Latest answers

Latest answers

Friday, September 11, 2009

310. Product-displacement?

In the post production for this movie, in opposition to product placement, the editors had to resort to something called product displacement,and digitally remove several logos from various artifacts in the movie (at a cost of several thousand pounds).

Many companies such as Mercedes refused to allow their products to be used in non-flattering and squalid settings which the movie demanded.

Identify this fairly contemporary movie.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

309. The road to enlightenment....

What is the following an example of:

In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat
hacking at the PDP-6.

"What are you doing?" asked Minsky.

"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe," Sussman
replied.

"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.

"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play," Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.

"Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher.

"So that the room will be empty."

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

Monday, September 7, 2009

308. Off with his head (but they couldn't get rid of his shadow)...

The Turkish-Greco school of shadow puppetry gets its name from the name of a labourer (the name translates into Blackeye in English) active during the construction of a mosque in Bursa during the reign of Orhan I. The labourer and his compatriot (who is also an integral part of these plays) used to entertain other labourers during construction time and were executed for the resulting delay of the work. The saving grace was that they became folk heroes!!

The plays themselves are structured into four parts – Mukaddime (the introduction), Muhavere (the dialog), Fasil (the main plot) and Bitiş (the conclusion).

Identify this art form which is especially associated with the holy month of Ramzan.