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01/01/10 -- Vol. 28, No. 27, Whole Number 1578
Table of Contents
I'll See Your SHANE (And Raise You a GORGO) (comments by Mark R. Leeper):
I rented a "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." DVD. The DVD was released by Warner Brothers. Now I seem to remember in the credits of "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." that the series was the product of M.G.M. It was a good try, but M.G.M. was trying to steal some of the magic of the James Bond Series which was produced by United Artists. I am sure that it was United Artists even though Bond films seem to be M.G.M.'s now. Somehow M.G.M. got James Bond but lost "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." to Warner Brothers who also released on DVD the original KING KONG, which I always thought was from RKO. Now DR. CYCLOPS was always a Paramount film. Now it is being in packs of Universal horror films. All I can say is that must have been one heck of a night of poker. [-mrl]
From My Mailbox: AVATAR (comments by Mark R. Leeper):
[This mail contains some spoilers for the film AVATAR. This mail item has been somewhat edited.]
I got the following letter of comment from a reader on my review of
AVATAR
READER: Avatar was better than [deserving] a [rating of] 6/10.
ME: Well, yes, and worse. It depends what you look at. There was
a lot to like and a lot that I did not care for. For me the first
half was much better than the second half. And remember that like
almost all reviewers I am giving you one person's reaction from
seeing one viewing. Your opinions would be expected to vary.
READER: Your critique is interesting.
ME: Thank you. (But I bet here it comes...)
READER: You think it's not realistic to have alien races that have
humanoid shape. We simply do not have enough information to say
one way or another what the average intelligent races would look
like. We have a sample of *one* planet.
ME: Very true. We also do not know for sure that the sun's light
won't turn blue tomorrow. We can just say that based on what we do
know it is very, very unlikely. As for the human form, evolution
is a random walk very closely attuned to the conditions on the
planet. If the moon were a little less massive there would be
nothing humanoid on this planet, at least so I have been told.
Evolution would have gone in a different direction. Actually life
tends to go in many directions and only chance die-offs tend to
limit the number of forms. If you look at the strange set of life
forms found in the Burgess Shale you get an idea how the directions
that life goes in can be extremely diverse.
Now it is true that nature does occasionally recreate and repeat
forms. The dinosaur ankylosaurus is very similar in form to the
doedicurus of the early Pleistocene. But it seems like a very low
probability event that humans would run into another humanoid race
in just another 150 years.
Also, there is some thought that life was seeded here and on other
planets, but it is not likely because the planets would have
sufficiently different conditions. And even if many planets did
have humanoid life forms due to seeding, at the point of the
seeding they would have had to be well on their way toward being
humanoid. They would not fit into the evolutionary tree as well as
we do.
I could see that using humanoid forms has to be allowed as part of
the storyteller's license.
READER: Also [making the aliens humanoid] helps the audience
connect with the characters. I know what you mean but they did the
correct thing by not making them look so weird as to turn off
people.
ME: This is true. The filmmaker's first responsibility is to
involve the audience. He will not get far if he does not do that.
READER: [You called the film a polemic.] You think we still don't
take advantage of people? We do it here on planet earth even with
all the cell phone cameras. [I heard] a cop brought a gun to a
snowball fight and was filmed, it would be totally expected for the
Black Hills scenario to take place on a far away planet. Good old
fashion greed is still alive a kicking and will be in 2154.
Especially on a remote planet away from the prying eyes of earth,
why not loot the planet? It seems very plausible; it would be
more unrealistic to have it any other way. Everything that was
done in the past is still being done today. Its done white collar
and more covertly but its the same old song and dance.
ME: What you say is true, but that is not what makes the film a
polemic. It is one thing to show two conflicting groups and to
make one be the aggressors and show the others sympathetically.
But you can go to the other extreme and make one group seem nastier
with every line they speak and make the other group Christ symbols.
That manipulates the viewer. The company people and the military
are always shot in half-light and are shown to be a lot nastier.
It is just unpleasant to see Cameron is so unsubtle in signaling
the audience whom the viewer should side with. He did the same
thing in TITANIC. Every word out of Billy Zane's mouth makes his
character seem worse. This is not very good writing.
It was much the same way with Kevin Costner's DANCES WITH WOLVES.
You see several white men in the West. With the exception of
Costner how many are at all likable? Every single one is portrayed
not even neutrally but definitely negatively. These films
undermine themselves by overstating their case.
READER: I do think the story parallels how we took the Black Hills.
This time they won vs. getting cheated. By the way, the American
Indians won in court on the Black Hills. The problem is they don't
want money; they just want the land back that they were cheated out
of.
ME: I think I knew that. The Black Hills were sacred to the
Indians and a cash payment is not going to do it.
