THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
03/08/02 -- Vol. 20, No. 36
El Presidente: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
The Power Behind El Pres: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
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Topics:
America's Secret Weapon (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Of Psychics and Tomatoes (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
WE WERE SOLDIERS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE GENESIS CODE by John Case (book review by Tom Russell)
===================================================================
TOPIC: America's Secret Weapon (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Last November, shortly before the Enron scandal broke but there
had beenplenty of business foundering, the cover of the management
magazine "Business 2.0" had a cover that had the following words:
America's secret weapon:
It's not smart bombs.
It's not even special forces.
It's cutting-edge management theory.
(I think I'm going to learn Arabic.) [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Of Psychics and Tomatoes (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Deceptive advertising is in the news. This case in point is Miss
Cleo the woman with the island accent who was a self- proclaimed
psychic and whose ads were an unavoidable blitz on TV a few months
ago. What you supposedly heard was a client at the other end and
Miss Cleo knowing all sorts of strange detailed secrets about her.
"How did you know that?" one would shriek in mock amazement and
someone else would respond, "She's a psychic!!!" It seems that
Miss Cleo had a range of methods to bilk the people foolish enough
to call her. The government finally got sufficient proof that she
was breaking the law and went after her. It is not sufficient
just to be cheating the public, as I believe all psychics do.
There are legal and illegal ways of cheating the public. It is
tough on the government. How do you know when a psychic is a
fraud? It is probably when they identify themselves as a psychic.
But, of course, there is no proof that there are no psychics (or
werewolves either) so the government has to wait until there are
better indications that a psychic is a fraud. The government has
a hard task because fiction abounds in claims that psychics are
true. Going back to stories with the Oracle at Delphi and the
Bible prophets psychics appear in literature and drama. And it
seems an unwritten rule of drama that when a psychic makes a
prediction it is true. Seers and psychics may be the oldest
practitioners of deceptive advertising going back to prehistoric
times and there is a conspiracy of credulity in the public to
believe the hype. I cannot prove that all this is true and that
there are no psychics, but--how's this?--the Spirits tell me that
all psychics are frauds. I predict that anybody going to a
psychic and paying for psychic knowledge will be cheated. Of
course I do not know this from personal knowledge. Fortune cookies
in restaurants are really my nearest contact with the world of
foretelling the future through supernatural means and fortune
cookies even there I am a skeptic.
I occasionally like to look at ads and see if I can figure out
where they distort the truth with language. Occasionally they
tell the truth and let the truth mislead the reader. The classic
case was of the company that was selling canned salmon. Either
because of the kind of salmon or their packing process the salmon
was a different color than most canned salmon, being white rather
than the usual pink. To avoid turning their customers off with a
difference in their product that was harmless might have
frightened customers away, they decided to turn the whiteness of
their salmon into a selling point. They said in their ad, "will
not turn pink in the can." Now that was a true statement. The
government still got after them because it is misleading. But
other cases like this abound and the government does not get after
all of them because some are a lot subtler.
One ad did catch my attention recently. A soup advertisement is
running in various magazines from a company that shall remain
nameless in case Campbell's Soup Company is in a suing mood. It
shows a smiling man, a Richard-Gere-look- alike, looking bemused
at a juicy beefsteak tomato. This is one beautiful tomato, let me
tell you. It is perfectly formed, a vivid red with no blemishes
whatsoever. This has got to be the most alluring tomato you ever
saw. This tomato looks like the highest work of art from American
agriculture and the art of the airbrush. You know some tomatoes
can look sort of deformed and squat. Some have what is called
"cat face." None of that here. This is one beautiful tomato, let
me tell you.
And the guy is the kind of look he would have on his face like it
is love at first sight and he wants this tomato to have his baby.
