Up and out

The bottom line is that space is a frustrating, ungiving environment, and you are trapped in it. If you're trapped long enough, your frustration metastasizes to anger. Anger wants an outlet and a victim. An astronaut has three from which to choose: a crewmate, Mission Control, and himself. Astronauts try not to vent at each other because it makes a bad situation worse. There's no front door to slam or driveway to speed out of. You're soaking in it. "Also," says Jim Lovell, who spent two weeks on a loveseat with Frank Borman during Gemini VII, "you're in a risky business and you depend on the other guy to stay alive. So you don't antagonize the other guy."

from Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Live in the Void, by Mary Roach

Space travel and the preparations people go through in order to get into space are always interesting. In a way, the Gemini program was the last great moment of midcentury American culture. And certainly there are still people willing to take the risks needed for space travel.

One wonders, though, how far this thing can be taken. As a species we evolved for the conditions prevalent on Earth. Some have taken a step or two off the planet. But colonization is a whole other basket of fish. Does anyone really want to live in the void? In theory, there are plans to settle Mars and then move on from there. This would require long periods, maybe lifetimes, of voyagers denying their human side. In practice we're not really exploring space as much as we're throwing our toys into it.

Good vibes

It's been about eight and a half years since I put some Milt Jackson on this blog. Looking at that post now I see a notice on the square where the video should be telling me that it's unavailable. On the internet, as in life, pleasures are often ephemeral.

Anyway, this is the Modern Jazz Quartet, and they seem to like what they do.

Philosophical problem

On Taxi, when the Sunshine Cab Co. is temporarily shut down, the drivers reunite a few months later to talk about what they've been doing in the interim. Louie has essentially been stoking a boiler room, selling stock over the phone. He quickly loses the job, because regardless of how much money he pulls in, he's still Louie De Palma. But one of his pitches keeps coming back to me.

Tom, listen to the words that are going to send you to an early retirement: Genetic research. You know, cloning and stuff like that. Listen, today they're doing it with rats. Tomorrow, they'll be cranking out Cheryl Tiegs by the dozens.

Ah, I know what you're going to say. I know, you got a philosophical problem because there'sa possibility that something maybe could go wrong. I mean, some mutant virus could wipe out half the world. If you're in the half that's still around do you want to be rich or not?

And what makes me think of this is, of course, artificial intelligence. There is, in practical terms, no difference between AI doomerism and AI boosterism. The theorists with their dark theories tell you that it's going to make us all obsolete and end humanity as we know it. The salesmen and advocates say exactly the same thing, and then they pass the hat. It's the same spiel Louie was doing, only without the charm.

Realizations

A few interesting observations here:

As the Center for Working Class Politics found, her “democratic threat” message was resoundingly unpopular. Especially with working-class voters. That’s no doubt because the #Resistance philosophy behind it dripped with condescension. It reminded everyone that liberals think Trump voters are a bunch of irredeemable fascists.

Ganz might argue that Harris’s failure was in pushing her democracy-mongering without an attendant economic agenda. In this way he could try to rescue the utility of his thesis. This won’t do. The social challenge is much more basic: if you think the person you are trying to win over is an Untouchable, they will smell your hatred from a mile away. Even if you insist that you just want to give them healthcare.

"Fascism" is a handy epithet. It evokes the dangers of a relatively recent past without being quite as blatant about it as "Nazi." Leftists calling out things as fascist are the photo negative equivalent of rightists saying that everything they don't like is communism. And as has become increasingly clear, it's just about as useful in the long run.

Night critters

It's an interesting hypothesis. From the Triassic through the Cretaceous, mammals were somewhat marginal. A lot of burrowers, and they were by-and-large nocturnal. Dinosaurs might have seen them as nocturnal pests. Since dinosaurs―or at least non-avian dinosaurs―some mammals have adopted diurnal lifestyles. Some, but not most. 

Again, it's a hypothesis, not a confirmed fact. But it highlights some interesting facts about us. One is that humans are much more visually oriented than other mammals. We have more acute vision than most mammals and can see in three colors. (If we had UV vision we might find it more trouble than it was worth.)

Then there's our ambivalent attitude toward the night. We don't, most of us, operate primarily at night. Some are afraid of it. But night also appears to us as a time of possibility, not bound by humdrum rules. That could be the old part of us calling out.