[-mrl]
BETWEEN THE FOLDS (film review by Mark R. Leeper):
CAPSULE: This 56-minute documentary written and directed by Vanessa
Gould looks at origami, the art of paper-folding that has gone from
a simple art of creating figures of animals out of paper to an
explosion of styles and practical applications. The film looks at
some of the major figures in creating origami and the vast array of
applications in the real world of engineering, biology, and
mathematics. The film sweeps viewers from intricately beautiful
works of folded paper art to the submicroscopic origami of
proteins, and it is well worth the trip. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4)
or 8/10
The documentary BETWEEN THE FOLDS, written and directed by Vanessa
Gould, is being shown on PBS's Independent Lens series in December
and January.
A personal note: I am a hobby origamist. I started folding toys
out of paper by age six. Like many origamists I began with paper
airplanes. Since then I got into many forms of origami, mostly
still folding toys and mathematical ornaments. Over the years I
have probably invented more than a hundred figures. But I have
always gone from squares and/or rectangles and folded animals,
spaceships, or perhaps abstract pieces. While I was folding simple
figures this the field completely changed under me and seeing a
film like BETWEEN THE FOLDS tells me much of what has been going on
of which I had been ignorant.
This is an art form, but it is an art form that is restricted by
mathematical rules. In the TED Talk cited below Robert Lang gives
the four mathematical laws that restrict the structures that can be
made using origami. Artists love self-imposed constraints and
BETWEEN THE FOLDS shows the vast panoply of creations that can be
made under those restrictions.
We see examples of people who start with wet paper to get more
realistic contours when creating animals. Michael LaFosse makes
his own paper and folds figures using the paper, sometimes wet. By
making his own paper he can control the texture. But he basically
is folding like I am, creating figures as realistic as possible.
If there is a difference there is the complexity of his creations.
Over the years figures have gone from seven or ten folds to dozens
and then hundreds. Pangolins, for example, can be given realistic
surfaces by tessellations of scales on their backs each
individually folded.
The film continues on to show origami subjects following the styles
of modern art, getting less realistic to find a greater truth in
their subject. More abstract forms are found. Some are more
complex, but Paul Jackson has made a study of abstract shapes that
one can get with a single crease and just some flexing.
All of this is art, but so far it has little practical application.
The simplest use is to use origami to teach geometry as a geometry
instruction tool as Miri Golan does in Israel. (I have done this
myself.) Origami turns geometric principles into a game. Tom Hull
applies it to more advanced subjects such as number theory and
higher algebra. Still it is being as just an illustration.
Martin and Erik Demaine, father and son professors at MIT, work on
general theoretic questions like what shapes can be formed by
folding paper and then making one straight cut. But their work has
a practical side. They, Robert Lang, and others contribute to
medicine, biology, natural sciences, and space. Lenses for space
telescopes can be folded into packages small enough to send into
space only to be opened up when they reach orbit. Science now
applies origami to a broad range of applications from compacting
car airbags so they too can be stored in a relatively small space,
to DNA structure. Erik Demaine has made advances in folding the
molecular structure of proteins to create drugs to use against
toxic viruses.
As one folder makes the point, everything seems to fold.
Geological pressure makes the surface of the planet fold. DNA
folds and unfolds. Even when we speak the vibration of our voice
folds the air. The science of what can happen when things fold is
turning out to be a fundamental study of how our world works.
Sadly at 56 minutes this film cannot cover to satisfying depth the
origami-related art, technology, science, mathematics, and even
philosophy. But what it does cover is well worth seeing.
This is a film that is intelligent, intriguing, and beautiful. I
rate it a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.
Film Credits:
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1253565/
A T.E.D. Talks with Robert Lang discussing practical applications
of origami and new software approaches to solving origami problems
is available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYKcOFQCeno.
[-mrl]
THE ACCIDENTAL TIME MACHINE by Joe Haldeman (copyright 2007, narrated by Kevin Free) (audiobook review by Joe Karpierz):
I've been wanting to read a bit more Joe Haldeman; I'd read THE
FOREVER WAR, MINDBRIDGE, and ALL MY SINS REMEMBERED back when I was
in high school, and I remember getting blown away by all three of
them. I've read a book or two of his since then, but I never
really picked him back up the way I'd wanted to. I don't know if
that's because of a lack of time or a feeling that I'd be
disappointed after those first three books. But I did sort of have
my eye on THE ACCIDENTAL TIME MACHINE just because of the title--so
when I started listening to audio books again I made sure that I
picked it up.
