My Favourite Web Site. EVER.

"The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction, not the need for simplicity and certainty, is the attribute of an explorer. Centuries ago, when some people suspended their search for absolute truth and began instead to ask how things worked, modern science was born. Curiously, it was by abandoning the search for absolute truth that science began to make progress, opening the material universe to human exploration." Heinz Pagels

Yes, I have a favourite web site. I've even written the designer, Michael Resnick, a couple times to tell him how much this "essay" means to me. I've been playing with this "essay'...yes, it's an essay...on the philosophy or theory in science of Emergence...for about 10 years. I even have been trying to write a script with this concept in it...it's given me many challenges. I can't really explain how I would use this in my story...I've got a kind of grid and the script works all around it. It's really tricky because too much "theory" in a movie script really sucks. It has to be set into the characters lives more or less...plus explained? Or what I've tried to do is have it play out... Very tricky indeed, at least for me. Um, the theory is not the major aspect of the story...it's a love story and comedy...but I have the theory of Emergence as part of it...sort of...ish. I see my limitations at times when working with this puzzle in a script. I'd really like to meet Michael Resnick and interview him on camera at MIT. He is super cool. A little fantasy would be to have him in a cameo...


Okay...this post is starting to look like a New Year's resolution...


Go play...here ( you might have to use Firefox, or a "flash" option on the game...)

Now, it might seem that such a fancy theory like Emergence was important ina flilm script where I want to incorporate such a notion. No the use or reference to this branch of biology (or philosophy or economics) is not the hard part of writng this story.

The hard part is making some of the script funny. The second hardest part is making the characters people that people want to follow and care about. Next, to make the story compel. The puzzle of adding Emergence into the mix is my own personal interest...in fact, like making a painting or a poem...sometimes a script doesn't have to make sure that an audience sees the same interests. A painting may have interested the painter for many things, many emotional or intellectual concerns...but those concerns are secondary to engaging a viewer in the over all image. Same for a script. What I have done is created a character who has an argument. Nope, not a physicist or a biologist. That probably wopuld have been a lot easier. Look at Jeff Goldbloom in Jurassic Park. Within seconds his charming character introduces millions of people to the idea of "chaos theory". Goldblum's character was a lovely creation of Michael Crighton's and way to help lay people understand a strange theory. (R.I.P. and thank you for E.R.. By the way the same bookdesigner for Cormac McCarthy designed the first edition of this novel. Goldblum's character was inspired by Heinz Pagels. I once got Mister Anchovy to read his book The Cosmic Code and we stayed up all night talking about it...Pagels also created the interesting publication of Science magazine which incorporated original art in it's issues)

However, I have chosen to not use a biologist to show the theory of Emergence...I can't tell you how I'm working it in...and it doesn't really matter. The hard job is writing a few funny lines, goddamn it, and that is a delightfully difficult enough challenge to give you, and me, pause...

Now...go play this game and tell me what you think...if you have the time or inclination...