THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/03/09 -- Vol. 28, No. 1, Whole Number 1552
C3PO: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
R2D2: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Acknowledgement (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Musical Parallel (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
NUMB3RS: TEHRAN (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The Vanishing Money Trick (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
OFF JACKSON AVENUE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE BROTHERS BLOOM (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
3-D Films (letters of comment by Lee Beaumont,
Steve Milton, and Taras Wolansky)
THE RISING: BALLAD OF MANGAL PANDEY (letters of comment
by Steve Milton and Taras Wolansky)
This Week's Reading (MIDDLEMARCH) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
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TOPIC: Acknowledgement (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
This week's MT VOID is brought to you by the Pre-Owned-Humvee
Owners Exchange. Humvee. For the man who is tired of yielding the
right of way. [-mrl]
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TOPIC: Musical Parallel (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
If a socialist believes in Socialism, does a pianist believe in
Pianism? [-mrl]
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TOPIC: NUMB3RS: TEHRAN (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I have talked several times in the past about getting students to
want to learn mathematics. I try to convince them that it is
useful in a lot of different ways, even though they cannot imagine
them or anybody in their family ever having the slightest use for
the quadratic formula. I have to admit that I do not really see
how they might find it useful in later life myself. That does not
mean I do not think that it should be taught. The exercise of
learning and understanding mathematics will serve them well in
later life. With critical thinking as well as with muscles the
rule is "use it or lose it." Of course, I find the quadratic
formula actually a very nifty tool, but I doubt that most people
even in my readership can get that excited about it.
In this effort there are "the bad guys" and "the good guys."
Anybody who publishes a book with a title like THE ONLY MATHEMATICS
BOOK YOU WILL EVER NEED or ALL THE MATHEMATICS YOU'LL EVER NEED is
a bad guy and not welcome in my house. On the other hand, I do
have a welcome and unexpected ally in network TV. I can quibble
about how the mathematics is handled in CBS's NUMB3RS, but at least
they are out there on a weekly basis saying that you can do things
you want to do with mathematics that you probably cannot do without
the mathematics. But, of course, NUMB3RS is a fiction program.
Personally I doubt that even Paul Erdos was as familiar with as
many fields of mathematics as is Charlie Eppes in NUMB3RS. He is
sort of the mathematical equivalent of "Our Man Flint" or "Buckaroo
Banzai". One might well wonder if his sort of mathematical
analysis actually is used in the real world. This made it
particularly interesting to see the "Washington Post" article "The
Devil Is in the Digits" by two Columbia PhD candidates, Bernd Beber
and Alexandra Scacco: http://tinyurl.com/iran-math. If it was
not on such a serious subject I could almost call this article a
delight. They take a look at the mathematical aspects of Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's supposed landslide victory in the Iranian elections.
As you probably know Ahmadinejad did far better in the polls than
was expected, particularly in the urban areas which are definitely
not his strongest areas of support. The pollsters had assumed he
had nowhere near the backing in the elections that he showed.
There were major protests that there had been election cheating to
which the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, responded
simply "We wouldn't do that." Of course the very secret nature of
the ballot makes it very hard to prove decisively that there was
cheating. But it is possible to get information out of crunching
the data from the election.
When a number is presented as a vote count it could be real or it
could be bogus. There is evidence in the number itself as to which
is the case. And the evidence can be in the least important
digits, the last two. If one were to naively write a number as a
fictional vote count on the simplest level one would write round
numbers, those that end in '0' or '5'. The round numbers look
rigged. So someone writing fictional numbers would try to avoid
those digits for the last number. But the fact is that each digit
should show up 10% of the time. An honest poll counter would not
avoid those numbers, but a human cheater would. It turns out that
in the vote count numbers the last digit of 7 shows up more than
expected--17% of the time--and 5 less than expected--only 4%. It
would appear that someone is cheating and revealing himself by
incompetently covering up his tracks.
Another statistical anomaly occurs with digit pairs. If you are
writing a random number and write a digit of four followed by a
second digit, are all digits equally likely? Again if you have a
randomizing generator like a vote count, any digit can show up as
the second digit picked with equal probability. If you are just
writing numbers yourself that is not true. It is more likely you
would pick 45 than 49, for example. From the four it is easier for
your mind to pick an adjacent digit than one a few digits away. It
is just easier to pick five for the second digit than eight or
nine. When examining the last two digits of vote counts there are
more digit adjacencies than you would expect. It seems likely the
vote results were fraudulently written by someone who is not very
good at writing random numbers (a talent that is surprisingly
rare).