Matt Fuller is a research assistant in physics at MIT. It's pretty
much a dead end position for him; he's been there forever, and has
pretty much worn out his welcome. In addition to that, his
girlfriend has left him for a guy who turns out to be a student
whose papers Matt has graded. Just before he's let go, one day in
the lab while he's working on the research project with his
professor he hits the reset button on some gizmo he's working with,
and said gizmo momentarily disappears. Of course, the professor
didn't see it happen. Just before leaving the lab, he hits the
button again, and it disappears again, this time for a slightly
longer period of time. He begins taking some measurements, and
begins to extrapolate how long the machine will disappear for each
time. He sends objects with it, including a turtle. He eventually
figures out that he needs a Faraday cage in order to travel with
it, and since he doesn't own a car, he goes over to his drug-
dealing friend to borrow his classic 1950s Thunderbird, with the
intention of returning it when the experiment is over. As a side
note, the time machine, as he is calling it, also moves, but he
hasn't gotten down the technique of predicting well enough where
the machine will reappear as well as he has when. He leaves with
the car, only to rematerialize in the middle of a highway where he
causes an accident, with the Thunderbird being totaled. He's also
up on the murder charge of the drug dealer he got the car from. He
is bailed out of jail by a mysterious benefactor who forks over the
$1 million dollars, but the problem is that he knows of no one that
has that much money. All he knows is that the guy looks like him
from behind. Matt figures that it must be himself from the future.
So he finds a way to get access to the Thunderbird and press the
button again.
And so begins what can only be called a romp through the future.
Each time he presses the button, things get progressively stranger
and potentially more dangerous. I don't want to talk too much
about each individual stop along the way, but noteworthy is the
stop a few thousand years in the future at the Massachusetts
Institute of Theosopy. Much of the northeast seaboard (we find out
later) has been taken over by a crazed madman who calls himself
Jesus but is actually just a man with delusions of power. He has
the whole area whipped into a religious frenzy. Matt is recognized
for who he really is, and is given a "graduate assistant" (he was
made a full professor in a previous stop), whose sole purpose is to
be at his beck and call. I got visions of Doctor Who at that
point, with her calling him "professor" (reminiscent of Ace calling
the Doctor that back in the '80s) and a bit of Heinlein, with his
attitudes towards women and sex.
As I said, things get weird, silly, and dangerous. It's really a
pastiche of various time travel tropes, and is quite enjoyable.
The ending, while upon further reflection is fairly predictable, is
still fun and appropriate. This is not a novel with deep meanings
or hidden messages - it's a fun romp through time, and if you take
it that way, you'll enjoy it. [-jak]
NEWTON AND THE COUNTERFEITER: THE UNKNOWN DETECTIVE CAREER OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST SCIENTIST by Thomas Levenson (Houghton Mifflin, 2009, 247 pages text plus notes, bibliography, and index, hardcover, $25) (book review by Pete Brady):
We all know of Isaac Newton (1642-1727) as perhaps the world's
greatest mathematician. He deduced the model for gravity, invented
calculus, solved the two-body problem (which shows that the planets
move in elliptical, not perfect circular orbits, explaining and
confirming Kepler's observations), and by his own admission, failed
to solve the three-body problem. He published PRINCIPIA
MATHEMATICA, working on it when he was in his 40s. Many of his
mathematical accomplishments are summarized in this book, but
mainly in the first few chapters.
There was another side of Newton. He was a confirmed bachelor, but
he did have social friends. His experiments in alchemy are well-
described, and were often dangerous. In the 1790s, in his 50s, he
decided to forego the isolated academic life in Cambridge and head
for London, where there was more action. He also got a paying job
- Warden of the Royal Mint. His job, among other duties, was to
catch and convict counterfeiters and bring them to trial, for which
the sentence was to be hanged.
His main and worthy opponent was William Chaloner, a flamboyant
crook, who mastered several kinds of counterfeiting, both in
coinage and in bills. Newton went after Chaloner as Sherlock
Holmes did after Moriarity. The contest lasted years, but in the
end, Newton prevailed.
One feature of the book is the way it describes London in the
1690s: a vermin-infested place, with sewage flowing in the streets,
and with people dying of the plague. There are many absorbing
descriptions of low-life in those times. I'll quote one, which
tells of Newton's journey from Cambridge to London (today, an
hour's drive):
"[In March 1697], Newton left Trinity College for the last time.
His luggage ... would have gone ahead. For his own journey, he
could have chosen to jounce with strangers on one of the early
stagecoaches that had just begun to run. More likely, he would
have hired a horse, as became a gentleman. He would probably have
broken the journey at the inn at Ware, waiting there, just as
Chaucer's pilgrims had three hundred years before, for enough of a
company to provide mutual protection along the isolated stretch of
road that followed, a notorious haunt of highwaymen."
