M&M: The Devil's Backbone

Dear reader,

The Devil's Backbone from the year 2001 is another great movie by Guillermo del Toro. It's sort of the first part of Pan's Labyrinth, which I already wrote about. I saw Pan's Labyrinth first, so that's why I wrote about it “in reverse”, even though The Devil's Backbone came first. While Pan's Labyrinth was set shortly after the Spanish civil war (1936-1939), The Devil's Backbone is set in the time of the Spanish civil war.

The movie tells the story of Carlos, who arrives at an orphanage, which is far away from the city. He befriends some of the boys and learns that there's a ghost haunting the orphanage. The orphanage is led by Dr. Casares and Carmen. Both are Republican loyalists and keep gold for the Republicans. Jacinto working at the orphanage and was raised there. Now he wants the gold.

Over the course of the movie, we learn that Jacinto wanted to take the gold once before already, but one of the boys, Santi, caught him. Jacinto pushed Santi so hard that Santi fell and hit his head very much. To hide this act, Jacinto takes rocks and binds them to the body of the dying boy and throws him into a supply pool of the orphanage.

When the war comes nearer to the orphanage, Dr. Casares and Carmen decide to leave the orphanage with the children and the gold. Jacinto, who wanted to take the gold again, is chased away shortly before that. He comes back though and wants revenge by spreading petrol (gas) in the kitchen and setting it on fire. This leads to a big explosion in which some of the children as well as Carmen die. Dr. Casares is also injured and dies a short time later.

Jacinto comes back the next day for the gold. But the surviving children show a great amount courage and ingenuity, similar to Pan's Labyrinth, and fight against the adults. How and if they manage it, you'll have to see for yourself.

Much like in Pan's Labyrinth, The Devil's Backbone is created in a visually very beautiful way, I find. Although Santi is a ghost in the orphanage, I wouldn't say that The Devil's Backbone is a ghost movie. For me, strange as it may sound, it's more a movie with a ghost than a ghost movie. The ghost in his appearance is somewhat resembling a zombie with its slow an, awkward looking movements. He's got very little of the otherwise typical soft coloured see-through features of ghosts, but has dark colours instead and blood is still streaming from his head-wound in a sort of cloud of steam. Although a ghost is not a solid figure and, in theory, could not harm a person, his looks and manners appear somewhat scary and menacing. This only changes when it's obvious that he isn't dangerous deep down. A refreshingly different ghost from what I'm used to otherwise. And anyway: who or what is a ghost? What is a ghost outside the traditional literature or movies? That's a question which The Devil's Backbone is about.

The Devil's Backbone is all around a rather quiet horror movie and is more about atmosphere than effects. Fans of pools of blood and slasher movies will probably be disappointed. The very real horror doesn't come from the ghost, but from individual adults and because of the war. This is seen in similar ways later in Pan's Labyrinth.

To stay with the subject of the movie: what's the meaning of a ghost for you? Write that to me in the comments, if you like.

Until next blog,

sarah

Apophis

Dear reader,

Apophis is a near-Earth asteroid, which was discovered in the year 2004, in which it caused quite a fuss. At first it was assumed that it would get very close to the Earth. Now more data is known about it and the fly path was determined more precisely. The probability of a collision with the Earth is very, very slim to rather unlikely.

You may wonder now, when Apophis will come so dangerously or un-dangerously near? According to current calculations, it's going to be on April, 13 2029. Don't laugh, when I'm going to tell you which day of the week it's going to be: in all seriousness, it's a Friday, the 13^th.

As a child, naturally I've been sceptical about Friday, 13^th and bad things happening on those days. But when I was in primary school (elementary school, for my American readers), we had a rehearsal on a Friday, 13^th, for a play of our recorder group and the rehearsal went without any problems. So I lost my fears about this specific day at a quite early age.

What could happen, if the asteroid does in fact come too close to the Earth or does in fact hit it? Well, that depends on the entry angle and the area of impact. If it's going to go down in deep water, we should expect high tsunamis. Although the asteroid has definitely potential to cause certain damage, should it hit the Earth, it's not expected to be a global catastrophe. Like I said, current status is that there's not going to be a collision anyway. I guess we'll literally have to wait and see what's going to happen on Friday, 13^th 2029.

Until next blog,

sarah

Faster reading

Dear reader,

some readers have been more or less waiting for this entry. I hope I can finally help you now. I think that there is no “the one” method, to read fast or faster. With this entry I'd like to share with you some thoughts and introduce you to different approaches.

Some claim that it takes longer to form words with the mouth than to just see them with the eyes. I don't necessarily mean reading out loud with this. Also the unconscious forming of words in your head take time.