He clearly has a lot of affection for this particular tomato. The
caption says (with its own peculiar rules of capitalization):
"Diets Rich In Tomato Products May Help Reduce The Risk Of Certain
Types Of Cancer." That is not as strong a statement as it seems
since notice they equivocate by saying "May." But still it "May"
actually be statistically true. It occurs to me, however, that
that "May" not be such a good thing. Foods that have tomatoes
also seem to have a lot of salt. And the more salt in your diet,
the more chance you "May" have of high blood pressure and dying of
heart disease. It is entirely possible that some people who eat
tomato products "May" have their blood sodium elevated and as a
result "May" die of heart disease when they might otherwise have
died of cancer. It will have reduced the risk of cancer. That is
true if sodium is dangerous for heart patients. Taken to its
extreme you could really say that suicide will reduce risk of ALL
kinds of cancer. Sky-diving without checking the parachute is a
very effective way of reducing the risk of cancer. The truth is I
am not looking to reduce my risk of cancer so much as looking for
ways of increasing my risk of death by old age. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: WE WERE SOLDIERS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: WE WERE SOLDIERS tells the story of the bloodiest three
days of the battle of Ia Drang in the Central Highlands of
Vietnam. This is a moving and powerful account of the Vietnam War
experience for once told with respect for the soldiers on both
sides. Mel Gibson stars as the commander of the American Seventh
Cavalry in Vietnam. Rating: 9 (0 to 10), +3 (-4 to +4)
I knew there was something that I hated about just about every
Vietnam War film I had seen. It took WE WERE SOLDIERS to focus
exactly what it was. Every major film about the war has had a
very sharp ax to grind. Every major film about that war, with the
possible exception of THE KILLING FIELDS, has been populated by
war criminals and freaks. Probably the best is APOCALYPSE NOW, a
film that I think paints the average solder as a stoner who wants
little more than to get high and listen to loud music. They are
led by commanders who are out of touch with reality and frequently
also with sanity. Perhaps the critics are right that it is a
great film, but even if it is, it is lousy history. The people I
knew who had served in Vietnam, acquaintances, friends, and even
my father-in-law, were not drug users and certainly not baby
killers. Not all people who served, perhaps, but most were just
average decent people who had gone though an unpleasant experience
and survived it with their mental balance intact. These are not
the characters of APOCALYPSE NOW.
The other respected films about that war all have their problems.
The second most respected film about Vietnam is THE DEER HUNTER
which has a nice portrait of American life, but there is really
very little about the war experience other than this weird idea
that captured soldiers were forced to play Russian Roulette. This
one guy has survived a relatively long time always winning at a
suicide game that gives him a 50% of surviving each round making
the mathematics as bizarre as the history. PLATOON I remember as
having a bad case of "the literaries" with dramatic scenes of
people falling to their knees in slow motion as they discover the
deep meanings of the war and the evil of their own side. FULL
METAL JACKET is basically two stories about the war, one of Marine
boot camp and a recruit driven over the edge, one about what it
was like to take down one sniper. THE GREEN BERETS is about tall
Americans standing up to a sub-human enemy. Not one of these
films has a credible account of what the people I know must have
gone through. Most filmmakers have shied away from saying the
fighter was a reasonable, moral person getting an unpleasant job
done and that that was pretty much true of the enemy we were
fighting also. The World War II soldier got a much better break
from cinema. At this moment of writing WE WERE SOLDIERS seems the
only film about the war I can remember that approaches an honest
and accurate look at the experience.
WE WERE SOLDIERS was written and directed by Randall Wallace, who
previously wrote and directed THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK and wrote
PEARL HARBOR. It is the true story of the Seventh Cavalry (no, it
didn't die with Custer at the Little Big Horn), their preparation
for the battlefield, and their actual fighting. It tells of their
three days, November 14-16, 1965, in the Battle of Ia Drang. That
was one of the bloodiest battles in American history. The Seventh
was led in that battle by Lt. Col. Harold Moore and the battle was
covered in part by war journalist Joe Galloway. The film is based
on the book WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE... AND YOUNG by (now)
Lt. Gen. Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway. Historical advisors
for the film are the same Lt. Gen. Harold Moore and Joseph
Galloway who wrote the book and were present in the battle. Given
that this is essentially the account of the American commander one
might expect the possibility that it could be a whitewash of
American military policy. It could have been another THE GREEN
BERETS. To the contrary, in at least three major issues the story
is fairly negative on how the military runs the war. And Moore is
also critical of himself as a commander. The heroes are the
individual soldiers. Once a soldier is on the field, he no longer
is fighting for the commanders, he is fighting for himself and his
fellow soldiers. This film is among other things a tribute to the
soldier. It also shows more than passing respect for the enemy
soldier. WE WERE SOLDIERS takes pains to show that the enemy is
also made up of people hoping desperately to get back to their
loved ones.
