Nuno Jardim Nunes

I’ve been busy setting up the joint CMU Professional Master program and failed to update the blog. Of course the lack of time meant less reading and more music…

Music

Movies

Books

Games

I was surprised my recommendations got so much attention, I’ve added a section on Movies and another one on Games.
Here it goes just a couple of days before Spring:

Music:

• Arcade Fire – Neon Bible – the much antecipated second album for the canadian band. I’m still listening to this one but on a first look it’s not as good as the debut Funeral, anyway not many bands out there are capable of doing powerful stuff like this with David Bowie.
• Joanna Newsom – Ys – a beautiful indie folk album from a great artist. It is perhaps overconsidered by the critic but nevertheless it’s a great album.
• Tom Waits – Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards – what can I say, it’s simply Tom Waits, can you imagine somebody else doing a masterpicece out of title like this!
• I’ve also revisited a couple of personal classics lately: Ryuichi Sakamoto and Ennio Morricone.

Books:

• Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion – A great book from Oxford ethologist and evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins. Thought provoking, brilliantly written with some great British humor.
• Philip Ball – Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another – this one was published a couple of years ago and only now I decided to give it a try.A very interesting perspective on the physics of society a must read.

Movies:

• Babel – there is something disturbing about this movie I can’t explain, following the scripting style of Crash (another great movie) it is a brilliant novel about modern times and globalization. I wonder how an american would look at this story… By the way the music in Babel is great, the end theme Bibo No Aozora was the reason I revisited Ryuichi Sakamoto.
• Pan’s Labyrinth (Labirinto del Fauno) – a great (horror) fairytale in fascist Spain (1944), one of the best movies of 2006 which makes Guillermo del Toro reach the standard of one of my favorite directors Tim Burton.
• The Good Shepherd – a brilliant film about the early story of the CIA from the perspective of a man’s life (Edward Wilson) – there is a magnificent quote in this movie:
  • Joseph Palmi: Let me ask you something… we Italians, we got our families, and we got the chuch; the Irish they have the homeland, jews their tradition; even the niggas, they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Wilson, what do you have?
    Edward Wilson: The United States of America, and the rest of you are just visiting.
• Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of our Fathers – two brilliant movies from opposite perspectives of the same battle. Clint Eastwood doesn’t stop surprising me.
• Deja Vu – an interesting sci-fi movie, it’s not a great movie but I particularly liked the storyline.

Games:

• Microsoft Game Studios – Viva Pinata – if you own an XBOX 360 (yes I own one but I wont admit provocative commentary in class) and you have kids age 7 and above go out and buy this game, it’s a marvelous piece of creactivity that will make the time they spend playing well worth it. This made our home a magnet for the kids at school and the neighborhood.
• Microsoft Game Studios (by Epics Games) – Gears of War – yes I also like to shoot some guys out there, but Gears of War is also an outstanding technical achievement which is use in my classes to show the students how game technology evolved. It’s also the only way I could send the kids to bed while playing Viva Pinata.
• EIDOS Interactive – Battlestations MidWay – I bought this one to see if it was this time they could solve the problem of playing strategy games in a console, meanwhile the console crashed and it’s up for repair. Anyway the game is combination of strategy, tactics and action – very interesting and quite challenging even for a longstanding strategy gamer like myself.

Music:

• Paul Simon – Surprise – I don’t fancy the earliest S&G albums but I’ve always enjoyed Simon’s latest solo albums. After the tropical landscapes of Rhythm of the Saints, and the African with Graceland he now partners with Brian Eno for a brilliant album;
• Ali Farka Touré – Savane – this is a masterpiece from one of the most brilliant african composers of all times that recently died of cancer;
• Clap your hand and say yeah – Clap your hands and say yeah – this a 2005 record from a band almost entirely launched on the internet. A nice record which sound a lot like Byrne and Eno.
• Bob Dylan – Modern Times – another old timer that came back to the scene with another brilliant album.

Books:

• Malcolm Gladwell – “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” – another brilliant book from Gladwell, this time about how our brain thin-slices, which is “the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and people based on very narrow ’slices’ of experience”;
• Barry Schwartz – “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less” – well I’m reading about decision making you might have guessed and this is an interesting book that explores why we have difficulties making choices with too much information;
• Gary Klein -”Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions” – another book about how people make decisions, this time Klein explores naturalistic decision making through a discussion of his own research with firefighters, nurses, nuclear power plant operators, pilots, etc.

The brilliant college application essay from a student that any University would accept blindly.
I would at least…

Hugh Gallagher’s ‘College Essay’
3A. ESSAY: IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION:
ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.
I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.
Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I’m bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.
I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don’t perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat 400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.
I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.
I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.
But I have not yet gone to college.

A cool video for a 3D Desktop prototype.

After a short period of vacations and a longer period of new experiences with the human nature I’ve bumped into this photo that almost perfectly reflects what I’ve experienced, both in content and illusion.

Music:

• Richmond Fontaine – The Fitzgerald, not available in iTunes apart from 2002 Winnemucca – My favorite band these days, this is the 3rd record in a row that almost beats my old time favorites from Lou Reed and company.
  

• The National – Alligator – they could one day be as good as Richmond Fontaine.
  

• Animal Collective – Feels – these guys make the most creative music and crazy sounds out there.
  

• Andrew Bird – The Mysterious Production of Eggs – a guitar and great songwritting.
  

• Sufjan Stevens – Illinoise – I don’t have a clue if Sufjan will complete the almost impossible task of composing a record for each US state (2 out of 50), but this is surely a great record.
  

Books:

• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell

• Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Popular Culture Is Making Us Smarter, Steven Johnson

• Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

• On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee

• The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki