Categories
Enterprise 2.0 Film Theory

B3ta dreaming

Almost beyond belief that daydreaming should be pathologised, yet Boing Boing picks up a thread from Consciousness and Cognition of a report about a woman who cannot stop daydreaming. Her doctors can find nothing wrong with her, yet prescribe her 50 mg/day of fluvoxamine but are unable to dream up, define a DSM condition.

50-minsBoing Boing relates her experiences to the chapter in the 50 Minute Hour called “The Jet-Propelled Couch” of a scientist called John Carter who had a similar condition and thought he was the John Carter of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Mars stories:

The physicist told Lindner he was able to teleport himself to Mars and have the same kind of adventures the fictional John Carter had. The physicist kept detailed maps and records of his adventures, accumulating 10,000 pages of notes!

This was the inspiration for Gene Brewer’s novel “K-PAX” and also bears a strong resemblance to P K Dick’s “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”, filmed of course as Total Recall. It also underpins Billy Liar and Walter Mitty. 

The condition described is not just found in fiction and it’s not an anomally, as Consciousness and Cognition state that:

Recently, the patient discovered a website containing a surprising number of anonymous postings on the topic of excessive or uncontrolled daydreaming. Numerous posters described patterns and tendencies that appeared remarkably consistent with the patient’s experience (including the original pacing behavior) and emphasized the stress of concealing their imaginary lives and the attendant shame, confusion, and difficulty in controlling their divided realities.

It has to be b3ta.com….

Categories
Communications Enterprise 2.0

Lapland ‘Shopped

An amusing seasonal debacle re the UK’s theme park Lapland. What originated as a minor trading standards story erupted into one of the Sun newspaper’s worst headlines in a long time – Lapland Was Bad For Our Elf

Yikes!

The Daily Mail was in an unusually self-righteous mood, dubbing the park ‘Blunderland

What entertained me most was the aspect that Adobe PhotoShop or similar might play in the fiasco. The photographs promoting the park are shall we say optimistic. Here’s what Lapland’s owner, Victor Mears says about them on his website:

All of the photographs were taken with an inexpensive digital camera – handheld/without a tripod – and the photographer who submitted them apologises for the poor sharpness, exposure and contrast quality whilst granting permission for any viewer of this web page to display the photographs without alteration under any circumstance on any public blog associated with the Lapland New Forest event or Lapland New Forest Ltd only.

Here’s some of the pics from their site:

Not that The Sun or their comrades would ever ‘Shop an image as B3ta.com’s regular contributor The Great Architect wryly observes in a sly poke at the Sun’s rival The Daily Mail:

I guess the question that remains is, who shopped whom?