal justice control, where you see states like Alabama that have permanently disenfranchised over a third of the black male population. I see real threats to the kinds of freedom and opportunities that I experienced as a result of the work that was done before me, and I feel a need to respond to that.”
