THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/30/10 -- Vol. 29, No. 5, Whole Number 1608
C3PO: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
R2D2: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Instant Communication? (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Connecting the Dots (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The IRS and Non-Profit Organizations (public service
announcement)
THE STONE TAPE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
COLIN FITZ LIVES! (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
The Worst Excuse for a Book I've Ever Seen (link to
blog entry by Bill Higgins)
NOTHING TO ENVY (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
This Week's Reading (CIVIL WAR POETRY: AN ANTHOLOGY and
OLD-NEW LAND (ALTNEULAND)) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Instant Communication? (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Evelyn tends to ask me if I have heard the latest about such and
such. Have I heard the latest about Mel Gibson--that sort of
thing. It always bothers me. How could I possibly know whether I
have or not? [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Connecting the Dots (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Back last Christmas there was a terrorist attempt on a plane when
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab--the so-called "underwear bomber"--
managed to get aboard an airplane and very nearly set off a bomb.
He was stopped only by other passengers seeing what he was doing
and preventing his success. This was nine years after September
11 and people would have thought that by this time, after years of
having a department of Homeland Security and putting up with
security checks at airports, that we should have been able to
intercept Abdulmutallab. Certainly he should have been caught
before he even boarded a plane. Secretary of Homeland Security
Janet Napolitano met with national derision when she claimed this
was an example of the "system working". A system that called for
passengers to wrestle a man with a bomb does not seem like an
example of the system "working".
There was a great national expression of dissatisfaction with our
intelligence agencies that had failed to recognize the danger from
this radical. The government had a pretty damning collection of
information bits about the bomber. They just had not coordinated
the information. They had not "connected the dots." I suppose I
agree with the critics, but I also wondered just what was involved
in the connecting-dots task. There may well be a whole dimension
to this problem that most people do not think about.
In hindsight it seems obvious that the facts about Abdulmutallab
should have raised alarms, but that is after these specific clues
are pointed out and brought together. Having in one place just
precisely the damning pieces of information and looking only at
them, the danger is obvious. But drawing that conclusion is just
the last and possibly easiest step. The really tough work is to
start with multiple haystacks of collected observations and pull
out just exactly the important needles. That part of the task is
not one that gets a lot of attention.
In a Sherlock Holmes story we see how "the world's greatest
consulting detective" draws conclusions from clues nobody else
would have noticed. What Conan Doyle never describes--and perhaps
never even thought about--is how does Holmes know that gray clay on
a boot is an important fact. At the same time he must decide that
the fact Sir Hugo had fish for lunch and that the dog is lame in
the left hind foot, and that a wasp has flown into the house are
all non-useful facts. Holmes would have to be awash in useless
observations that are never destined to be of any value. He just
manages to coordinate all this data to pull out the most important
facts.
Ever notice that when the CSI team finds a clue at the crime scene,
that clue is vitally important in the solution of the crime. They
must find hundreds of bits of potential evidence that are never
useful. In real life sometimes a cigar stub found at the scene of
a crime is just a cigar stub found at the scene of a crime.
However, the TV program has to fit in an hour slot so they cannot
show all the false leads and useless pieces of evidence. And even
if they could it would be a real bore for the audience.
A lot of police work is not very sophisticated. It is like "Joe
says Sam did it. You catch Sam with the gun and he confesses."
That is barely any detective work. But anti-terrorist detective
work probably is rarely that easy. Even if you have all the data
collected in a single database--a huge mosaic of disparate facts--
what indices into that data do you have? You can index in by
"name", but little else you have is that constant. Even "name"
gets changed, I suspect. Put on top of all this inter-agency
rivalries. If the CIA has been outshining the FBI for the last
year or so the FBI is going to find it in their best interests to
be less cooperative.
Having intelligence data is only the first step. And drawing a
conclusion from the right set of facts is only the last step. But
in between there is the task of bringing the right facts together.
Computer analysis can of course be a powerful tool in that search
process, but computers also make it possible to collect much more
data which makes it even harder to connect the dots. You have a
race between accelerating rates of collecting data and perhaps
faster algorithms to analyze that data. It is not clear which is
winning that race. But I strongly suspect that connecting the dots
is getting harder year-by-year. And that could make it harder for
the right facts to come together. I can understand why
intelligence agencies would have a hard time "connecting the dots."