With this book, I took a fascinating trip into life in the17th
century. The world did not have to wait until the 1880s for the
real Sherlock Holmes! [-ptb]
Myrrh and AVATAR (Letter of comment by Dan Kimmel):
In response to Mark's comments on myrrh in the 12/25/09 issue of
the MT VOID, Dan Kimmel writes:
Two (well, three) sentences leapt out at me:
Have fun! You know the expression, "The myrrh the merrier!" [-dk]
And in response to Mark's review of AVATAR in the same issue, Dan
writes:
[Mark says]:
Yes, bingo. Mark you hit it exactly. I don't dislike the story as
much as some, but I know how derivative it is. Nonetheless, I felt
seeing it in 3D (which I generally don't like) that this was the
closest I'm going to get to visiting another planet. For that
alone the film is a must see for SF fans.
[-dk]
AVATAR (letter of comment by Richie Bielak):
In response to Mark's review of AVATAR in the 12/25/09 issue of the
MT VOID, Richie Bielak writes, "I haven't yet seen it (maybe
tomorrow). But here was an interesting article on science in
AVATAR:
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/43440." [-rb]
Myrrh (letter of comment by Jay Morris):
In response to Mark's question about myrrh in the 12/25/09 issue of
the MT VOID, Jay Morris writes, "Well, if you haven't got a
recently deceased body you wish to anoint:
Mark replies, "Ratz. Not one at the moment." [-mrl]
Memory and Propranolol (letter of comment by Fred Lerner):
In response to Mark's comments on memory in the 12/25/09 issue of
the MT VOID, Fred Lerner writes, "Recently I've been seeing some
literature on the use of propranolol in PTSD patients, mostly
discussing the ethical (and forensic) implications of using the
drug to suppress traumatic memories. I am waiting to see some more
literature on the ethical aspects of denying this relief to a
patient suffering from PTSD." [-fl]
FANTASTIC MR. FOX (letter of comment by Taras Wolansky):
In response to Mark's review of FANTASTIC MR. FOX in the 12/25/09
issue of the MT VOID, Taras Wolansky writes:
Mark got the plot of The Fantastic Mr. Fox a little wrong: "Mr. Fox
is actually no longer a chicken-thief and now writes for a
newspaper, but the farmers have long memories and do not forgive."
The plot is really about Mr. Fox's midlife crisis, and the male ego
in action. First he buys a house in a dangerously exposed
location. Then he decides to raid the three big farms in the area,
just to prove to himself that he is still the "fantastic" thief he
used to be, years before. Years before he promised his wife to
stop thieving, after getting them both caught in a trap through
rash stupidity. (He set off the trap just to see how it works!)
After he raids the three farms, the farmers go after him,
destroying the aforementioned house in the process, even as he and
his family escape. (Here, they tunnel as fast as a dolphin swims.)
He escalates the war by stealing the farmers' entire inventories;
they retaliate by flooding his tunnels.
At most, the farmers are guilty of over-reacting. The film treats
them as villains without showing them do anything very villainous.
Perhaps the book made more sense.
For me, the film had a very even level of drollness. I did not
laugh even once; I'm not sure I even chuckled. I just smiled
broadly through the whole film. [-tw]
Mark responds, "[Actually there is a short prologue that tells why
he gave up stealing. Then the film flashes forward two years at
least for a while he is no longer a chicken-thief. Beyond that I
did not want to tell too much of the plot. What I said was true,
but of a window of time just after the prolog." -mrl]
This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
Time to recap 2009. My reading was down somewhat, 180 books
instead of the 200 or so in previous years. I think that this was
due more to other demands on my time than on the larger size of
books, especially since I have always read a lot of older books
anyway.
About 37% of my reading was non-fiction. Of the fiction, about
half was science fiction (including alternate history), about a
quarter was mysteries, and the rest was non-genre fiction.
Starting with this issue, the only time I will give ISBN-10 numbers
is for books that do not have an ISBN-13.
The best new book I read in 2009 was China Mieville's THE CITY &
THE CITY.
THE MATRIX AND PHILOSOPHY edited by William Irwin (ISBN-13
978-0-8126-9502-1) is good--up to a point. The problem is that the
essays pretty much all center on the question of "what is reality?"
and after a while seem to be repeating the same ideas over and
over. This is part of a series on "[pop culture entity] and
philosophy", where the pop culture entity might be a movie, a
television show, or a filmmaker. Most of the others seem to
provide a broader range of topics, and might not seem as
repetitive. [-ecl]
Go to my home page
I hate holiday-themed gifts. Can anybody tell me what I am
supposed to do with myrrh?
AVATAR has the most fully visually realized science
fiction world I can remember in a science fiction film.
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Quote of the Week:
I am coming more and more to the conviction that the
necessity of our geometry cannot be demonstrated ...
geometry should be ranked, not with arithmetic, which
is purely aprioristic, but with mechanics.
-- Carl Gauss, 1817