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Articles by Ryan A. Piccirillo

Found 12 articles
The Technological Evolution of Filmmaking and its Relation to Quality in Cinema
August 13, 2011 - 2814 words | Film and Cinema » Filmmaking
The development of motion picture complexity has been driven by a continuing technological evolution, ignited and manipulated by human initiative and inventiveness, which has afforded filmmakers the opportunity to practice a more complex craft to tell more complex... Read Article »

Keywords:

Film Film History Technology Filmmaking Cinema
Qi (Chi) in James Cameron's Avatar
October 12, 2010 - 1885 words | Film and Cinema » Avatar
A nine-foot-tall, royal blue giant creeps low to the ground, brushing by exotic foliage. He holds a proportionally large bow and arrow in hand. In an instant he pauses, keeping entirely still, before loading an arrow into his weapon. He pulls back steadily, locking... Read Article »

Keywords:

Avatar Qi Chi Chinese Philosophy Neo-confucianism James Cameron
The Mind in the Brain, the Brain in a Robot: Strong AI in an Artificial Neural Network Brain Replica Housed in an Autonomous, Sensory Endowed Robot
October 4, 2010 - 5869 words | Philosophy » Artificial Intelligence
The advent of digital computers and contemporary neuroscience has fundamentally changed possible approaches to artificial intelligence (AI). Mankind’s perpetually evolving technological capacity inevitably leads to faster processors, more complex systems, and... Read Article »

Keywords:

Artificial Intelligence AI Cognitive Science Searle Artificial Neural Network Sensory Endowed Robot
Logotherapy and the Holocaust: Uniting Human Experience in Extremity and Normality
September 20, 2010 - 3043 words | Psychology » The Holocaust
The Holocaust created a new type of person en masse: survivors. Those who survived were forced to cope with a first-hand encounter with the human capacity for evil. For the Holocaust survivor, the struggle to live continued long after liberation. The extreme nature... Read Article »

Keywords:

The Holocaust Frankl Logotherapy Holocaust Survivors Surviving the Holocaust Trauma
The Sobibor Revolt: "Death to the Fascists"
September 14, 2010 - 2292 words | History » The Holocaust
Between 1942 and 1943, 250,000 innocent Jews were systematically murdered at the Nazi death camp Sobibor (Blatt). An underground movement, composed of a select few courageous individuals, plotted and executed a plan of escape to avoid the otherwise inevitable fate... Read Article »

Keywords:

Sobibor Revolt The Holocaust Nazism Sobibor Death Camps Concentration Camps
The White Rose Movement: Conscience in Silent Nazi Germany
September 9, 2010 - 2548 words | History » The Holocaust
The morality of every person dictates the innate wrongness of genocide, and yet the world stood by as the Nazis sent millions to the gas chambers during the Holocaust. Historians and social scientists often attribute this moral failure to the blissfully feigned... Read Article »

Keywords:

The Holocaust Whire Rose Movement World War II Germany Nazism The White Rose Scholl
Property Dualism & Physicalism: Unclenching the Soldier's Fist
August 31, 2010 - 2411 words | Philosophy » Dualism
From the time of the ancient Greek philosophers to modern contemporaries, the mind-body problem has been perpetually debated. With neuroscientific evidence in mind, traditional Cartesian dualism, which establishes that mental and physical substances are fundamentally... Read Article »

Keywords:

Dualism Property Dualism Physicalism Philosophy Of Mind
The Lockean Memory Theory of Personal Identity: Definition, Objection, Response
August 9, 2010 - 1934 words | Philosophy » John Locke
For centuries philosophers have struggled to define personal identity. In his 1690 work An Essay on Human Understanding, John Locke proposes that one's personal identity extends only so far as their own consciousness. The connection between consciousness and memory... Read Article »

Keywords:

Philosophy Memory Theory Bundle Theory John Locke Philosophy Of Mind Cognitive Science
Moral Adaptation in Primo Levi's "Survival in Auschwitz"
March 17, 2010 - 1419 words | English » The Holocaust
The holocaust proved that morality is adaptable in extreme circumstances.  Traditional morality ceased to be so within the barbed wire of the concentration camps. Within the camps, prisoners were not treated like humans and therefore adapted animalistic behavior... Read Article »

Keywords:

Primo Levi Holocaust Holocaust Survival Survival in Auschwitz Concentration Camp Nazi Auschwitz
Raising Titanic: The World of Communication & the Creation of One of the World's Most Succesful Films
March 10, 2010 - 3625 words | Film and Cinema » James Cameron
Twentieth Century Fox was right to question the likelihood of box-office success for James Cameron’s $200 million film Titanic: “an Edwardian period piece, a costume film, a romance, a story whose ending was known – and a ‘downer’ so to... Read Article »

Keywords:

Titanic Avatar James Cameron Creating Titanic Film Budget Journalism Film Criticism
Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission: Taking America from a Proud Democracy to a Privately-Funded Corporatocracy
March 9, 2010 - 946 words | Opinion » Supreme Court
Democracy is based on the core principle that the power to govern should be in the hands of the people.  In the United States, the people exercise that power by casting their vote for the candidate they see as most fit to lead. This right is now being threatened... Read Article »

Keywords:

Supreme Court Corporatocracy Democracy Government Citizens United Federal Election Commission 5-4
Career Snapshot: The Film Director, A Human Lens
March 5, 2010 - 1789 words | Film and Cinema » Careers
The scene is set for another take: the actors and extras are in costume and in place; the set decorator has set the stage just as the vision of the film entails; the director of photography has the lights and cameras ready to capture the action. However, before the... Read Article »

Keywords:

Director Directing Film Directing Cinema Spielberg Filmmaking Movie Director Producer

Ryan A. Piccirillo studies Film at Boston University in Boston, MA.