Beber and Scacco's analysis says that the probability that the
figures reported were fair election results is less than one half
of 1%. The probability that the protesters were correct and that
there really was cheating is more than 199 to one.
Now of course there very probably is cheating in our own elections.
It would be interesting to see a similar analysis performed on
United States election results. And there is an unanswered
question of whether the Iran cheating was enough to swing the
election. There also is the consideration that Beber and Scacco
may have made it too easy for future election fraudsters to see how
to make their numbers credible.
But I would hope the kids I work with would get enough of a feeling
for mathematics that they could understand Beber and Scacco's
analysis and factor that into their political opinions. [-mrl]
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TOPIC: The Vanishing Money Trick (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
"$25 trillion of national wealth has vanished."
This was a statement in a recent editorial in US NEWS & WORLD
REPORT. But what does it actually mean?
For example, Planet Money did a podcast about how much was actually
lost in the Bernie Madoff scam. The investors are claiming they
lost $50 billion, based on what their last statements from Madoff
(before the crash) said they were worth. But others (including,
undoubtedly, Madoff's lawyers) are claiming that what they lost was
much less--in fact, was equal only to what they had put in.
So for example, if John Q. Investor put in $1000 ten years ago, and
Madoff told him that each year he got a 15% return which John then
re-invested, then John would see a statement showing that he had a
little more than $4000. Since no one is getting anything from Madoff
at this point, John would claim he lost $4000. But the response is
that thet $4000 never existed, it was completely made up by Madoff,
and all John really lost was $1000.
This is made complicated by the fact that John may have paid taxes
on these "returns" over the years. In a 25% bracket, John would
really have "netted" $2250 in gains, so his "loss" would be only
$3250, not $4000. (He can now file amended tax returns to recover
those taxes, so that at least he can recover that. If he couldn't
than he could reasonably argue he had lost $1750, $1000 to Madoff
and $750 to the government.)
And in fact, some institutions have released more detailed
information about their losses. Hadassah originally said they lost
$90 million, but then revised that, saying that they realized that
much of that never existed, and their real loss was more like $33
million. American Technion revised their losses from $72 million
to $29 million, and Yeshiva University from $110 million to $14.5
million.
Back to the $25 trillion of national wealth that has vanished. How
much of this is "Madoff money"--money that never really existed in
the first place?
Now, one argument might be that John Q. Investor actually believed
he had $4000, and so did everyone else, and so he had the economic
power of having $4000, which in turn is the same as actually having
the $4000. But I'm not convinced.
For example, if I find someone who is very gullible, and I tell him
that I have put a million dollars in his bank account, and he
believes me, that does not add a million dollars to the economy.
Even if I print up a fake bank statement which lets him convince
someone else to issue him credit as if he had a million dollars,
that does not add a million dollars to the economy.
And if someone bought a house for $500,000 several years ago,
thought it was worth $1,000,000 last year, and now thinks it is
worth $700,000, has the economy lost $300,000? Had it gained
$500,000 before? Somehow it doesn't seem so.
What about stock prices? Well, when Enron collapsed, supposedly
$60 billion disappeared from the economy. But were they ever
really there in the first place? [-ecl]
[Many charitable organizations, originally publicly very irate
about their losses may be less open about their losses now. The
question arises why they had so much money that they could afford
to take it from their supposed goals and instead invest (or gamble)
the contributions with money-making schemes like Madoff's. They
have really been caught red-handed misrepresenting what they were
doing with contributions. Even if they had invested more prudently
it was not what they claimed to be doing with the contributions.
-mrl]
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TOPIC: OFF JACKSON AVENUE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Three (or more) crime stories intersect each other in this
tale set in Queens, New York's underbelly. A Mexican immigrant is
forced into sexual slavery; an unreadable Japanese hit man prepares
for killing; a car thief tries to steal enough to buy himself a
legitimate business. The film makes a slow and grim build to a
suspenseful third act. Newcomer writer/director/actor John-Luke
Montias (in his second feature film) shows us several faces of
crime. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
Three contiguous stories of different sorts of crime unfold
simultaneously and finally tie together. Olivia (played by Jessica
Pimentel) has been lured to Queens from Oaxaca, Mexico with
promises of a job was a waitress in a new restaurant. Instead she
has her passport taken from her and is brutally forced into sexual
slavery. Her first day is shown in harrowing detail. But she is
determined she will get herself out of the predicament. Meanwhile
hit-man Tomo (Jun Suenaga) has been brought to Queens from Japan to
eliminate a client's business competitor. The Chinese client and
the client's family are clearly impressed by Tomo's cold
professionalism. But under the fa‡ade Tomo is a mother-obsessed
English teacher in Japan. Tomo supplements his meager income as a
contract killer. And he is not adapting well to the United States.