Cellar Septet

For all his Midwestern charm, Ray Bradbury could be disturbing even when he wasn't working in Weird Tales mode. One example is "The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse." It's a tale of exploitation, addictive fame, self-mutilation, and the loss of self. I'm not the only one who remembers it, and the text can be seen here. (While he wasn't the loudest Cold Warrior, Bradbury may have been surprised to see his work memorialized on an international computer network by Russians who leave Cyrillic comments.)

It might be overly dramatic to say that we are all George Garvey now. Still, it's true that the kind of image consciousness that was once limited to entertainers and aristocrats has spread to the general population. And many have found that they have no natural defenses against it.

Magic 👁

Ever wonder about Chinese typewriters? I have.

The Chinese writing system is pictographic. Written characters represent entire words, not just phonemes as in our Latin alphabet. There are currently more than 100,000 of these characters. The advantage of this is that people who speak entirely different languages can understand what each other write if both are familiar with Chinese writing.

One disadvantage is that mechanical reproduction of this language isn't exactly straightforward. If a Chinese-language typewriter (or computer keyboard) were made on the same principle as an English-language one, it would be about the size of a truck and no one would be able to find anything on it.

In the forties, a Chinese author named Lin Yutang had a remedy. He invented a typewriter where a relatively small number of keys could be used to select from a much larger number of characters. The invention actually took some time to take off, but it was absolutely crucial in spreading the language.

Yodeling with a capital J

 

I don't know or much care how Dame Edith Sitwell is ranked as a poet these days. She speaks to me, anyway. She pursued her vision with verve, and it remains infectious.

Façade came early in her career. She'd do many other great poems. But this suite with accompanying music is a terrific example of her having fun.

Travelin'

I just watched Obsession. That's Brian De Palma's Obsession. De Palma had gained attention with a few thrillers in the preceding years, very much descendants of Hitchcock. This one feels like the first time he had something of a big budget. As a couple of examples, the middle of the film is shot on location in Venice, and he got to work with composer Bernard Herrmann.

The story is a bit of a midpoint between Vertigo and Oldboy, and it doesn't always make sense. Genevieve Bujold is quite lovely, though, and gives an engaging performance once she appears as the second of her two characters. John Lithgow is good too. Oddly enough, he was actually younger than Bujold.

Oh Aubrey

 

Aubrey Beardsley, avatar of Art Nouveau and the Decadent movement. He may be the best remembered of Oscar Wilde's collaborators. Certainly he's left his mark on the world of illustration in the years since he worked. 

One thing I didn't realize about him until very recently. Besides his getting a free bowl of soup with his haircut, I mean. With all the drawings he did, prints he made, all the indelible images, he was only 25 when he died. Who knows what he would have gone on to do.

In his death throes he begged his publisher and a friend to destroy all of his obscene drawings, which by some standards would be the majority of them. They didn't obey, of course. He could still tell St. Peter that he'd given it the old college try.

⛄

Sunday we got a titanic amount of snow. Come this morning, it was still snowing, but not nearly as fast or at the same volume. It had basically stopped accumulating, although it got a little fluffier after 8PM. 

Lots of shoveling going on. There were impacts on other things. All the banks were closed as far as I could tell. So were most eateries. Garbage day has been pushed back by a day...at least. Not many of the neighbors have their barrels out, so I don't know. 

Groceries were still open. Buses still running, thank God. And I think I saw a mail truck driving along, so the creed appears to be in effect.

Skimping

I saw a guy at the supermarket today wearing shorts. Short shorts. A friend of mine from a couple of years back was one of those guys who would switch to shorts as soon as it was spring on the calendar, even if the weather was still wintry. A little showoffy but I could see what he was going for. But today might turn out to be the coldest day of the year, and is likely to at least be in the top five. Whatever point you're trying to make, there are better ways to make it.

But that's me. I wore socks to bed last night and intend to do the same tonight.

looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong

It is a little bit funny that a few days after I bitch about something―on the way to bitching about something else―there's an Unherd article about it. Namely, how so many movies today just run on forever.

