Please note that all blog posts before 8 April 2007 were automatically imported from LiveJournal. To see the comments and any LiveJournal-specific extras such as polls and user icons, please find the source posting at http://brianenigma.livejournal.com/2004/03/So, last night I went to see “What the #$*! Do We Know?” last night at The Bagdad with Eric. “There's nothing like combining microbrew and quantum physics,” I thought to myself beforehand. The movie was hyped as being a sort of Alice in Wonderland trip into quantum physics, which sounded awesome. I would either end up completely confused or come up with some profound theories I would not be able to remember in the morning.
The reality of it ended up being a little different. While I did not dislike the film, I am doubtful that it will be a future DVD purchase. The educational bits ended up being quite fun. It was part documentary, part story, which I am sure makes dry subjects like superposition and collapsing probability waves a bit more interesting to the average person. They also delved pretty deeply into biological chemistry–how neurons work, how peptides are produced and distributed, etc. I had learned about the physics before, and had at least a conceptual understanding of the biology. If it were just these, I would watch it again and again.
What ended up irking me was that there was quite a lot of traditional philosophy mixed in with new-age metaphysical bubblehead philosophy. I do not know the regular philosophy well enough to tell which bits of the movie talked about the former and which the latter. It had entirely too much of Ramtha–that is for certain.
I do believe in certain alternative medicines and philosophies in some instances. In a non life-and-death situation, I would much prefer to use natural health care as a first line of defense. Many say reflexology is bunk, but I have seen positive results in myself (I do not know if that is because the body really is wired up such that pressure points in the feet relieve the back or if the thought that it works is a comforting enough placebo. If it works, I'm not going to argue the details.) It just seems like this stuff was pushed a little too hard, with too few boundaries placed between established philosophies and new-agey conjecture.
Afterward, we went to The Pied Cow for another drink. (I got a Polish beer with an integrated BEER THERMOMETER!) This was a nice little Victorian house turned into a coffee shop, with an great atmosphere and a big side yard for outdoor smoking. (You can rent a hookah while there.) It reminds me of The Gypsy Den back in OC, only with a bit more history.
Also, the really trippy thing about that movie was that the opening and closing scenes were in the very same theater in which I saw it. Almost in the same seat, even.