Thirdly there is Joey (played by the film's writer director John-
Luke Montias). Joey desperately wants respectability. He has a
tire shop that he intends to buy just as soon as he can steal
enough cars to earn the $100,000 to buy the shop. But Joey just
does not have the kind of mind that can make it all work.
The film is shot on a low budget with no familiar faces. But that
gives the film more of a realistic and almost documentary feel. A
standout performance comes from Stivi Paskoski as Milot, the
vicious Albanian pimp who keeps the women in line at the bordello
house. It is Milot who gives the film most of its dramatic
tension. He has frightened the more experienced girls into a
docile compliance almost more frightening than Milot himself.
Meanwhile Tomo keeps track of his ailing mother back home with a
fixation that is keeping him from performing is hit. And Joey
spars with his uncle who shares Joey's home and undermines the
thief's confidence.
The film has a disturbing, if fascinating, first half. But Montias
lightens the tone in the second half of the film, particularly with
his own character. His Joey proves that car theft is not glamorous
like it appears in the movies. And the main character of each
story struggles to win the approval of a family member who is not
about to give it.
Montias does not balance the stories evenly, not that that is
really necessary. The story of Olivia really takes center stage.
It is the main story and Tomo and Joey really get secondary status.
It is as if Montias is really telling that story, but it was not
too short a story to fill the film.
While OFF JACKSON AVENUE has that uncomfortable first half, once
the film gets going it is compelling, with the story of Olivia
doing most of the compelling. Finally it builds to a satisfying
and almost funny d‚nouement with a cleverly intricate sequence
involving all of the
primary characters of the plot. I rate it a low +2 on the -4 to +4
scale or 7/10.
OFF JACKSON AVENUE opens at the Quad Cinema in New York July 17.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1016083/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/off_jackson_avenue/
[-mrl]
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TOPIC: THE BROTHERS BLOOM (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The second film for writer-director Rian Johnson is a
pleasantly bizarre story of two international con men trying to con
a wealthy and attractive widow. Or are they trying to con each
other? In any case, Johnson is trying (and succeeding) to con the
audience. The film is fun, but the characters are not well
developed. The audience has to be onboard not for the characters
but for the twisty ride. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
The most playful crime films are the ones about confidence
tricksters. They could be telling a straight story or they could
be pulling the wool over the audience's eyes. And the viewer never
knows for sure. Some tell their story directly about people in
this profession--and they usually are a fascinating subject to
write about--and some pull their own hustle on the viewer at the
same time they are entertaining. THE BROTHERS BLOOM is about as
twisty a con man film as I have seen. It is written and directed
by Rian Johnson, whose debut was the creative high school film noir
film BRICK.
The Bloom brothers have been fraudsters since they were boys. We
see them as young teens pulling a scam on an entire town. This is
when the younger of the Blooms (apparently his name is Bloom Bloom,
played by Zachary Gordon and later played by Adrien Brody) first
associating a really good con game with attracting girls. His
older brother Stephen Bloom (played by Max Records and later by
Mark Ruffalo) plans the cons and entices Bloom into the scheme.
His planning is meticulous with all the steps represented as blocks
in a flow chart. The art design picks up the motif of the hand-
lettered boxes and uses them as chapter titles for their story.
Flash-forward several years and the two brothers are now part of a
three-person team. The third person is almost literally a silent
partner. She is a Japanese woman with the Chinese name Ying-Ling
or Bang-Bang, as she is usually called. Rinko Kikuchi plays Bang-
Bang. Their latest mark is Penelope Stamp (Rachel Weisz of the
"Mummy" movies and the excellent THE CONSTANT GARDNER). The two
men apparently charm Penelope who seems as ill-fated in finding
friends and love as she is driving a car. Bloom is now in his
thirties and realizes if he does not get out of the game soon these
scams are going to be his whole life. And perhaps he would like to
retire with Penelope. Incidentally, it is nice to see Maximilian
Schell along in one of his least glamorous roles ever.
