THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/22/03 -- Vol. 22, No. 8
Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Little Cheese: 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:
Xerxes (comment by Mark R. Leeper)
Bitter Obscurity (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
OPEN RANGE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (THE POET AND THE MURDERER,
AFTER THE FACT: THE ART OF HISTORICAL
DETECTION, TWELVE ANGRY MEN) (book comments by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Xerxes (comment by Mark R. Leeper)
We were watching a show on the Battle of Salamis, where
Themistocles sends a message to Xerxes saying that he has decided
to change sides and wants to help the Persians, so if they would
just attack a certain point, they could win. Xerxes thinks this
is great and does ahead--with disastrous results. Mark then
commented, "Xerxes was what today we would call a 'rube.'" [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Bitter Obscurity (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
One of the more interesting science articles I read recently is
about the uses of adenosine monophosphate (AMP). It is a food
additive that you might be seeing more of. What does it do? It
enhances the taste of just about anything. The claim is that if
you add it to oatmeal it tastes better than a hot fudge sundae.
Add it to cheap coffee and the coffee tastes as good as the
expensive blends. The claim of the Linguagen Corporation, who
patented the stuff, is that it makes spinach tasty to children.
So is it like a spice? Nope. It adds no flavor to anything. It
is essentially flavorless. So what does it do that makes food
taste better? It adds nothing but it takes flavor away. It is a
bitter blocker. It inhibits the ability of the human taste system
to detect the flavor bitter. Most foods and especially medicines
that taste bad to us do so because they taste bitter. That is
actually a health problem. Some people will not take a medicine
that tastes too bitter to them. They will forego having
medication they need because it comes with a compound that tastes
too bitter. Inhibit the ability to taste that bitterness and it
seems that the medicine is not so bad.
But does it really work? In fact, you probably already know it
works without realizing it. Breast milk contains calcium
compounds. Calcium compounds are actually very bitter. They give
breast milk a very bitter flavor. Milk has a bitter flavor? Yes,
but adenosine monophosphate is also found in breast milk so nobody
notices. As a baby you were able to drink breast milk because of
AMP. Ever notice how many foods have corn sweeteners added? You
see it in some products to mask the flavor of less expensive
ingredients. Spaghetti sauce made from cheaper tomatoes
frequently will use corn sweeteners to hide that fact. AMP is
supposedly healthier and can make the cheaper foods taste a lot
better.
AMP is probably not the first commercial use of inhibitors to
create an aesthetic effect. Though they have never admitted it,
Airwick Air Freshener is assumed to have worked by deadening one's
olfactory nerves with some mild anesthetic. In other words it
eliminated unpleasant odors, and eliminated most other odors,
pleasant or not. The company obliquely denies that is what they
were doing, saying they used "odor counteractants" but that seems
to be an industry buzzword for "anesthetic." AMP does not knock
out one's entire sense of taste, because that would be obvious.
For a few seconds, the bitter flavor of a food goes undetected
because the bitter sensors are disabled. (It would be
interesting to take a bitter medicine with milk and see if that
blocks the bitter flavor.)
AMP is not the only flavor inhibitor. In India grows the Gymnema
Sylvester, a plant that does the same thing for the sweet taste
sensation. A real hot fudge sundae would not have sweet flavor at
all with the addition of an extract from this plant. And what a
waste that would be.
