THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/25/08 -- Vol. 27, No. 4, Whole Number 1503
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Another Very Bad Sign (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Repairing the Misinformation (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Education and the Internet (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
THE DARK KNIGHT (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
TUVA OR BUST! by Ralph Leighton (book review
by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (AGATHA RAISIN AND THE QUICHE OF
DEATH, THE FORGER'S SPELL, DISCOVER YOUR INNER
ECONOMIST, and Sister Wendy's "Story of Painting")
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Another Very Bad Sign (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
What is happening to the world? Is there nothing to believe in
any more?
>From the film RAIN MAN:
Charlie: Ray, all airlines have crashed at one time or another,
that doesn't mean that they are not safe.
Raymond: Qantas. Qantas never crashed.
Charlie: Qantas?
Raymond: Never crashed.
But now Qantas airplanes are falling apart in air, admittedly
without crashing: http://tinyurl.com/68292f
I don�t think we can blame this one on the Bush administration.
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Repairing the Misinformation (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
As may be obvious from my review, I am not keen on the new
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH or a lot of the bad science
that is in the film. Nevertheless, it is a kids' film and if
they enjoy it, it can be turned into a learning experience. The
filmmakers have cooperated with the American Geological Institute
to make a fun little booklet that has a lot of good information
about geology and science in general.
You can read about it at and order a copy.
http://tinyurl.com/5reevn
They have a free PDF copy at the site below,if you want to print
it yourself:
http://www.earthsciweek.org/J3D_web_150dpi.pdf
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Education and the Internet (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
A friend recently asked me a detailed question about a subject I
actually knew very little about. With a little use of Google, I
was responding with a detailed answer to his question in just a
matter of minutes. It occurred to me that in sixth grade how
long it took me to get the information that was needed for a set
of reports I was given to write to write, and how I did it. It
was weeks of library work and stress. Now I was responding to a
question even more complex and I was doing it fast enough that it
seemed like I knew the answer all along. Those reports would be
easy to do today. But the research skills of going to the
library and ferreting out answers would be far less useful and
necessary.
As the as technology advances education has to adapt to the
changing world. This puts a premium on teachers who not only
teach, but who have a forward-looking view to what skills are
going to be needed in the future. Unfortunately, school systems
can easily be lulled into teaching the same skills they have
taught the previous year and the year before. Traditionally,
teaching was not a profession that required its practitioners to
be highly proactive. To the contrary, the educational system
discourages teachers from straying from a standard curriculum,
and admittedly that is with good reason. Students are tested
against the current curriculums. The "No Child Left Behind"
policy more or less enforces that from one classroom to the next
students are learning very much the same set of skills, but it
does not guarantee that those skills are what are currently the
best strategy for the student. Additionally, while some teachers
may be innovative, others are anxious to use that position in
order to push a particular political agenda and to even
indoctrinate students to that agenda. So there are very good
reasons to stick to a fixed curriculum, even if that approach to
teaching is becoming less and less of a fit to the current world.
But the skills required in the world are changing and even are
unpredictable.
The communications revolution is changing the very meaning of
what education is. Information has become much easier to obtain
since the advent of the Internet and educators may not have yet
shifted to new educational paradigms. Forty years ago one of the
primary skills that an education was supposed to teach was how to
get information in a world where it was not easy to do. Research
paper projects were in large part exercises in wresting knowledge
from a world where getting information was a real effort. A
major assignment for students was the research paper for which
students had to go to the library and ferret out information on a
given topic. True, there was also the skill of organizing the
information and the skill of expressing the information found.
But what characterized a research paper was the research that had
to be done. And doing the research was often far from easy.
Today electronic interconnectivity has changed the landscape of
education and with it some of the most challenging aspects of
education. Interconnectivity is breaking down the barriers
between people and information. Researching a subject, a task
that was the major part of writing reports, now takes just
minutes on Google and educators are reacting by shifting their
emphasis from obtaining information to evaluating information.
Yes, you can in minutes get twenty sources on Iran, but which of
those sources are reliable? Which of the writers have self-
serving biases? In the 1960s there were few enough available
sources of information. There was less concern about whether
sources were reliable. It was difficult for authors to get their
points of view before the public. There was some consciousness
that one source was better than another was, but if an author was
good enough to be published it was probable there was some value
in his point of view. Forty years later it is little effort to
put the word "Iran" into Google and to find many sources of
varying quality on the subject (though Google's algorithm tends
to put the most valuable sources listed toward the top).