Muriel Zagha may be right that studios wanting to give audiences added value as a way of coaxing them back to the theaters. Of course the problem is that it could very easily have the opposite effect. In their minds, I think most cinemagoers still think of it as a good way to spend a couple of hours. If the whole thing counting transportation runs into four or even five hours, that's a lot of your day that's now gone, which can be a frustrating experience.

One might blame James Cameron for starting this. His Titanic ran for three hours and a quarter and made zillions. Of course it wasn't the first long movie to become a hit. But there were doubters. In the months before it was released it became notorious for running way over budget and generally being out of control. Then it proved the doubters wrong. Now everyone wants to be James Cameron. It sometimes works out for them in a commercial sense, sometimes not, but it's led a lot of them astray.

Anyway, it's encouraging to hear that shorter screen classics are proving popular at Picturehouse cinemas. Hopefully that trend will spread to the other side of the Atlantic.

7 Wonders of the World? Maybe?

Let no one say that there are no wondrous sights in Canada. Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan has Mac the Moose, which at least approaches the level of twenty-first century Sphinx, north of the 48th parallel. Imagine the first gaggle of Saskatchewan motorists to drive by that one. The awe.

What makes this thing even better is the revelation that Mac had to have his antlers redone and built off a little to fend off a "world's biggest moose" challenge from the Big Elk from Norway. Who knew it was such a competitive field?

Road trip

The mammoth hunters' hide-covered dwellings squat on a low promontory overlooking the broad river valley. Thin plumes of smoke rise from the houses into the cold, still air this late spring day 25,000 years ago. A group of skin-clad men scrape meat off a large leg bone. Children play nearby, while an adolescent watches the valley below. Suddenly, he calls out softly. The men stop work and gaze intently into the distance. They see a small herd of woolly mammoth making their way to the river. The hunters grab their weapons and descend into the valley. The children halt their play and watch as the mammoth lumber on unsuspectingly. The senior cow stops, as if sniffing danger. Reassured, she moves on to the river, and the others follow. one young beast lags behind. The hunters concentrate their efforts on this one animal. 

Excerpt form The Great Journey: The Peopling of Ancient America by Brian M. Fagan. Fagan, a British anthropologist and archaeologist who taught in the US and Kenya, had an enviable grasp on his subject. Of course our understanding of the subject of early human migration has changed since the book's publication date in 1987. Notably, he addresses the subject of whether Neanderthals crossed over into the Americas. Since the starting point for humans crossing into the Western Hemisphere appears to have been Siberia, we'd now ask if Denisovans had done so. (That said, a number of Amerindian people have traces of both in their genome, not too surprising since the two species lived in overlapping turf in Eurasia.) But of course when the book was written, paleoanthropologists hadn't even discovered and identified Denisovan remains yet. 

But the book has more going for it than Fagan's understanding of the science of the day. He's making a real and fruitful attempt to show how both the Old and New Worlds looked to our long-ago ancestors. It's a quest for understanding on a personal level as much as scientific knowledge.

Wrap it up

The introduction of CDs was something of a disaster for the art of the album. I don't mean sound quality, although there probably is something to that. Nor am I talking about the fact that CDs were and are essentially computer software, making it inevitable that the computer savvy would eventually just loot the music. That's just a bad business decision. No, I'm just talking about overlength.

For good reason, you'll sometimes hear the complaint that 200-minute blockbuster movies seem to have three or four climaxes and endings. Some of us remember that movies are supposed to tell a story, and that to that end they should settle on one ending. But the filmmakers here (think horse by committee) are concerned with shooting a lot of footage, using it, and pleasing every sector of the market. If the result is incoherent, oh well.

Similarly, the music album is an art form developed in the decades after World War II. The final song should be a closing statement, something for the listener to deal with afterwards. Ending Revolver with "Tomorrow Never Knows" is a weird choice from a band that made several of them, but it's one you have to respect. A lot of albums from the CD era―probably peaking in the years 1995-2005―get to a nice closing point...and then just keep going. Hidden tracks and extra tracks are usually songs the artist didn't think were good enough for official inclusion on the album at all. Sometimes they're wrong, but not usually.

Worst are the alternate takes and remixes. In any decent comedy club, if the comedian said, "Now let me tell those jokes again, but pronounce some words differently," he'd be strung up.

Sunk coast fallacy (sorry)

Atlantis is an underwater city filled with mermaid people. People who can breath underwater anyway. That's at least how Marvel and DC depict Atlantis. Futurama played on that myth but changed it to Atlanta, as in Georgia.