The problem with this film is that the people are not characters
but plot contrivances. I guess what it means to create a character
is to make the character understandable and perhaps just a bit
predictable. But Johnson wants to keep his characters enigmatic so
the viewer is never really sure what they will do. This means that
we cannot believe we understand anyone. A film like THE STING
intelligently does not make its plot too convoluted and
unpredictable. Consequently its director, George Roy Hill, could
develop his characters more than Johnson allowed himself to do in
THE BROTHERS BLOOM.
THE BROTHERS BLOOM is as much a game as it is a story film, but
then so are most mysteries. The audience climbs onto the
convoluted plot and tries to hold on to the storyline. Then Rian
Johnson does whatever he can to surprise them and throw them off.
Right through to the end and perhaps beyond the audience is not
sure who to believe. That makes for an enjoyable ride, but not
enough more than that. I rate THE BROTHERS BLOOM a high +1 on the
-4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0844286
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/brothers_bloom/
[-mrl]
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TOPIC: 3-D Films (letters of comment by Lee Beaumont, Steve Milton,
and Taras Wolansky)
In response to Mark's article on 3-D films in the 06/26/09 issue of
the MT VOID, Lee Beaumont writes:
Is the phrase: "72 frames per second per eye" correct? I would
think that 24x2=48 frames per second (overall) would be sufficient.
If it is truly 72 frames / sec / eye = 144 frames / sec that is 6x
the old rate and seems excessive. [-lb]
Mark replies:
There are still only 24 different pairs of images per second. But
each frame is transmitted three times. According to the Wikipedia
article "In Real-D Cinema, each frame is projected three times to
reduce flicker." So the figure of 6 is two eyes times three
projections. So it is 144 frames per second of which only 24 pairs
are different. See the Wikipedia article at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_D_Cinema. [-mrl]
Lee then asks:
Is the polarization characteristic of a frame an attribute of:
1) The image file (e.g. captured within the .jpg), or
2) The display device (e.g. the monitor, projector, filter, etc)
Okay, reading the Wikipedia article it says that the Zscreen is a
dynamic filter that shifts the polarization, so it is an attribute
of the display device.
However, your article says the market for this is being generated
by HD TVs which cannot manage the polarization of the display.
[-lb]
Mark replies:
Yes, the Zscreen is placed right in front of the projector lens and
is synchronized to the frames of the film. And the market is
exploiting a capability that projected light has but that cannot be
recreated with an HD TV. [-mrl]
Steve Milton writes:
There was an attempt several years ago to project 3-D without
lenses by simply sending both left and right eye images alternately
with a high frame rate. The theory was that each eye would seek
out the image that made sense like those magic 3-pictures. I saw a
demo of it. It sort of worked but the picture tended to flicker in
and out of proper 3-D. I guess it wasn't considered good enough
and was abandoned. [-smm]
And Taras Wolansky writes:
I was perplexed by the account of red-blue (or anaglyph) 3-D movies
in the June 26th issue. As I understand it, all the 3-D
information is encoded in the colors of a single image; no two
projectors are required. The colored glasses are sufficient to
make the single image look different to each eye, creating the
illusion of 3D.
After all, the red-blue system-- unlike polarized 3-D--will work on
an ordinary TV screen, or even a printed page. [-tw]
And Mark responds:
I think you are right. I got my information from a former
projectionist on a podcast. I got the impression that he was
talking about the original 3D, which would have been a color
separation process. But even in the 1950s they should have been
able to put both images on a single frame. On the other hand until
recently it would have been impossible to project both horizontally
polarized and a vertically polarized images from a single lens. So
almost certainly that is the process that requires two projectors.
[-mrl]
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TOPIC: THE RISING: BALLAD OF MANGAL PANDEY (letters of comment by
Steve Milton and Taras Wolansky)
In response to Mark's review of THE RISING: BALLAD OF MANGAL PANDEY
in the 06/19/09 issue of the MT VOID, Steve Milton writes, "The
'pro-British' scene may not be intended to be pro-British, but
another demonstration of British disregard for India culture and
customs." [-smm]
Mark replies, "I thought about that. I have been all over the
world and have never found a culture I thought was as different
from the West as India is. I cannot entirely rule out that there
is not somebody in India who still believes in widow-burning. But
I would guess it would be as unlikely that an Indian film would
defend that custom as it would be to find a current United States
film that defends slavery. " [-mrl]
Evelyn adds, "There is a story--probably apocryphal--from the days
of the Raj. A British officer, trying to stop an act of suttee,
was told by an Indian man, 'It is our custom to burn a woman on the
funeral pyre of her husband.' The officer replied, 'And it is our
custom to execute murderers.'" [-ecl]
Taras Wolansky writes, "As for the movie about Mangal Pandey, my
rule of thumb is, if it's in a movie, it's probably untrue. In
Wikipedia, Pandey comes across more as a demented rioter high on
drugs than a freedom fighter. He is symbolically important, of
course, representing an Indian nationalism that did not actually
exist at the time." [-tw]
Mark replies:
I have skimmed the Wikipedia article and can find not place that it
says that Pandey was demented or on drugs as you claim. You will
have to point me to where you draw that conclusion. A Britannica
from the 1930s is very negative on on Pandey and an Indian website
is very positive. Neither opinion is very surprising.