There is some debate as to whether use of AMP is a good thing or a
bad thing. Certainly some medicines will become much more
palatable if the flavor can be eliminated. But there actually are
good reasons to make some foods to taste bitter. If it would have
a injurious effect it is for the best that some foods taste
unpleasant. Diesel oil not only tastes bad; it actually is bad
for you. Bitter flavor is frequently a flag of food that goes
bad. It acts as a warning alarm. AMP will turn off that warning
alarm. Also there are those who dislike the idea of a cheap and
underhanded way to make food taste really good. It is basically a
deception. Frankly, I would risk it. I would be willing to eat
only things that taste really good even if it was a fraud and a
sham. I can imagine a future in which we have lost all our
traditional values that making good tasting food is an art. I am
not too frightened by the idea of a world where everybody eats
food that tastes good. What do you think? If there was a
shortcut so that all food tasted good, should we take it? Is it
the unpleasant food that makes the pleasant food good? I guess
that is a variation on a very old question. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: OPEN RANGE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Kevin Costner has returned to the western with a film
that has a lot of visual style but is damaged by a cliched and
overly familiar storyline. At times the storytelling is sluggish
with some scenes that just linger on and wear out their welcome.
The film has a long build to the gunfight every viewer knows is
coming, but it is worth waiting for. Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1
(-4 to +4)
We see fewer and fewer westerns these days, but as a genre the
western refuses to die. It is too popular a genre to go way
forever. And this season the western proves itself very much
alive with the release of OPEN RANGE. It is not a classic
western, as some are claiming, but it is worth seeing.
One of the standard plots of the Western is of the little so-
called wars that took place over the use of range land. It was
sheep men against cattlemen and free-grazers against homesteading
ranchers. Traditionally in films the homesteaders are portrayed
positively and the free-grazers associated with lawless elements.
They are drifters and rustlers. Not so in OPEN RANGE. While this
film has many cliches, that is not one of them. It is 1882 and
times are changing. Ranchers with title to land are replacing the
drifting free-grazers. The homesteaders don't want to have
strangers grazing their cattle on their land. OPEN RANGE makes
its heroes the free-grazers who are accustomed to grazing their
cattle where they want and recognizing no claims of ownership of
range lands. The villain wants to keep the free-grazers away from
his town and will run off or kill any free-grazers who come
around.
But cowmen with drifting herds are still common and "Boss"
Spearman (played by Robert Duvall) is one of them. Boss's main
hand is Charley Waite (Kevin Costner who also produced and
directed the film), who has worked for Boss for ten years. Then
he has the big friendly Mose (Abraham Benrubi) and the kid, Button
(Diego Luna).
We see little tensions among the men. Button cheats at cards, is
caught, and apologizes. Charley is not quick to forgive him.
Then Mose goes into the local town and just doesn't come back.
Boss and Charley go looking for him and find the town ruled by the
bully Denton Baxter (Michael Gambon). Baxter owns the town
Marshall (James Russo) and between him and a gang of enforcers,
Baxter has things pretty much his own way. He does not want free-
grazers around his town and perhaps wants to grab the Spearman
herd. Baxter's men have picked a fight and badly beaten Mose and
had the Marshall take him to jail. Boss and Charley spring Mose
and take him to the local doctor, but the fighting continues until
Boss and Charley are up against Baxter and his men. The town is
polarized. Some were sick of Baxter and were waiting for the
spark to move against him. Some still side with Baxter. The
viewer knows by experience with western films that this whole
situation can end only one way, with a gunfight.
This script by Craig Storper, based on the novel THE OPEN RANGE
MEN by Lauran Paine, develops an affectionate relationship between
the principled Boss Spearman and his chief hand. They kid each
other and work well together in a deep respect. Charley has a
dark past, but Boss knows to leave it alone. Few films want to
portray close male relationships for fear the relationship will be
misinterpreted as sexual. These men are good friends who know
each other well.
The plot of OPEN RANGE is one that is similar to many western
films of the 1940s and 1950s. You have the good guys just trying
to eke out a living and the bad guys bullying them and provoking a
fight. Many of the touches seem a little manipulative, like
having Baxter's boys kill Mose's dog. Nobody wants to see a dog
die. This is a dark film. It is dark visually and dark in tone.
In moments of the character's anger we hear thunder in the
background as storms are brewing. The tension in the characters
is matched by the tension in the weather as we see arks of
lightning in the sky. Like the buildup to the storm, this film
has a long buildup to a violent, if somewhat disorganized,
gunfight.