For someone who was educated in the 1960s, it is a heady
experience to hear about a subject with which one is unfamiliar
and in twenty minutes to be able to wield a great deal of
information on that subject. But it also means that the research
skills that he learned in school are at best poorly aligned with
the current information landscape and perhaps are nearly obsolete
and useless. One of the major goals of education was to make the
student erudite. But this capability to "flash learn" obscure
subjects changes the definition of erudition. The range of
subjects that one can knowledgeably discuss extemporaneously may
not be increasing with time. The range of subjects that one can
knowledgeably talk about after twenty minutes of Internet time
has exploded.
Ironically, while the effort to do research has become easy, many
students are becoming lazy. Why do a research paper at all, no
matter how easy, when for a few dollars one can purchase one
ready-made. Also, plagiarism is on the rise as tempting material
flows easily to the student's PC screen. Teachers have to be
extremely computer savvy to keep up with students' ability to get
around the learning process.
But gone are the days when the Mr. Chips sort of teacher who
imparts the same information from decade to decade can still be a
good teacher. Education systems should frequently re-evaluate
what skills would likely be the important ones for the future and
re-adjust the curriculum accordingly. Unfortunately, drifts in
the skill set taught are just what the education system is
designed to avoid. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE DARK KNIGHT (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: In a year in which one film after another is based on
comic books this is a super-hero film whose depth is like no
other. It plays with the whole philosophy of the superhero and
the whole nature of superhero battles. It manages to bring
together an action film and a thought piece. This is a lot more
than we have come to expect from a comic book film. Rating: low
+3 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
Spoiler warning: This review discusses more abstract concepts and
issues than plot points, but they still might be considered
spoilers.
In Gotham City (here apparently a visual amalgam of Manhattan and
Chicago) five criminal gangs have pooled their resources only to
have them stolen by a brilliant but psychotic sociopath, the
Joker (played by the late Heath Ledger). The presence of the
Joker brings out Gotham's other strange resident, the Batman
(Christian Bale) and thus begins a giant battle between two very
twisted men in costumes.
THE DARK KNIGHT is possibly the most hyped film of the summer.
Surprisingly, for once, the hyped film is also one of the most
serious and complex films of the year. Within the lines of this
comic book story are some ambiguous moral decisions, and between
the lines of the script some deep philosophical questions. This
is the second Batman film directed and written by Christopher
Nolan, whose films are best described as astonishing. FOLLOWING,
his first, was an unconventional thriller seen by relatively few
people. But his MEMENTO was an amazing introduction to Nolan for
most film fans. THE PRESTIGE, his latest film before this, was
an intricate puzzle box that is fascinating on first viewing and
is even more so on the second. Even considering THE DARK KNIGHT,
it is still THE PRESTIGE that is his best work.
As for his Batman films, BATMAN BEGINS (which preceded THE
PRESTIGE by two years) has a much deeper psychological pitch than
any other superhero film in memory. Nolan painted Batman as
twisted from childhood and not so much a hero as a victim of his
own demons. It was one of the best super-hero films, but BATMAN
BEGINS still rested comfortably within the conventions of the
comic superhero genre.
Nolan's second Batman film surpasses his first with a dark
psychological drama that nearly reinvents the superhero film. It
brings us to a land where in spite of the possible good
intentions of the superhero, the innocent can become victims of
the fight itself. THE DARK KNIGHT is a comment on all other
superhero films and the implicit safety net with which they
operate. It reminds us that with great power comes not just
great responsibility but also some great psychological burdens.
The concept of Batman, as with most superheroes, has usually been
that he can do anything that needs to be done to stop evil. The
end of a Batman story or nearly any superhero story has
traditionally been that order is restored and things have
returned to the state they were at the beginning. All dangers
have been averted and evil has failed. Somewhat more
sophisticated superhero stories might allow one or two innocent
people killed to reinforce how bad the evil is. But in general
the butcher's bill in a superhero film has been small. That is
just part of the formula. And we are supposed to feel fortunate
we had the superhero around to keep down the killing. That was
just how a superhero story works. But in THE DARK KNIGHT Batman
is faced with the proposition that innocent people are killed and
others will die until he reveals his identity. He must decide
how valuable to him is the secret of his identity. People are
dying and that rips away the traditional safety net that his
protection is infallible.