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: The IRS and Non-Profit Organizations (public service
announcement)
I received the following info on a mailing list I'm on: "There had
been some discussion earlier about groups losing their 501(c)(3)
status because of the new filing requirements. The IRS has just
announced a one-time extension, along with a list of everybody
losing their exemption. See
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id"5959,00.html.
This is verified; the IRS page says:
"Tax-exempt organizations that do not satisfy annual filing
requirements for three consecutive years automatically lose their
tax-exempt status. The IRS is providing one-time relief for such
organizations that have filing due dates on or after May 17 and
before October 15, 2010. The list includes organizations for which
the IRS does not have a record of a required annual filing for 2007
and 2008, and whose 2009 return, due on or after May 17 and before
October 15, 2010, has not yet been received."
If you are involved in any non-profit organizations, you might want
to check that they are not on the list of not-yet-compliant groups
that the IRS has on their site. (There is a list for each state
that can be sorted by town, which helps.) [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE STONE TAPE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Nigel Kneale combines science fiction and the supernatural
again in this 1972 story of cutting-edge electronics research
laboratory haunted by a ghost. At one time Kneale was a font of
new ideas, but this play is mostly a reworking of some of the ideas
from the much superior QUATERMASS AND THE PIT. Still the narrative
is tense and at times unnerving. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or
6/10
Spoiler: The review will be followed by a spoiler discussing Nigel
Kneale's idea.
One of the most respected names in British movie and TV science
fiction is Nigel Kneale. Kneale wrote some of the best BBC science
fiction of the 1950s to 1970s. His calling card was his adaptation
of George Orwell's 1984, a broadcast that caused nationwide
controversy in Britain. But Kneale was best known for four stories
involving rocket scientist Bernard Quatermass. He wrote three
Quatermass television plays for the BBC in the 1950s. A fourth TV
play was produced in 1978. Kneale wrote a handful of other plays
for the BBC in the 1970s, including THE STONE TAPE.
Ryan, an electronics research corporation, has renovated an old
building into an advanced electronics facility. Taskerland, as the
estate is called, is a renovated Victorian building on a foundation
going back to Saxon times. The Ryan group hopes to leapfrog the
Japanese competition by developing a new recording medium with
greater capacity than anything previously available. On the team
is just one woman, Jill Greeley (played by Jane Asher). She seems
very unnerved from the very beginning when she and her car is
almost crushed between two large lorries. But she remains
distraught for reasons not immediately explained. She seems
sensitive to something ominous in the building. She is drawn to a
chamber that predates the 20th century and there she finds a
screaming ghost. She has trouble convincing the other developers
but soon they too are experiencing the screaming ghost. When the
scientific team can no longer doubt the existence of the ghost they
decide to investigate it as a scientific phenomenon. And a
scientific phenomenon is indeed what the ghosts turn out to be.
The style of the Quatermass plays is somewhat slow and talky by
today's standards. They are stories with ideas, and ideas need to
be discussed. THE STONE TAPE has the same style, though perhaps
because I saw it several years after the Quatermass stories, the
slow pacing is more apparent. The BBC had small special effects
budgets so rather than showing a lot of what is going on, it is
discussed by the characters. The same tight budgets make the
cutting edge research laboratory seem a little sparse.
The casting of Jane Asher as Jill is an interesting trivia point:
in the Hammer Films version of THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT (called
THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT [sic] in Britain and THE CREEPING UNKNOWN
in the United States), Jane Asher played a little girl whose tea
party for her dolls is interrupted by the presence of something
alien. More recently she was in the comedy DEATH AT A FUNERAL.
Her discomfort with everything that is happening is intriguing at
first, but becomes tiresome as the play proceeds. As with
QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, a woman seems the most sensitive person to
the ambient supernatural influences. In both cases the woman seems
mysteriously possessed. Her acting could have been taken down a
notch or two without damaging the production. But in fact, as in
QUATERMASS AND THE PIT the forces strike out and affect the minds
of everyone in reach. Directing is Peter Sasdy, who directed a lot
of horror at about the same time including a few films for Hammer
Films in their late heyday.