James Muro's camerawork keeps much of the film shrouded under
overcast skies. We see wide vistas under heavy, ominous clouds.
This keeps the color pallet limited and some scenes deliberately
under-lit. Frequently Muro and Costner have the screen fade to
black after a scene and allow a few seconds of pause, a style we
have not seen for a while. Some of the rain imagery seems a
direct homage to UNFORGIVEN, a film that has many of the same
themes. But if OPEN RANGE has to be imitative, UNFORGIVEN is a
good film to imitate. Still OPEN RANGE gives us more an homage to
the old westerns than an original new story. I rate it a 6 on the
0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Simon Worrall's THE POET AND THE MURDERER starts in Amherst,
Massachusetts (where I went to school at the University of
Massachusetts). Daniel Lombardo, as curator of the Jones Library
(the Amherst public library), buys a previously undiscovered Emily
Dickinson poem at an auction at Sotheby's. Then he starts to have
doubts as to its authenticity, and the story it flashes back to
Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, in a strange twist that ends up
incriminating a man who had forged Mormon Church documents and
eventually murdered two people to cover up his crimes.
These aren't "spoilers"--this is all true.
The story is, of course, fascinating. (If it doesn't seem
fascinating to you already, well, you could probably skip this
book.) My quibbles are that I'm not sure I completely trust
Worrall's research and statements. For example, Worrall describes
where Lombardo lived as "West Hampton." There's a Westhampton in
the Amherst area, but no "West Hampton." And it's not Interstate
95 that one takes to Amherst, but Interstate 91. Also, his
statements about the Mormon Church seem to indicate an anti-Mormon
bias that might have affected his approach. So when he comes down
very negatively on Sotheby's, I have to wonder if there may not be
another side to the story. Still, with that caveat, I would
recommend this book to all those who like books about books.
AFTER THE FACT: THE ART OF HISTORICAL DETECTION (Vol. 1) is also
about the sort of historical detection that Worrall was doing
(and, for that matter, the sort that Mark Hofmann had done to do
his forgeries). This volume has a prologue about selecting
evidence, using as its topic the death of an American diplomat
soon after the American Revolution. The seven sections that
follow (in the third edition) include a study of indentured
servitude and slavery in early Virginia, Jackson's frontier versus
Turner's, the "psychohistory" of John Brown, and the difficulties
in getting an accurate view of slavery through oral histories.
("Psychohistory" here refers to determining Brown's psychological
state, not the predictive science of Isaac Asimov's works.) Of
interest to historians (professional and amateur), I suspect this
book is a bit too dry for the general public. (And priced as a
textbook, it's also a bit expensive. I found it at the local
thrift shop.)
And tying in with the idea of historical evidence, I recently
watched the film TWELVE ANGRY MEN. If you are unfamiliar with the
film, you should see it, so I will not describe it too much. The
setting is a jury room for a trial where the verdict seems obvious
at first but .... What is interesting is that every time I watch
this now, it occurs to me that the same people who like this film
also have definite opinions of the O. J. Simpson trial which are
almost diametrically opposed to their views here. [-ecl]
(Let me say this about that. I like TWELVE ANGRY MEN a lot. It
was me who introduced Evelyn to the film in the first place. I am
sure the way that Reginald Rose wrote TWELVE ANGRY MEN, the pieces
of testimony in the trial were deliberately engineered to fall
apart on examination. The intention was not an indictment of the
judicial system but to contrive a situation that would show the
character of the twelve jurymen and the reasons these people do
what they do and believe what they do. The conclusions one might
draw from this one fabricated story may have nothing to do with
actual legal procedure and are not intended to. [-mrl])
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Tolerance is, of course, an extremely intolerant
idea, because it means "I am the boss: I will
allow you some, though not all, of the rights I
enjoy as long as you behave yourself according to
standards that I shall determine.
--Bernard Lewis
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