With the invisible safety net of superhero story convention gone,
there are collateral deaths that Batman cannot avert. They are
killed because the Joker wants to show the limits of Batman's
power and also for the simple abstract cause of chaos. The Batman
supposedly defends order without seeing that he himself, a bat-
masked, self-appointed vigilante, is a breach of that order.
THE DARK KNIGHT takes us to a new world in which there can be
serious casualties in a battle between super-hero and super-
villain. The Joker is attracted to fighting the Batman
specifically because he is the Batman. He is not trying to get
rich from the proceeds of his crimes; he is simply playing a game
with the Batman. And the Batman cannot back away from the fight
because he is the Batman.
For the Joker the game is mostly about Batman, but just for kicks
he also adds an object lesson for the rest of us. He shows us
with a psychological experiment that fear can turn many of us
into mass murderers also. One of his crimes is an exercise to do
just that. It is it a potent message in the post 9/11 world.
But clearly this is a deeper Joker than Jack Nicholson's or
Caesar Romero's Joker clown who laugh gleefully as they defaces
paintings or do other mischief. It is like comparing an abyss to
a little furrow. Heath Ledger gives a good performance as the
Joker. He does make one the great silver screen creeps, nearly a
polar opposite of his Ennis Del Mar in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN.
Where Nolan falls down is the background world for his story. At
times the background has a very realistic feel, like that of a
MYSTIC RIVER. Other times it seems to fall back on the less
credible logic of a comic book. One case is when a character has
figured out Batman's identity and is scheduled to reveal it on
television. We are led to believe the station was ready to put
him on television for the revelation, but they do not know whom
he is going to name.
THE DARK KNIGHT has an enviable cast of usually lead actors
playing supporting roles. In addition to Bale and Ledger, Aaron
Eckhart plays District Attorney Harvey Dent on a strange journey
from crusading public servant to the featured villain in the next
Batman film. Both Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine are reduced
to playing squires to the Dark Knight. Gary Oldman plays the
future Commissioner Gordon who wields the Bat-searchlight.
Finally, Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Rachel Dawes (the Batman's love
interest) and Eric Roberts plays a mob boss. The screenplay is
co-authored by brothers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan who
collaborated on the scripts for MEMENTO and THE PRESTIGE.
By July of 2008 the filmgoer might not be blamed if he were a
little tired of comic book action films hitting the theaters one
after another. IRON MAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, WANTED, ... the
list goes on. THE DARK KNIGHT leads the pack and is the most
intelligent of the lot. I rate it a low +3 on the -4 to +4 scale
or 8/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: TUVA OR BUST! by Ralph Leighton (book review by Mark
R. Leeper)
One of the great scientists of the 20th century was Richard
Feynman. Feynman got a doctorate in physics from Princeton and
went to work at the Manhattan Project. There his whimsical
nature and his ability to think "outside the box" made a real
reputation for himself. He taught himself to crack safes in
order to demonstrate security holes at America's most secret
project. By 1951 he was a professor at Caltech which he remained
until his death in 1988. His lectures on physics have become
classics in book and film form. Feynman Diagrams are a visual
way to describe subatomic particles he invented in 1948 and
remain in heavy use to the present. He also was considered a
great bongo player. He had a wild sense of humor and loved
telling stories about his exploits. The stories were collected
by a Ralph Leighton and published in two delicious volumes,
SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN and WHAT DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER
PEOPLE THINK? He was appointed to the Rogers Commission to
investigate the Challenger Disaster. He traced the cause of the
disaster to the rubber O-ring seals which failed to function in
the wintry temperatures of the Challenger launch. These are just
highlights of a great career. Any books about Feynman should be
fascinating and most are. TUVA OR BUST! would seem on the
surface to be one such book, but it is a serious disappointment.
