THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/04/06 -- Vol. 25, No. 5, Whole Number 1346
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
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Topics:
Just Steps Away (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
New DNA Code: This Could Be Significant (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
Western Films (comments by Daniel Kimmel and Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (TRESPASSERS ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD:
THE SECRET EXPLORATION OF TIBET, THE BAT TATTOO,
and OUTWITTING SQUIRRELS)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Just Steps Away (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Our favorite obscure video store was not there the last time we
went into Manhattan. We looked them up on the Web and found they
had moved. They claimed their new location was "just steps away"
from their old one. We looked at the map and it was quite a trek.
I thought they had misrepresented the truth, but then I told
Evelyn that technically they were correct. Of course, Moscow is
"just steps away" from Paris as La Grande Armée proved. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: New DNA Code: This Could Be Significant (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
You may remember that in the film CONTACT the scientists were
receiving via the Very Large Array radio telescopes a coded
message from an alien civilization. As they are examining it,
they find that besides the main message there was another coded
message interlaced with it. Well it seems that DNA may have
other codes inside of it that we have not realized. It is
something that is not genetics, but is there in addition to the
genetics. The New York Times has published an article that may
be significant. It is titled "Scientists Say They've Found a
Code Beyond Genetics in DNA" by Nicholas Wade. See
http://tinyurl.com/gjjwn. There is apparently a second code in
the DNA.
Biologists at Northwestern University in Illinois and the
Weizmann Institute in Israel have found the new encoding that
works in addition to and controlling the genetic code of DNA. As
described in the article "The genetic code specifies all the
proteins that a cell makes. The second code, superimposed on the
first, sets the placement of the nucleosomes, miniature protein
spools around which the DNA is looped. The spools both protect
and control access to the DNA itself." It seems that just having
a stretch of DNA does not imply it will be activated. Only a
small part of the DNA is activated, but these nucleosomes are
important in controlling what part. The DNA appears to move, and
some positions it can move to are more important than others are.
The second code determines the movement and what nucleosomes are
in the most important locations.
Some of where this fits in is the great redundancy in the same
DNA code. The same information may be encoded many times in the
DNA strand. One copy may mutate but there are others. But what
controls which copy is the one that the cell officially uses.
That may be a question of location or something entirely
different, but it might be controlled by the new codes. This
makes the new code seem not so much like it has its own messages
but that it controls the messages of the DNA we are familiar
with.
As I hope is not too obvious my knowledge in this area is less
than complete, but this looks like it could be a significant new
understanding. I wonder if there are smaller codes controlling
the new code, ad infinitum. In any case people who are
interested may want to look further into this.
This reminds me of my own pet question about DNA. I have
mentioned this in the Void before. Take a yard of white thread
and a yard of black thread. Twist them together so that they
become one single thread. This takes a lot of twists. Now pull
them apart. You've got a whole lot of untwisting happening and it
is really hard to do gracefully. You have a very large winding
number to deal with and it has to be resolved somehow.
The double helix of human DNA is two threads twisted around each
other with what I believe to be many-many turns, perhaps in the
tens of thousands. It is like a long and very twisted ladder.
If you split the bonds between the two strands in a remarkably
short interval of time they completely separate from each other
with both threads intact. How do they do that? What happens to
the huge winding number? I am not asking what agent causes it to
happen. I am pretty sure that an enzyme is the agent. I am
trying to imagine how two molecules so twisted around each other
manage to extricate themselves from each other gracefully. It
seems to require that either the ends spin very fast or that
there is a lot of breaking and rejoining to allow one strand to
pass through the other at thousands of locations. How exactly do
the two sides of the ladder extricate themselves from each other?
After talking with biologists, and getting a response from almost
none, the answer seems to be that there is no untwisting at all,
but that there is a very great deal of breaking chains to let the
other chain through and then reconnecting. But that raises more
questions. Do both chains break? Does only one break and if so
what determines which one? These seem to me like basic questions,
but it does not seem that a lot of people have thought about
them. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Western Films (comments by Daniel Kimmel and Mark R. Leeper)
In response to Evelyn's comments on western films in the 07/21/06
issue of the MT VOID, Dan Kimmel wrote:
I appreciate Evelyn's trying to work toward a definition of the
Western genre. Perhaps I can shed some light, since I had to
come up with a definition for my students when I taught a course
on the subject.
Westerns are set in the American West, wherever they're shot.
