Non-astronomical Interests

But I do have a few other interests:

• The music dramas of Richard Wagner
• Parsifal 
• Der Ring des Nibelungen
• Classical music
• Franz Schubert
• Texts of Schubert's Lieder
• Winterreise
• The Schubert Institute
• Anton Bruckner
• The life of Bruckner
• Ludwig van Beethoven (late quartets; Hammerklavier sonata)
• Grand Canyon river rafting
• photos from our rafting trips
• more photos from our trips
• still more photos
• and even more
• daily log for the 1998 trip
• what to bring
• a river journal
• I want to sign up for next year's trip!
• John Wesley Powell 
• Go (the ancient Chinese board game, more profound in beauty and in difficulty than chess)
• Play Go here (I play under the name "howardbond"--see you there!)
• Learn the rules here (5 minutes to learn, a lifetime to master)
• NEW: A recent study has established that "Go players use the right half of their brain, which works out position and orientation, more than the problem-solving left half used by chess aficionados."
• Some quotations about Go:
• [it is] something unearthly . . . If there are sentient beings on other planets, then they play Go--Emanuel Lasker
• Unlike chess and its different pieces and complicated rules, Go is played with black and white stones equal in value, seemingly making it compatible with the binary nature of computers. Since the aim of a move is to control the most territory, the optimal move yields the maximum amount of territory -- a simple counting procedure and a chore computers excel at. Yet in spite of the efforts of the world's best programmers over the last 30 years, the level of computer Go remains about that of a human who has studied Go for a month--Richard Bozulich
• Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to double-entry accounting.--Trevanian
• Cinema. Here's my Top 11 List:
• 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ebert's 1968 review.  Ebert's 1997 review: "Only a few films are transcendent..."
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. My favorite film. I can do no better than to quote Time magazine: "It builds to a Beethovenian crescendo... here is cinema with the depth of literature and the splendor of opera... a cinematic triumph."  Among the wonders of this film are three scenes of staggering beauty: the lighting of the beacons (with its Brucknerian musical accompaniment); the rescue of Frodo and Sam by Gwaihir and his brethren (powerful mythological and religious overtones here); and the "Grey Havens" scene at the end, which has brought a big lump to my throat every time I have seen it. If a finer film has ever been made, I have yet to see it. And here's a nice quote from a review at amazon.com: "We finish at the Grey Havens, the best ending in literary and cinematic history, which encapsulates all of Tolkien's themes: courage, friendship, suffering, and passing on. It just doesn't get better than this." The music is a triumph; the Master of Bayreuth, the obvious model for Howard Shore's leitmotivic score, would be proud! (Listen carefully at the end of the credits, and you will hear a snippet from Act III of Die Walküre, inserted no doubt as an homage to Wagner.)
• Fitzcarraldo.  Ebert's 1982 review.  Ebert's 2005 review: "If I abandon this project, I will be a man without dreams, and I don't want to live like that." One of the greatest films about the human condition.
• Forbidden Planet. This is the film that changed my life (in 1956).
• Lola rennt (Run, Lola, Run)
• Paris, Texas.  This long film ends with an enthralling 20-minute-long scene that is one of the masterpieces of cinema. For most of this take, the camera just rests on the face of Nastassja Kinski, and she breaks your heart. August 2005: Paris, Texas has finally come out on DVD, now with a director's commentary track added. I was enthralled once again as Wim Wenders described how he filmed that astonishing scene. Ebert's 2002 review: "...one of the great monologues of movie history." Ebert's 1984 review: "It is true, deep, and brilliant."
• Red.  Ebert's review.  Kieslowski says: "I think there is a point at which all these trifling matters, all these little mysteries, come together like droplets of mercury to form a larger question about the meaning of life, about our presence here, what in fact went before and what will come after, whether there is someone who controls all this, or whether it all depends on our own reason or on someone or something else. The mystery is there all the time."
• Sundays and Cybele
• A Thousand Clowns. Very funny, and very profound. "Go to your room." "I can't, this is a one-room apartment." "Then go to your alcove."