The book is by Ralph Leighton, the close friend of Feynman who
collected stories for the above two books. Leighton was
something of a traveler and thought he knew geography until
Feynman asked him whatever happened to Tannu Tuva. Feynman
remembered from his youthful days of stamp collecting that there
were triangular and diamond-shaped stamps supposedly from a place
called Tannu Tuva. [See comments at the end of the review.]
Leighton was stumped and the two began researching the place.
When they found out that the capitol was Kyzyl they decided they
had to visit any place that has such a strange spelling. It
seems to have become an obsession with the two (or at least
Leighton). The book TUVA OR BUST! is Leighton's memoir of his
search and plans to visit Tannu Tuva with Feynman. Most of the
book's illustrations are photographs featuring Richard Feynman.
Leighton lets us know over and over what good friends the two of
them were. He drops stories of going to parties with Feynman,
playing bongos with him, having Feynman as the best man at his
wedding, etc. However, little of Feynman's wit comes through in
the writing.
Instead, we have a longish account of Leighton's travails in
trying to arrange a trip to Tannu Tuva in Outer Mongolia, part of
the Soviet Union, during the Cold War. The account is highly
detailed and much of it leaves one wondering why we are being
told much of what is in the book. The same story made an
entertaining hour documentary for the BBC, "Horizon--The Quest
for Tannu Tuva" (a.k.a. "The Last Journey of a Genius"). However
that same charm spread over two hundred pages, even with wide
margins, is a little thin. Much of it is about Leighton butting
heads with bureaucracy heightened by international tensions.
Contending with the bureaucracies is a major effort. The story
is a race against time as early on Richard Feynman is diagnosed
with cancer. The book does not focus closely enough on Feynman
to track his failing health, but is puts some pressure on
Leighton to solve the problems necessary to arrange a visit. It
is hard to feel a lot of concern in spite of this because
Leighton repeats over and over that one of the chief attractions
for the two is the spelling of Kyzyl.
The path to arranging the trip is arduous and requires more than
ten years. During this time we observe form an arm's length what
is happening in the international competition between the United
States and the USSR. We here about the Challenger crash. The
pair makes discoveries like finding pieces of the throat-singing
music that can be found only in Tannu Tuva. Incidentally, the
book comes with a plastic record of with a sample of the music.
Samples can be found at
http://www.ubu.com/ethno/soundings/tuva.html.
The book is mostly about Leighton, many of whose journeys were
made alone, yet it repeatedly keeps mentioning that there is a
connection to Feynman, lest we forget. Leighton bets on the
mentioning of Feynman keeping the book interesting and loses that
bet. If the traveling partner were some unknown Joe Smith the
account would probably have a very much smaller readership.
Other stories include how the two go on bongo playing forays. We
read about Russian restaurants and how bad the service is. We
are introduced to various Eastern Europeans, some of whom are
helpful and some are not.
I would recommend this book really only to people who have
already read SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN and WHAT DO YOU
CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK? They are more entertaining and
give the reader much more of a feel for Richard Feynman.
Incidentally, I am informed by a stamp collector that the Tannu
Tuva stamps that started the whole proceedings probably never saw
Tannu Tuva and were never used for postage. Apparently the
future Nobel Prize winner was taken in by some fraudulent stamps.
My friend showed me a few. Though cancelled, they have full gum
on the back, indicating that they served no postal purpose. The
postmarks carefully never obscure the pictures on the stamps, so
that they can be sold to unwary collectors. Perhaps some
government official gave permission in return for a cut of the
take. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I really like the BBC radio adaptation (I cannot find the name of
who did it) of AGATHA RAISIN AND THE QUICHE OF DEATH by
M. C. Beaton (ISBN-13 978-0-312-93916-8, ISBN-10 0-312-93916-7),
so I decided to read the book (and possibly the whole series of
Agatha Raisin books). While the book was okay--and had I read it
cold, I might even have said good--I discovered that the best
parts of the radio adaptation were not in the book at all. The
basic plot is there: London public relations executive Agatha
Raisin retires to a cottage in the Cotswolds, where she tries to
gain acceptance by entering the local quiche-baking content. Her
quiche, however, is actually store-bought, and what is more, has
poisoned the judge! But the adaptation has an acerbic wit that
is missing from the book, where the characters are flatter and
less appealing, even the ones who are supposed to like. The book
is very popular--there are seventeen sequels--but not up to my
expectations.
