The New 007
I recently watched Casino Royale, the latest instalment of the British MI-6 secret agent, James Bond movies and it struck me as I realized that the new 007 is very different from all the previous James Bond movie that I have seen. Yes, I watch every single James Bond movie throughout history not because I love to see Bond frolicking with the women but I love to see how he overcomes his opponents using his cool gadgets.
This time, however, did not feature much of his technological advantage, but the whole movie revolves around the new James Bond moving the story, defeating his adversaries, and overcoming his personal struggle with love with nothing else but his personality, courage and wit. The movie gave me a very deep impression of Daniel Craig, the lead actor, as he managed to portray a very humanistic secret agent who bleeds quite profusely(all the cuts, bruises and punches he took from his opponents), suffers pain (the horrible chair whip scene), feels love (which ended tragically with betrayal and death) and admits his failings (he knows when he makes a mistake and does whatever he can to correct it).
I really like the new 007 because he is not the kind of death-cool agent that could just walk away from an explosion but one who may wipe his sweat, blood and wince at the pain when he goes about trying to save the world. If you did not manage to catch it at the silver screen, I would recommend getting hold of it as a VCD or DVD. This will be the first James Bond movie I believe to be worthwhile for collection.
The Memory Pill
http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/21/memory_drug
A couple of weeks ago, I received the above video of how a scientist manages to use adrenalin to help mice remember things far better and the whole experiment points to a possibility of using chemicals to make "memory pills" enhance our memory power and learn things at a rate never before imagined. Wow...does that mean students can study at a fraction of their time and remember all the things that they have read?
This is definitely a good thing from one angle because most students I know are studying so hard that they barely have enough time to learn more about themselves and their surroundings. With all the talk on being competitive and efficient and trying to make it big through life with all the best possible things, this potential option really sounds attractive to the people who are always hard-pressed for time to acquire facts.
This, however, may be a dangerous thing as well, because it may provide an opportunity for people to try and bend time using chemicals and hence skip out a very important process of changing facts into the knowledge- the maturity of it. Facts needs time to "mature" because what one learns is mere facts but to classify it properly in one's mind and to form a judgement as to when to use the knowledge in appropriately circumstances requires the evolution of facts into knowledge. For example, one may know CPR, but one will still need to know if using the CPR will be the best option given the conditions of the casualty or if by using CPR will endanger oneself if there is clear and present dangers around. So, even if one may imbibe the memory pill and learn CPR in a matter of minutes, one may still be ineffective in using the facts behind CPR because it has not been transformed into knowledge yet and that transformation takes time...
The Fallout Tactics Team
I temporarily stopped playing the Port Royale trading-cum-pirate-hunting game because my in-game wife was returned to me safely by that nasty pirate king, together with a box of 20,000 gold coins. Why? Because my in-game was talking incessantly about hygiene of her captors and managed to convert some of those swashbuckling pirates into demurely behaved men and that pirate king was so astounded with what he believed to be a terrible conversion that he sent her back to me with money to prove his apologies for kidnapping her in the first place.
So with my in-game wife safely chatting away in Havana, one of the main port-cities that I controlled in the game, I went back to playing a tactical combat game called Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel. It's a very engaging game because it tests my ability to organize and manage a small team of commandoes to fulfil a number of missions given by The Brotherhood of Steel against a backdrop of post-apocalyptic environment. The missions are challenging in their own ways, from retrieving fusion batteries, recruiting mechanics, saving hostages, detonating nuclear plants, rescuing comrades, assassinating betrayers to defeating a post-apocalyptic supercomputer.
Using an editor, I managed to achieve unlimited gameplay and this is the 10th time I am playing the game and its missions with a deeply-developed team of commandoes consisting of a commander, a ranger, a sniper, a gunner, a mechanic and a surgeon. I crossed-trained them in many disciplines such as first-aid, doctor, lockpicking, traps & demolitions, repair and science and the members complemented one another very well in the various missions, just like a real-life special forces detachment. The gameplay requires much thought because it does not mean that packing the largest machine gun and rocket launcher will automatically yield victory because there is inventory space and encumbrance factors to work around with and the AI opponents can be hiding in deeply-entrenched positions, shredding the commandoes into bits if the wrong and reckless tactical decision is made. If nothing goes wrong, I should be playing this game from time to time because a good game keeps my mind nimble, my heart excited and my thirst for a well-earned victory quenched.
Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are
seasoned.
By: Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858US author & physician (1809 - 1894)
(Image source: http://sg.movies.yahoo.com/Casino+Royale/movie/13754/)
(Quote source: http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/2062.html)
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