Thus THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY is a Western. Movies set in
Mexico with Western characters might qualify. Movies set in
upstate New York do not. (THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS is not a
Western.) Movies set in Australia can be cousins to the Western,
but let's respect their own history.
My own college film professor pointed out that there is a cycle
to westerns (and I don't think this was his original coinage),
and movies can be placed somewhere along this line:
1. The taming of the West
2. The settling of the West
3. The closing of the West
Movies with the fort under attack by Indians are in the first
category. Movies about the establishment of law/church/school
are in the second category. Movies about how the old time
cowboy/gunslinger doesn't have a place in the "new west" are in
the third category.
These categories are fluid and may overlap. SHANE is a bit of 1
and 2, for example. The third is elastic as well. When I taught
my western course I did a trio of John Wayne films (STAGECOACH,
THE SEARCHERS, THE SHOOTIST) which showed not only his
development as an actor but also--in the last film--a classic
"closing of the West" film. But the final movie I showed was
LONELY ARE THE BRAVE, which was set in the present (of 1962) and
which no one questioned as not being a western.
Looking at your list, I see no problem whatsoever with DANCES
WITH WOLVES. Of course it's a Western, in terms of location and
fitting easily into category 1. That it has a modern sensibility
is besides the point. Genre films almost always reflect the
times in which they are made. Western films may be loosely
inspired by history, but they are not historical films. MY
DARLING CLEMENTINE, for example, is a great film, that almost
completely ignores the facts it is supposedly recounting. GRAPES
OF WRATH and OF MICE AND MEN are clearly *not* westerns. They
have none of the motifs of the genre, and no real ties to it.
Location is important but it's not enough. Is Neil Simon's
CALIFORNIA SUITE a western merely because it takes place in the
west? Oliver Stone's JFK? Of course not.
The two interesting films on your list (of the ones I have seen)
are THE SEVEN FACES OF DR. LAO and THE MARK OF ZORRO. I think
they're westerns in the same sense that A SCANNER DARKLY or
DR. STRANGELOVE are science fiction. They're not the best
examples of the genre (whatever their qualities as films) but
they do use at least some of the trappings. It's like those
diagrams from math class where you depict overlapping sets.
Hope this is of some use. [-dk]
Mark responded:
I pretty much agree with you, but I think that the boundaries are
a little fuzzier than you make them out to be. Most people
consider QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER to be a Western. IMDB counts it as
such. I am uncomfortable with saying that we cannot tell a film
is a Western if, say, we don't know if it takes place in in New
Zealand or the American West. There is also a question of where
the West begins. We definitely include Texas but can we include
Louisiana? Ohio? At the time of THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS it
took place in what was the West. I would just say that there is
not such thing as a litmus test to decide if a story is a Western
or not. With some films it is arguable. [-mrl]
To which Dan wrote:
I think there are a number of films (like the current THE
PROPOSITION) that are like westerns in every respect but
location. I'm willing to include them in a genre discussion, but
I think we need to respect the difference. The "western" is
about the *American* west. I'm not willing to pretend that the
differences because a film is set in Australia or New Zealand
don't really matter. It's not fair to the history or the
mythology of those countries.
As for what constitutes the west, anything west of the
Mississippi, and maybe some stuff right on the shores. But THE
LAST OF THE MOHICANS fails both because of location *and* time.
The western is largely from the mid-19th century to the end of
it, with some allowances for movies about the "end of the west"
or, like BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, people living under or against the
mythology of the west. But a movie set in colonial times can't
be a western any more than a story about Spanish explorers in the
New World can be. Is DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK a western? Is THE
MISSION? If so, it makes any attempt to define the genre
impossible. Not all crime films are "gangster movies." Not all
mysteries set at night are "film noir." Not every movie where
someone sings a song is a "musical." That's just the way it
goes. [-dk]
And Mark said:
Well, neither of us is the final arbiter. There are films that
some people consider westerns because it fits their definition
and others have stricter definitions. We have a CD of music from
Westerns that includes GETTYSBURG and MOHICANS. I think they are
stretching a point. This is why I like mathematics. Everybody
agrees on what path-connectedness means in topology. Perhaps
someone else has another definition of connectedness and he will
have a different name for it. Mathematicians never have to argue
over definitions. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
TRESPASSERS ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD: THE SECRET EXPLORATION OF
TIBET by Peter Hopkirk (ISBN 1-56836-050-9) is about the attempts
of Westerners in get into Lhasa when not just Lhasa, but all of
Tibet, was closed to foreigners. However, the most interesting
stories are of non-Westerners, in specific the pundits from
India. In the 1860s, several Indians who had been specially
trained by the British were sent to try to penetrate into Tibet,
get to Lhasa, and ascertain the situation vis-a-vis the Chinese
and particularly the Russians. The story of how they were
treated by the British is as depressing as their adventures are
exciting. First, the British came close to completely
undermining their efforts by publishing the details of their
training and travels in the "Journal of the Royal Geographical
Society" in 1868. Only the fact that no one in China happened to
read the "Journal" prevented future trips from meeting with
disaster. (And you thought security leaks were a new thing!)
