Fun to listen in as Elijah and Scott Card happily trashed Avatar during a chance meeting on this springy afternoon. Nice also for my college-bound boy to hear from a working creative artist about the benefits of a well-rounded liberal arts education to his career.

It reminded me that I'd meant to link to OSC's latest -- as I told him, the stuff about the mechanics of human vision was a little over my head, but I suspect that, with some exceptions, he's correct in calling 3-D "the most worthless film technology ever developed, with the possible exception of smell-a-vision."

Comments

[Ian McDowell]

Yeah, I probably "see" 3D a bit better than OSC does, but I agree with him on this. It really does heighten the awareness that what we're watching is artificial, and often irritatingly so, even so someone like me who has more tolerance for deliberate visual artifice than he does (I'm not bothered by Scorcese's "calling attention to himself" in THE AVIATOR, for instance). It was cool in CORALINE, but most of the time I have no use for it, and adding it to movies that were originally intended for 3D, such as Burton's dreadful ALICE sequel or the upcoming CLASH OF THE TITANS, tends to make them look considerably worse.

[Thomas]

"But the purpose of two eyes, evolutionarily speaking, is not binocularity, it's redundancy. You can lose an eye and still see. By having two eyes, you double your chance of survival in a world where lack of vision can kill you.

The binocularity effect is, while mildly useful, fundamentally trivial....

We perceive distance primarily through focus – when we focus on near things, far things blur a little; when we focus on far things, near things blur."

Binocularity is how we judge distance, not through focus. As someone who once spent some time wearing an eye patch due to injury, I can tell you it is almost impossible to quickly judge distance with one eye. Cover one eye and try to catch a thrown ball. Make it a nerf, because you're likely to get hit.

I suppose having two legs is all about redundancy, walking is just a trivial by-product.