THE FORGER'S SPELL: A TRUE STORY OF VERMEER, NAZIS, AND THE
GREATEST ART HOAX OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY by Edward Dolnick
(ISBN-13 978-0-06-082541-6, ISBN-10 0-06-082541-3) is primarily
about Han van Meegeren, a painter who forged several Vermeers
which fooled even the leading art critics of the day. Dolnick
goes into a lot of technical detail of how van Meegeren did this,
and even more on the psychology of convincing people that
forgeries are real. He also explains how critics in the 1930s
were fooled but we can tell immediately these are fakes. One
reason, he says, is that van Meegeren's women have features that
were considered beautiful in the 1930s when he painted them, but
not now. So while his audience saw beauty, we do not. He
actually makes a science fiction connection, saying, "science
fiction always tells as much about the era when it was created as
about the era it tries to imagine. In the future as it was
portrayed in the fifties, for instance, husbands commuted to work
in personal rockets and wives stayed home and cooked up meals in
a pill. For a decade or two, readers found it all quite
plausible." (page 221)
One might compare this to films. We can look at a film made
about Troy for example, and be able to tell whether it was made
in the 1930s, the 1950s, the 1980s, or the 2000s. Even if
someone tries to make a film now that looks old, there are often
things that give it away. Some are technical, but others are
harder to define. The Timothy Hines version of WAR OF THE WORLDS
was made to look Edwardian--though obviously no one was making
color sound films then--but it is clearly a product of the 2000s
rather than, say, the 1950s.
I have two quibbles with THE FORGER'S SPELL. One is that the
book is told in a strange order. For the first hundred pages
Dolnick talks about Nazi art looting and thefts, then he jumps
back to the creation and selling of forged Vermeers in the 1920s
and 1930s. As each major character is introduced Dolnick has to
jump back in time again to give the background of that character,
which gives the narrative a "stop-and-start" quality. Then he
finishes with the discovery of the forgeries, after the war. So
Dolnick tells the middle chapter of the story, then the
beginning, and then the end.
It is not until the epilogue that Dolnick addresses why a
painting thought to be by painter X is worth millions, but when
it turns out to be by painter Y, it is worth $1.98. (Actually,
good forgeries are worth more than that, but as curiosities
rather than as art.) We have this idea that art should be valued
as art, but it seems that much of it is valued as relic. Van
Meegeren asked, "Yesterday this picture was worth millions of
guilders, and experts and art lovers would come from all over the
world and pay money to see it. Today, it is worth nothing, and
nobody would cross the street to see it from free. But the
picture has not changed. What has?"
Dolnick's answer is three-fold. First, "the world was full of
people who thought of themselves as art lovers but were in fact
merely snobs." Second, he quotes Alfred Lessing, who said that
Vermeer was great because "he painted certain pictures in a
certain manner at a certain time in the history and development
of art." And lastly, Dolnick says, "When we praise a work of
ark, we have in mind not only the finished product but the way
that product was made. ... [The] forger has the unfair
advantage of working from someone else's model." (page 291)
The notion that people are too concerned with the origins and
expert opinions of art and not enough with their feelings about
it ties in with comments made by Tyler Cowen in his book DISCOVER
YOUR INNER ECONOMIST (ISBN-13 978-0-452-28963-5, ISBN-10
0-452-28963-7). He was discussing the best way to see an art
museum. Interspersed with suggestions such as to skip the first
room entirely (because it is always the most crowded), he
observed that most people spend more time reading the labels than
looking at the art. When you enter a gallery, he said, look
around, pick the one item that you like the most or find the most
intriguing, and spend your time looking at that.
And speaking of art, I just watched Sister Wendy's "Story of
Painting". While one can argue that one should not infer
official Church theology from this film, I will observe that
Sister Wendy talks about the cave painters of Lascaux as living
20,000 years ago among wooly mammoths. This is not consistent
with the notion that the earth was created 6000 years ago, and
that mammoths were created only as fossils, so this provides at
least some evidence that the Church is not endorsing "Young
Earth" creationism. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
We should be eternally vigilant against attempts
to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
------------------------------------