But the movie demonstrates that discipline and professionalism, especially given the irrational state of the industry right now, are at least as important as genius.
Ray has even enlisted, at the expense of American taxpayers, a spy at Morel's anti-credulism lectures: "Sending in a live asset had been rational, granted that he had been in an irrational state himself over Morel".
The characters in his most memorable films are men who live in a permanent, irrational state of war with themselves, with the rest of humanity, with the wild inscrutability of the natural world.
But he adds that "it's obvious his days are numbered" and suggests: A situation in which, let's say, his palace comes under fire, could put him in an irrational state and lead him to act out of despair.
Noting that North Korea's diplomatic steps have seemed well calculated in recent months, the official added: "How can we at the same time argue that it is an irrational state?" The North's diplomatic opening has already prompted the White House to indicate that it will lift a broad set of economic sanctions that have been in place since North Korea invaded the South 50 years ago this month.
Were it not for my mother-in-law's advice that evening -- she went through an eerily similar loss of a child on that exact day in 1991 -- my already irrational state would have been made worse by the next round of corporate checkmarks.
Irrationals, stated as decimals neither terminate nor repeat.
Mr. Putin can also use the visit to challenge the idea that North Korea is an irrational "rogue state," a description the United States has used to justify its antimissile plans.
Cliff Kupchan, an Iran specialist at the Eurasia Group, a Washington-based consulting firm, said that while Iran does not want to be viewed as an "irrational cult state" like North Korea, it also sees the conspicuous absence of talk about regime change by North Korea's adversaries in the current episode of heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
The Greens' visceral hostility to nuclear power is irrational (the state of Baden-Württemberg is hardly prone to Japanese-style tsunamis); closing plants makes electricity costlier and Germany's (and Europe's) ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions harder to meet.