After many years of trying to find videos of this play, seeing the
real thing is something of a letdown. It is good and without
having seen QUATERMASS AND THE PIT it would be better. But the
earlier play glories in more and richer ideas. This play is now
quite as high in quality. I rate THE STONE TAPE a high +1 on the
-4 to +4 scale or 6/10. The DVD was apparently at one time
available from Sinister Cinema Amazon.
Spoiler... Spoiler...
As I said this play's idea does not work as well as the idea in
QUATERMASS AND THE PIT. It is not quite clear what causes an event
to be recorded. There are decades worth of material that could be
recorded, but why is it so dramatic a moment. For that matter, why
is it even a human moment that is recorded? Kneale's idea is
somewhat overly anthropocentric. There is no reason why a human
would be more likely to be recorded than, say, a horse. One also
feels that the number and location of ghost sightings does not
support Kneale's hypothesis.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069316/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: COLIN FITZ LIVES! (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Two security guards have to spend the night in a cemetery
protecting the grave of a rock-and-roll icon on the anniversary of
the star's death. This amiable comedy was made in 1997 and won
awards at film festivals but was never given a wide release.
Sundance Selects has now released the film to Video on Demand.
There is nothing remarkable in the plotting and not a whole lot
that is unexpected, but the film entertains as it builds its
characters. Robert Bella directs the script by Tom Morrissey. The
best part is the frequent fan interviews on the meaning of the
great Colin Fitz and really the influence of mass media on people's
lives. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
[The fictional] Colin Fitz was the voice of his generation. His
rock music was loved by millions of people. People who actually
knew him knew he was something of a jerk, but his music is what
people remember him for and in the five years since he has been
dead his legend has only grown. Tomorrow will be five years since
his death. Every year since he died there has been trouble in the
cemetery around his grave. The fans cannot stay away. This year
Colin Fitz's widow, Justice Fitz (played by Julianne Phillips), has
hired a security company to guard the grave. Two guards have been
picked to stay by the grave and protect it. The two guards are the
mismatched pair of the meticulous Paul (Matt McGrath) and Woody-
Harrelson-like Grady (Andy Fowle). Paul is new to the company and
sort of highbrow. He listens to poetry on his Walkman and drinks
bottled water. He tries to do everything exactly by the rules.
Grady sees the night as a chance to party at time-and-a-half. He
plans to buy a cache of beer and munchies and have a good time all
night. As the night passes the mismatched odd-couple guards talk
to each other discussing religion, celebrity, music, life, death,
and the state of the world. They swap urban legends, which, of
course, Grady fully believes and most of which involve the
mysterious Colin Fitz. Throughout the night fans making the
pilgrimage to the grave show up and make life difficult for Paul
and Grady. Though the film follows a familiar route for a buddy
picture, the characters are well developed.
Intercut with the main action are interviews with often-clueless
fans on what Colin Fitz meant to them. The fans have an almost
religious devotion to the last rock star. Stories get told about a
multiple suicide of ardent fans, and there are supernatural Colin
Fitz stories as well. One fan opines that if everybody got into
Colin Fitz that there would be no more fighting between the Jews
and the Israelis. Some fans believe he is still alive and others
expect him to return from the dead. The mosaic forms a picture of
Fitz reminiscent of both SWEET AND LOWDOWN and THIS IS SPINAL TAP.
The supporting cast is fine and includes William H. Macy, Martha
Plimpton, and John C. McGinley.
The film is underscored by constant rock music, purportedly the
music of Colin Fitz. It helps to maintain the footage and is even
credited to Colin Fitz in the closing credits.
Robert Bella has given us a likable film with the accent on the
writing, something all too rare these days. I give COLIN FITZ
LIVES! a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
COLIN FITZ LIVES! was made in 1997, but never got a general
release. In 1997 it played at film festivals winning awards from
the Austin Film Festival, the Long Island Film Festival, and
WorldFest Houston. COLIN FITZ LIVES! is being released by Sundance
Selects for Video On Demand on Comcast, Cox, Cablevision, and Time
Warner where it will be available in August, 2010.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118873/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Worst Excuse for a Book I've Ever Seen (link to blog
entry by Bill Higgins)
As Bill describes it:
Here's what happened: Someone scanned the 1912 book. Someone ran
optical character recognition (OCR) software on the scanned images,
which results in a lengthy string of characters. General Books
obtained the OCR output file. They offered it for sale as a print-
on-demand book for thirty bucks or so.