The approach of a close adaptation of accounts of the participants
is the one Ridley Scott took with his recent BLACK HAWK DOWN.
Where it differs is mostly in the way the soldiers are
characterized and made real, even at the possible risk of
sentimentalizing. We see their home lives as well as their
professional ones. We see their wives and their children, so that
when they are in battle we know whom they are hoping to get back
to. We see something of their families' loss when some are
killed. We get to know Moore's values and the love that he has
for his men and the loss he feels when they will not be returning
home. BLACK HAWK DOWN was a good film, but WE WERE SOLDIERS is a
better one for that very reason. Be prepared. This is a
realistic view of battle and people whom you come to care about
are going to be killed. And some of the violence in the film is
very realistic in ways that are not pleasant to watch.
Mel Gibson who plays Hal Moore is used to playing warriors after
GALLIPOLI, THE PATRIOT, and BRAVEHEART. He plays very much the
ideal commander here, worried mostly about his men and the
possibility he might screw up. Sam Elliot stands out has Moore's
grouchy second in command Sgt-Maj. Plumley. Chris Klein is as
usual for him the archetypal sweet guy with a good reason for
getting home, the type that Moore would most worry about. Where
the film has problems is he may be a little too sweet. So is
Moore's daughter. It reminds us we are seeing things from Moore's
point of view rather than seeing a detached account. At times
that view is more emotional than we want to see in a war film.
But the scene of Moore leaving home and going to war is a poignant
as the scene of Frederic March returning from war in THE BEST
YEARS OF OUR LIVES.
This will not be the most respected portrait of the Vietnam War on
film. But it has what is unfortunately an unusual point of view
about that war. It says that the men who fought it were human,
fallible, and moral. It accords them the same respect that the
men who fought in World War II got in the films of their time.
For the originality of that approach I would rate this film a 9 on
the 0 to 10 scale and a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE GENESIS CODE by John Case (book review by Tom Russell)
After more than three years of semi and full retirement I've yet
to finish reading the books I hadn't had time to read while I was
working. (Is there an "MT-bay?") In spite of this I still hunt
for science fiction that I enjoy - especially on "bargain book"
tables. If a book isn't categorized as SCIENCE fiction, it might
be anyhow if, for example, the author is a physicist.
John Case, so THE GENESIS CODE's dust jacket says, is a pen name
for a Washington, DC, area private investigator. Case is not a
physicist. But according to the teaser, a scientist's secret work
is a threat to a major religion. I'm sold - THE GENESIS CODE is
science fiction: 1. It's based on science - the work of a
scientist. 2. It's fiction.
Ever since reading Mark Leeper's hint years ago, I get out a pad
and pen whenever I start a book - to take notes about each
character as I read along. Doing this helps with THE GENESIS CODE
as some characters reappear later in new situations.
I should know about writing if I'm going to pretend to be a book
reviewer, but I don't. But I can say this is one of those can't-
put-it-down "page turners" that keep me from doing the projects my
wife expects to see done when she gets home from work. What makes
this book especially appealing to me: Its extrapolation from
current science is plausible.
To make up for not reading THE GENESIS CODE when it came out, I've
just read John Case's two more recent novels, THE FIRST HORSEMAN
and THE SYNDROME. Both are also science fiction by 1 and 2 above.
(But they're not a trilogy - Hooray.) [-tr]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
If God did not exist, it would have been necessary
to invent Him.
-- Voltaire
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