Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? ----William Blake, The TygerIn the first half of this season of House of the Dragon, we’ve sat through three episodes all with eerily similar endings, with characters sneaking in where they’re not wanted, whether to assassinate someone or attempt to broker peace in the desperate final hours before all is lost. In Episode 4, titled “A Dance of Dragons,” the net of tension that Westeros has existed under since King Viserys’ death has broken, and both sides now know there’s no way out, except through open war.
‘House of the Dragon’: Who Was the Shocking Death in Dance of Dragons?
If dragons were real, how might fire-breathing work? “A dragon could draw on some chemistry used by the bombardier beetle. This insect has evolved reservoirs adapted to store hydrogen peroxide…”
Despite the fact that there are no giant flying reptiles that breath fire, dragons show up in folklore from all over the world. Could there be any more frightening combination of features in a dangerous animal? Even contemporary stories, like Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings present dragons as the ultimate fantasy monster.
But would it ever be possible for a creature of earth to spout flames like a fire-breathing dragon? To produce flames from the mouth, an animal would have to possess three things: fuel, oxygen, and a spark. Strangely, all three of those things are produced by living creatures already, although none produce all of them. If we were to rig up an animal that combines the biological processes of a cow, Devil’s Hole pupfish, or the the fulmar gull with the talents of the bombardier beetle and the electric eel, we might have a fire-breathing dragon (if it were also a flying reptile). Read about the biological possibility of a fire-breathing dragon at the Conversation. -via Kottke
At The Japan News Takafumi Masaki writes on Tokyo's Literary Bars: A Place Famous Writers Grabbed Drinks, Gained Inspiration; Many Artists Still Gather to Discuss Their Crafts
But: "in recent years, many of the bars have gone out of business" .....
See part one of the article.
A gripping tale of grit and greed from the backstreets of Paris
Of Money and Blood tells the story of two petty crim Tunisian Jews from the working class Paris suburb of Belleville: Fitoussi (the flamboyant front man, played with swagger by Ramzy Bedia and Bouli (David Ayala as the math brains) who hit upon the idea of creaming off billions in VAT from a fake carbon tax scheme they set up in partnership with a handsome playboy trader Jerome Attias (based on the equally suave real-life fraudster, Arnaud Mimran), who is intent on a get-rich-quick scheme to prove himself to his father-in-law, a scion of the Jewish establishment.
One of the many layers of tension written into the taut, fast-paced scripts is the cultural collision between the streetwise Sephardi swindlers and the showy Ashkenazi businessmen, which I have not seen deployed in a drama before.
Always big noting himself, Attias boasts of funding his friend Netanyahu’s political campaign; in real life, Netanyahu, who has been photographed holidaying with Mimran, denies the amounts involved.
Real life tragedy nearly stopped the drama from being completed when the actor originally cast to play Attias, Gaspard Ulliel, died in a skiing accident on a break from shooting. After a hiatus, series director Xavier Giannol decided that Ulliel’s friend Niels Schneider would replace him in the miniseries.
Perhaps that subterranean trauma adds to the intensity of the performances, in a plot full of twists, many of them reflecting poorly on French political bureaucracy under pressure.
The series was originally going to be called Tikkun, the Hebrew word for mending, and used in the series in the phrase Tikkun Olam, meaning to heal the world (and the neat opposite of that other great foreign one-word title, Fauda, appropriately the word for chaos in both Arabic and Hebrew).
Customs inspector Simon Weynachter sets out to track down Jérôme Attias and Alain Fitoussi, who are at the head of one of the biggest financial swindles of all time.
Vincent Lindon plays the main character, Simon Weynachter. He is a magistrate who creates a new investigative service to combat modern white-collar crime. He accidentally discovers the case of the carbon quotas misappropriation, a scam that became an exhausting obsession.
His antagonists, a strange group of crooks, are two thugs from the Paris slums and a trader from the posh side of town, Jérôme Attias. As the story proceeds, Simon’s attention eventually focuses on Attias, who becomes the key figure of his investigation, as if Simon has found his evil double. He – a man whose entire life has been spent defending law and order, pondering faith, good and evil – is up against a ruthless adversary, the decadent product of our modern society devoured by self-destructive passions.