When naively applied to the sort of mathematics Professor Schott
was writing, OCR does not work very well. In Equation 260,
"delta d sub phi equals" becomes js 7
"two lambda double-dot prime" becomes 2a,"
"minus omega mu dot prime" becomes oji'
"plus" becomes + (the only thing correct so far)
Page 134 of the General Books edition is, in fact, useless
gibberish.
The entire book is useless gibberish. It's the worst excuse for a
book I've ever seen.
[-wh]
[Full text--with pictures--is available at
http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/154567.html.]
==================================================================
TOPIC: NOTHING TO ENVY (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
In response to Evelyn's comments on NOTHING TO ENVY in the 07/23/10
issue of the MT VOID, Kip Williams writes:
I remember being told by one of my German teachers that in Berlin,
the Easterners could receive TV broadcasts from the West side--the
West (if I don't have this backwards) had PAL system, and the East
had SECAM, and though the color signal didn't come across, users of
SECAM sets could watch such shows as DALLAS and DYNASTY, and envy
the lifestyle of those horrid people.
By the time the Berlin wall actually fell, we'd moved two more
times, but I always wondered how much the ability to see those
broadcasts had motivated the Easterners to be free, and eventually
to reunite Germany. [-kw]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
CIVIL WAR POETRY: AN ANTHOLOGY edited by Paul Negri (ISBN
978-0-486-29883-2) is a typical "Dover Thrift Edition": everything
is in the public domain, and the paper and binding are fairly basic
(though I think all Dover Books are on acid-free paper). It is not
as good an anthology as WORLD WAR ONE BRITISH POETS (ISBN 978-0-
486-29568-8), probably because the 19th century style often seems
more trite and less sophisticated than the 20th century one. It
certainly seems as though 19th century poets "cheated" more on
rhyme and scansion, although the fact that by the 20th century many
poets abandoned them altogether saved the latter from the necessity
of cheating. (Walt Whitman abandoned them even earlier.) In
"Boston Hymn", Ralph Waldo Emerson attempts to rhyme "seas" and
"fleece". In "Barbara Frietchie", John Greenleaf Whittier has the
verse: Fair as the garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde.
These don't even have the same number of syllables, let alone the
same meter.
OLD-NEW LAND (ALTNEULAND) by Theodor Herzl (translated by Lotta
Levensohn) (ISBN-10 0-910129-61-4) is a typical utopian novel of
the sort that was popular towards the end of the 19th century. The
utopian society is being set up in Palestine by Jews, but that is
really peripheral to the utopian aspects. The only relevance that
the Jewishness of the project has is that the founders use the
anti-Semitism of Europe to encourage Jews to emigrate and
Christians to support them in doing so. In retrospect, this seems
very bizarre--sort of like using the racism of the mid-20th Century
American South to get all the blacks to emigrate to Africa.
And this is a fairly apt parallel, because one of the projects this
utopia is working on is an anti-malarial drug so that the blacks in
America can be encouraged to emigrate back to Africa--but even that
only as a side effect of "opening up of Africa." One scientist
says, "The white colonist goes under in Africa. That country can
be opened up to civilization only after malaria has been subdued.
Only then will enormous areas become available for the surplus
populations of Europe." While it is true that at the time Herzl
wrote this book, there was a strong "Back-to-Africa" movement, it
was not intended as a side effect of bringing millions of white
colonists there. Now this reads as the worst sort of condescension
and paternalism. Herzl also vastly underestimates the difficulties
caused by the influx of millions of Jews into Palestine, and their
project to acquire all the land. (Then again, all utopian novels
seem to gloss over the areas that people think would cause the most
problems.)
Some things never change, though: "The [younger generation] were
really only a kind of superior proletariat, victims of a viewpoint
that had dominated middle-class Jews twenty or thirty years before:
the sons must not be what the fathers had been. They were to be
freed from the hardships of trade and commerce. And so the younger
generation entered the 'liberal' professions en masse. The result
was an unfortunate surplus of trained men who could find no work,
but were at the same time spoiled for a modest way of life."
My edition of this book is also annotated with comparisons to the
actual situation in Palestine at the time of the translation.
However, since the translation was made in 1941, the comments are
somewhat out-of-date. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
The one serious conviction that a man should have
is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
-- Samuel Butler