Second, when the pundits were finished, they got piddling amounts
of money (or, if they were really lucky, small pensions) and a
few (oral) words of thanks. William Rockhill observed, "If any
British observer had done one third of Nain Singh [or others]
accomplished, medals and decorations, lucrative offices and
professional promotion, freedom of cities and every form of
lionisation would have been his. As for those native explorers,
a small pecuniary reward and obscurity are all to which they can
look forward. . . . " Sir Richard Temple asked the question of
why these pundits did it, and then gave his answer, "Not to those
honours which afforded an honorable stimulus to British
enterprise, but only this--his zeal for the department he served,
his obedience to so good a superior as General Walker, his
loyalty to the public service, his firm determination to do his
duty according to his poor ability and, above all things, his
reliance upon the British Government which he knew would reward
him generously should he survive, and would take of his family
should he perish." This sounds so condescending that it is even
more depressing to realize that corporations now expect this of
the employees, and deliver even less after years of service.
These people were followed by a series of considerably less
competent (and less prepared) Europeans, including several who
decided they were called to preach the Gospel in Lhasa. Petrus
and Susie Rijnhart decided not only to go to Lhasa, but to take
their newborn son with them. Only Susie survived--barely.
Another explorer, Henry Savage Landor, seems to have done
everything possible to antagonize the Tibetans he dealt with.
Today's tourists may be obnoxious at times, but the sheer
presumptuousness of some of these early explorers is amazing.
The back blurb from the "Guardian" for THE BAT TATTOO by Russell
Hoban (ISBN 0-7475-6163-X) says that it "completes a trilogy of
masterful late works." I wish there had been some indication of
what the other two books are. Internal evidence suggests that
one is AMARYLLIS DAY AND NIGHT and the other is probably HER NAME
IS LOLA. However, since I read the latter two years ago, and
have the former still on my shelf of books to read, the trilogy
aspect was lost on me. Luckily, it seems more a triptych than a
trilogy, in that the books seem to be able to stand on their own.
(I might compare the effect to one I mentioned in my comments on
Christopher Priest's books a few weeks ago--that characters and
places seem to recur throughout the different books.)
In THE BAT TATTOO, the main characters are Roswell Clark and
Sarah Varley. Roswell is an artist/craftsperson who has had one
big success with a toy involving crash-test dummies. Sarah is a
dealer in "objects d'art" which she sells from a table at various
street markets. Both of them are trying to get over the guilt
they carry from their earlier relationships. The idea of two
people in need, and in need of each other, is a recurring theme
in Hoban's work, and he does it very well. Of course, the big
problem is that most of his later works are not readily available
in the United States. I bought THE BAT TATTOO and AMARYLLIS
NIGHT AND DAY in Canada, and several others in Britain. The only
book of his (other than children's books) that one sees here with
any regularity seems to be RIDDLEY WALKER--a very good book, but
very unlike any of his others. I don't think I've ever read a
bad Hoban book, so any that you find are recommended.
OUTWITTING SQUIRRELS by Bill Adler, Jr., (ISBN 1-55652-302-5) is
subtitled "101 Cunning Stratagems to Reduce Dramatically the
Egregious Misappropriation of Seed from Your Birdfeeder by
Squirrels". (The whole book is only 188 pages long, which makes
it a bit title-heavy.) In addition to suggestions (most of which
he admits do not work very well), Adler provides a lot of
information about squirrels and their biology. It's of interest
even to people like us who *want* to feed the squirrels. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Any movement in history which attempts
to perpetuate itself, becomes reactionary.
-- Josip Broz Tito