In reality, Plato probably made up Atlantis as an allegory. There's no evidence a continent ever sank, especially one larger than "Asia and Libya combined." Although to be fair, they probably weren't measuring Asia from East Turkey to Eastern Siberia as we do now. 

The possibly connection with the city state of Helike adds an interesting twist. Plato knew about the sinking of Helike of course. But for years it was itself considered a myth, and it's only been found quite recently. The truth is about as wild as the story, overall. 

Polar bear substitute

Not too long ago I saw a video that had been posted on Twitter. A polar bear, in a mad dash to protect its cub from an advancing orca, throws the cub onto the deck of a fishing boat, where the crew swaddle the cub in towels and otherwise provide care. Sweet, if a little fishy. The maker of the video might have gotten away with it if they hadn't gone for a close-up of the cub's face at the end. The cub looks like an abomination unto the Lord, and makes it beyond obvious that the whole thing is AI.

So, how about Iran? This past weekend that was supposed to be the story. The freedom-loving Iranians were rising up against the mullahs. The regime was about to collapse. A brave and sexy protestor was making acts of defiance in the streets of...Canada, it turned out. (About where my mother grew up, in fact.) 

It's all a little late. Twelve years ago, when Obama was still in, you could have done a stage-managed revolution and mostly everyone would have gone along with it. The world has changed. Millions have seen through the Iran thing as the CIA and Mossad doing a color revolution, and would have done so even if Mike Pompeo hadn't come out and said it.

Anyway, if Reza Pahlavi wants to be king, he should storm Tehran himself. He won't earn any respect by sitting on his ass and letting foreign intelligence clear the way for him.

Never forget

 

When I first saw the header for this video I said, "Wow, are they actually playing 'Rain', the song John Lennon wrote for the Beatles?" As it happens, the answer is "no." Or if they are, the tune has been altered beyond recognition. But they are playing something tuneful. I mean, I don't think I could play music that well with my nose. Same goes for pretty much everyone I know.

Gwer

You've probably seen images of the Green Man seen around Britain. A face partly obscured by leaves, both the face and leaves generally rendered in stone.

These are seen on churches, among other places. And they do mark a connection between Christian and pre-Christian England. One thing I hadn't realized was that the name "Green Man" had only been used since 1939, when Lady Raglan published it in an article. Her research on the topic was quite thorough, and though she wasn't a prolific author that article continues to be influential. Before her, Green Man figures were known as "foliage heads." Not as catchy.

A tumbleweed rolls by...

The dead Internet theory has interested me for a while. Certainly the net feels "deader" to me than it did in the first decade of this century. The weirder alcoves, the ones that justified the medium to begin with, have largely disappeared or, worse, been taken over and hollowed out. Automation through AI is a plausible explanation.

One problem with the theory as it is often discussed is that, as in this article, it tends to get mixed up with political concerns involving "misinformation." Misinformation is a slippery term, sometimes used to mean "things I disagree with." Which is not to say that there aren't bad actors manipulating gullible people in regards to politics, or that AI isn't one of their tools. But it's very easy to hit the panic button on this when there really are people out there who support things you oppose.

I suspect the primary purpose of bots is to make it look like the web is still an active, thriving place, rather than a mostly sterile and dull one.

Player piano

 

Some painstaking work must have gone into putting this film together. Still, it winds up having a very playful air. And while you can't see any live human person, there's a feeling of someone being there, someone playing the music. The magic of stop-motion animation.

Made by Carmen D'Avino, who discovered filmmaking as a teenager in the Depression and was a painter as well.

Zapped

I had forgotten how they worked. 

Yesterday I met my downstairs neighbor by the stairwell. We chatted about a few things. She was nice enough to give me an extra flyswatter, as we'd both had recurring problems with the little things and she'd bought two. 

Today I saw a housefly hovering in my bathroom. It flew up to the window over the shower and I swatted at it. Since I hadn't made contact with it, I assumed that it had escaped. But a second later, its body fell into the tub.

I don't enjoy killing flies, and I wish them a peaceful life wherever their natural environment is. However, neither am I going to let it pass as they invade my space, and this is at least a less stressful way of getting rid of them.