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Leonardo Ambasciano

  • Home
  • Research & CV
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    • Articles
    • Book Chapters
    • Editorials, interviews, op-eds
    • Reviews
    • Translations
    • Ph.D. dissertation
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    • Studying the Religious Mind
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    • 1.1. La vita sulla Terra
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    • 2.1. Chi siamo? Tassonomia, genetica, primatologia
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    • 2.3. Novità e continuità tra Pleistocene e Olocene
    • 3. Appendici
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The toxic legacy of Michael Crichton

February 15, 2023 Leonardo Ambasciano

“I’m telling you, this is the way modern society works – by the constant creation of fear.” The cover of Michael Crichton’s fourteenth novel, State of Fear (2004), courtesy of my local library. London: HarperCollins (cit. from Prof. Hoffman’s tirade on p. 456).

When Crichton addressed the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1999, he gaslighted the scientific community by saying that stereotypical portrayals of mad scientists and other negative tropes in the movies were absolutely normal (“Since all occupations are portrayed negatively, why expect scientists to be treated differently?”).

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In Climate Change, Storytelling Tags cinema, literature, dinosaurs

The End of the (Jurassic) World

February 13, 2023 Leonardo Ambasciano

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs!? Nope, wrong franchise. Jurassic World release poster (2015). © Universal Studios and Amblin Entertainment, Inc. Source: IMP.

When a graduate student of Stephen Jay Gould went to the movies to watch Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster tentpole Jurassic Park in 1993, he lamented that the animals depicted in the movie – in particular the Velociraptor, called raptors – were “the same old, ordinary, dinosaur shit-green” (Gould 1996: 230). When Gould reported his student’s colourful impressions in a studious review of the movie, he duly noted that Spielberg tried to experiment “in early plans and models” with the “bright colors” you would expect in a birdlike animal evolutionarily closer to birds than lizards and other reptiles. However, in the end the production team decided to revert to dull, dated, and monochromatic reptilian hues (Gould 1996: 230). They had already renounced the hissing serpent-like tongue for the raptors featured in the first shooting tests for the kitchen attack sequence – and that was quite enough, thank you very much.

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In Storytelling, Climate Change, Cinema, Pop Culture Tags cinema, dinosaurs

The Future I Dreaded So Much Is Here. And It’s Scary (and Hot) as Hell

July 8, 2021 Leonardo Ambasciano
Another place, another time. Liguria, Italy. 2016, (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) Leonardo Ambasciano.

Another place, another time. Liguria, Italy. 2016, (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) Leonardo Ambasciano.

In 2019 I saw the effects of man-made climate change with my own eyes.

It was a scorching 40°C outside, well above the usually mild June temperatures of the Ligurian Riviera. The air was blistering hot, like the devil’s breath. The pitiful shrubs and the wilted flowerbeds on the sidewalk reminded me of something from a bygone era, like fossilised remains of a poor urban planning from another century. The few and far-between palms on the boulevard provided no shade at all. An elderly lady fainted a few metres from me, collapsing lifeless on the ground.

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In Climate Change Tags politics, religion, epidemics, comic books, anthropology, family recollections
 
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