Chasing Rabbits 101 .. (?)

As a final entry for the year, I was planning to write a post about "Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy ?". A sort of animated documentary directed by Michel Gondry, which covers a series of discussions with Noam Chomsky (check out Wikipedia if the name doesn't sound familiar). But somewhere at the half of it I got sleepy. Overall, it's an interesting amalgam of ideas, but too chaotic to follow carefully if your brain didn't have enough rest before. I have to admit though that the 2nd half was slightly more coherent. In particular, the string of short (more or less) philosophic sequences includes some notable opinions on the human learning process, and also one of the most rational or logical argumentation on the need for religion I've heard by now. But even so, this doesn't change my disappointment that what I've seen is pretty far from what I intended to have as "catchy final entry for 2013". Therefore ..

I'm doing something that I .. let's say discreetly avoided before. Which is to try catching up with a series of "off-topic" entries on my "native" .ro blog version, series that started somewhere in 2007 and continued at the "impressive" rate of one/year. Even so, I'm not in the proper mood now to search, translate, adapt, and so on and so forth, for all the posts. In short, it's about rabbits :) More exactly it started with an old saying, that I don't know where did originate, but in Romanian goes something like: "Who runs after two rabbits doesn't catch any of them." Well, let's just say that I totally, completely, and strongly disagree with that. And through those entries that I wrote during the years I tried (usually at very late hours when my mind gets in a sort of "lucid drunkenness" state of spirit) to develop various chase tactics, hunting grounds analysis, etc, that would prove "the theorem" wrong. Now ... I'm not considering my crazy random ramblings as an equivalent subject to a Noam Chomsky interview, but I'm really too lazy at the moment to get into details with the thing in the first paragraph. Actually I'm quite lazy for any long entry, so I'll try to wrap up my "rabbits" thing quickly ;) ...

Let's say that I strongly believe that there are ways, maybe very complicated, to somehow steer the running rabbits towards the same destination. Consequently, and ideally, at some point you'll chase "one" and not two. Or another way to look at it, you'll chase two (or more) rabbit-halves that complete each other. But, that's the simple version to state a potential solution which includes that "very complicated" part :) You can gradually add up to the equation lots of stuff. For instance there's the time to get them running on the same path. Time which might be so long that you can compare it with a pyramid construction. And pyramids are nice, but you know what's the final purpose of that building, don't you ? :) So .. although a beautiful achievement for posterity, the whole thing might get ironically grim in respect to you ;) And actually, constructing the pyramid = getting the rabbits on the common path, is unfortunately not exactly the same with finally catching them. So, how do you build a pyramid and catch the rabbits at the same time ? Well, typically you can find pyramids in the desert (especially this kind, since they're very often more a mirage .. a Fata Morgana, than an actual pyramid). Ergo, the hunting ground might be a desert. It might look easier to hunt rabbits in a desert, but it's actually not. No water, wind storms erasing tracks, you can get lost .. So what to do ? Well, the rabbits probably try instinctively anyway to run out of the desert (they also need water). So the desert must have an end. How to get there ? Let's think a bit out of the box. Shrink the desert surface. How ? Stop the global warming :D

Is that all ? Well, no :) Obviously it's not that easy to stop the global warming :P What's above is a summary of some of my ramblings written years ago (at least a couple that I had the patience to quickly re-read now), just to give an idea of "the topic". What's new this year ? Well, I got to the point where I'm thinking that I might after all need an introductory manual to "learn the basics" .. despite my previous five years "advanced expertise" accumulated on "hunting techniques". That's because I'm either getting old (and well .. the rabbits are forever young), or I have some major flaws in my "strategic planning" that keep the "hunter - rabbits" distance constant (not to destroy completely my morale now and say that's increasing). Well .. maybe there's the external factor = the fate. But to discuss about this, and how much of the "global warming" is caused by kismet would require another entry ;) So I'll stop for the moment with a question mark. I'm too tired now to try an answer to that (plus the doctor told me to stop drinking and I didn't chew enough poppy pretzels to get the opium concentration in blood sufficiently high to trigger an inspiration boost). I'm still not tired enough though to give up on the idea that the rabbits can be "modeled" somehow such that somewhere, sometime, to get an acceptable convergence and catch more than one.

I'll end this with a short film I remembered about which says more than many words ( it's a movie blog after all :) ) .. + a warm "Happy New Year !" and a wish for a .. let's say nicer 2014 than the (still) current year ;)



PS 1 : I've been gradually trying on my .ro blog version to switch my "chasing rabbits" annual entry to a "let me tell you a story" entry. Unsuccessful by now because I didn't have time to catch the story "rabbit", but I'm slowly progressing. And it's not the 1st time anyway, but I didn't write any since 2009 so it's been a while. Who knows, maybe next year ;)

PS 2 : For who's interested in the Chomsky talks from "Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy ?", that's the trailer. Enjoy!