Your rule of thumb on historical films is pretty much useless since
historical fact in film is really hit or miss. Film is reasonable
for getting a high-level view but not for accuracy of details. I
believe GETTYBURG is quite accurate. It follows pretty closely
most historical accounts of the battle. Some films are closer to
the truth than others, but then some historical accounts are closer
to the truth than others. I think that it is George MacDonald
Fraser who points out that people would not be able to picture a
lot of history without historical film. My rule of thumb is that
film is a good indicator of what aspects of history would be
interesting to research, but not of what I will expect to find
after doing that research. You will notice that my review does not
make any judgments on the historical figure Mangal Pandey. In any
event you might want to have much better sources than Wikipedia
before concluding that someone who may be someone else's national
hero was a 'demented rioter high on drugs.' Also, I have a
suspicion that many of our own national heroes would not stand up
well to close scrutiny. [-mrl]
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TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
MIDDLEMARCH by George Eliot (ISBN-13 978-0-14-043388-3, ISBN-10
0-14-043388-0) was published in 1872, yet well over a century later,
there are some surprisingly relevant passages. For example,
writing of Lydgate, the new physician in Middlemarch, Elliot says,
"since professional practice chiefly consisted in giving a great
many drugs, the public inferred that it might be better off with
more drugs still if they could only be got cheaply..." [page 146]
But Lydgate has some new ideas: "One of these reforms was to ...
simply prescribe, without dispensing drugs or taking percentage
from druggists." [page 147]
(I am glad that the Penguin edition has a few notes explaining the
historical references--a passing reference to an act regarding
pharmacists is certainly easier to research when you are told it is
the Apothecaries Act of 1815. That Act set minimum standards for
someone to become a physician; the Medical Act of 1858 clarified
the charges allowed. Apparently before the latter act, physicians
could only charge for surgeries or medicines, but not for their
services in non-surgical cases.)
And there is still a lot of truth in Eliot's observations about
marriage and people's expectations upon entering into it: "The fact
is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are
acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few
imaginative weeks called courtship may, when seen in the continuity
of married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse
than what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear
altogether the same. And it would be astonishing to find how soon
the change is felt if we had no kindred changes to compare with it.
To share lodgings with a brilliant dinner companion, or to see your
favourite politician in the Ministry, may bring about changes quite
as rapid: in these cases too we begin by knowing little and
believing much, and we sometimes end by inverting the quantities."
[page 195] Of course, nowadays people who find themselves in a
marriage that is not coming up to expectations can usually get out
fairly easily, but in George Eliot's time things were more
difficult.
And in "the more things change" category, we have a minor character
bemoaning, "But some say this country's seen its best days, and the
sign is, as it's being overrun with these fellows tramping right
and left, and wanting to cut it up into railways, and all for the
big traffic to swallow up the little, so there shan't be a team
left on the land, nor a whip to crack." [page 556]
And the current economic crisis seems for many very much the same
situation Lydgate finds himself in. In preparation for his
impending marriage, he spends several hundred pounds on furnishings
for his house, feels he must keep two horses, and says nothing when
his wife insists on buying only the best quality food and throwing
frequent parties. At the same time, the income from his practice
has declined. He has seen lack of money in his patients, but never
applied the concept to himself. Although "Lydgate believed himself
to be careless about his dress, and he despised a man who
calculated the effects of his costume," yet "it seemed to him only
a matter of course that he had abundance of fresh garments--such
things were naturally ordered in sheaves." [page 588] He does not
want to ask for money from his father-in-law, but his wife does
anyway--only to be told by her father that he might soon need a
loan himself. If this doesn't sound contemporary, you haven't been
paying attention.
This is not to deny that some of the passages are written in a very
convoluted 19th century style that is hard to understand. But the
book as a whole is surprisingly modern and rewarding. [-ecl]
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Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Black holes are where God divided by zero.
-- Steven Wright