Generally you should have in mind what you want with the text and what you want to read it for. I have my own method to read fast and created it out of different ideas and suggestions. I don't know certain scientific words or expressions for kinds of reading. I only want to share ideas that helped me.

At university we had a seminar about working scientifically, in which the teacher told us that we should first check the headlines of a text for a first broad overview. Of course with books the table of contents is naturally helping with that. (With scientific texts or non-fictional writing, I realised that a look at the last pages or respectively lines of the text helps as well. Most good non-fictional books and scientific books anyway, have a list of references, where you can see how up to date the used literature is now. Depending on the topic I also like to check if certain authors and their works have found their way in or not.) The next good advice was, that the text immediately at the pictures or graphs talk about them. So you could skip that text and just look at the pictures and graphs and work them out on your own.

How much do you trust your unconscious to help you with reading and being useful? Maybe you know the following study already:

(source: http://www.obandigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/globalmaxer1.jpg)

Depending on how well you are with reading, it's easier or harder to unrevel this “letter salad” of the study and reading it so it makes sense. Texts are generally not a letter salad like that and so it's easier to take those in then. At first it will be unfamiliar, but with experience you'll take in more and will be able to take in the words faster.

Maybe it was similar for you as it was at my primary school (“elementary school” for American readers). We were told to put our finger under the line respectively word we were just reading. For my method to read faster I use the bookmark turn it horizontally under the line I'm currently reading to go through it faster and not jump lines.

Some suggest to read a certain part of the beginning of a line and a part at the end of the line. Our brain would be able to sort of think up the middle part of it. Whether or not it's true, I don't know. My thought about this would be that with this method, I'd jump too much with my eyes. Namely from the beginning to the end to the beginning to the end of lines. My feeling tells me that a calmer movement of the eyes would be more comfortable for me.

The magician Derren Brown had a series years ago called “Trick or Treat”, in which he gave the applicants a blind choice between a positive experience (trick) or a darker one (treat). Glen Brighton is an ordinary man, who enjoys taking part in pub quizzes. Derren Brown signed him up for a certain one and wanted to prepare Brighton to make the first place. That means, he has to read a lot and take knowledge in at a very short and liminted time. For this Derren Brown lets him make a hand to a fist and then stretch out the index finger and pinky. Glen Brighton is only to concentrate on the area between the outstretched fingers. I personally favour that sort of eye movement down the middle part of a text, instead of concentrating on the beginning and end of a line. Also it's probably more text to sense and take in that way.

If you're interested in that episode: part 1, about 10 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycHhiv5g_8k and part 2, also about 10 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcVCrALes58.

I often use my bookmark in the way described above to stay in the line I'm reading and not explicitly reading every single word when going along that line with my eyes. It's not reading as such, more a visually taking in the words with the eyes. I guarantee you, that this method alone will make you take in faster. Trust that you don't need to read every single word exactly, to understand the content. You will notice individual important words anyway. Trust that you don't need every single detail, to understand the whole. Much like language teachers at school talk about not needing to understand every single word in a foreign language text or film. Start slow. Use the bookmark, like I do or to start with use your finger for individual words. Go through the line in a constant speed and take in the words without reading exactly.

If you need or want specific information from a text, be aware of the words. Have an image of the word in your head. And then it's like with those crosswords where there is seemingly letter salad in a square (German: Quadrat) and you are to find given words horizontally or vertically or whichever way. If you need to find the word “dog”, you don't need to go through every line looking for “dog... dog... dog...”, but look for “d” and if you've found a “d”, look around it for an “o”. If that's not the case, go to the next “d”. If it's got an “o”, look if it's followed by a “g”. That's quick, because it's just a square Quadrat with few letters.

For a longer text with sentences, it certainly makes more sense to search “bigger”. I'm quite certain that if you were to look for a capital letter “q” in the paragraph above, the word “Quadrat” will literally jump at you, even just roughly scanning the paragraph. Check that paragraph and trust your unconscious with that. The capital letter “Q” is an unusual enough word within a sentence, even in English where “q” is generally a more common letter than in German. But even if you're looking for a less unusual “c”, like for example in “crosswords”, you will find it within that paragraph. All you have to do is to have in mind what the “c” looks like. Have an image of the small letter “c” in your mind and do an image search. With a bit of exercise in this, you can also search unknown texts for information, even if it's not precisely in your head and irrelevant words vanish from your conscious perception. That happens quite automatically, just like when sometimes sometimes a word is written twice within a text, and when you read it unconsciously, you don't notice, only when someone points it out to you. Or did you notice that I wrote the word “sometimes” twice in the previous sentence? If you want, write that in the comments or also if those suggestions helped you.

Until next blog,

sarah