THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/06/10 -- Vol. 29, No. 6, Whole Number 1609
C3PO: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
R2D2: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups (NJ)
The Natural Irony (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
We Almost Lost Triceratops (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
SOUL KITCHEN (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
OLD-NEW LAND (ALTNEULAND) (letter of comment by Fred Lerner)
Mel Gibson, Connecting the Dots, Non-Profits, Scanning
Books, and Civil War poetry (letter of comment
by John Purcell)
Scanned Books (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
This Week's Reading (THE CUBS AND THE KABBALIST)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups (NJ)
August 12 (Thu): THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas
Adams, Middletown (NJ) Public Library, 2005 film at 5:30PM,
discussion of film and book after film
August 19 (Thu): THE SURVIVAL OF THE SICKEST by Sharon Moalem and
Jonathan Prince, Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 7PM
September 23 (Thu): THE DISPOSSESSED by Ursula K. LeGuin,
Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 7PM
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Natural Irony (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I saw a sign for a housing development. They have a nice natural
site--or rather what used to be a nice natural site. They cut down
the trees, dug up the grass, and built yet another housing
development. And what did they call it? Get this. The Preserve.
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: We Almost Lost Triceratops (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Most people I meet who are of a scientific frame of mind started
being interested in science when they were children, and most
learned pretty much the same science. I am not saying that someone
who is twenty learned the same facts as someone who is seventy, but
two people who are the same age learned pretty much the same
scientific facts as each other. If you are the same age you
learned the same things about space and the same things about
dinosaurs.
When I was a kid I thought of science as sacrosanct. To me science
was another word for Truth. But every once in a while science has
to change. At any given instant science is our best guess about
the world. It may soon be trumped by a better guess, but it is the
best guess at that instant. Those facts we learned as children may
no longer be true. When I was young we thought dinosaurs dragged
their tails on the ground. Today we know better. But there is
still some resistance when we find out that something we learned as
a fact is no longer our best guess. So what "facts" have I given
up?
First it was the Brontosaurus. Movies like DINOSAURUS! or the
original film of THE LOST WORLD had this thing called a
Brontosaurus. It had a long neck and a long tail. Technically
that made it a sauropod. It was one of the most popular dinosaurs.
It turned out the Brontosaurus was a chimera that resulted from
fossils getting mixed. What was supposed to be a Brontosaurus
skeleton was the head of a Camarasaurus on an Apatosaurus body.
There was no Brontosaurus. Oh well. Easy come. Easy go.
More recently there was the controversy over Pluto. Every good boy
can name the planets. And the list ends with Pluto. The technical
definition of a planet--a definition that might change with time--
includes the idea that a planet's gravitational force pulls the
debris out of its orbit. Pluto does not do that, so Pluto is only
a planetoid or a dwarf planet. This one got some real pushback.
People wanted there to be another new definition for planet
gerrymandered to allow Pluto to fit the definition. No, the
decision was made that Pluto is not really a full-fledged planet.
It is a dwarf planet. So it goes.
Well, get ready for one more. We could lose Triceratops. You know
Triceratops. That is the dinosaur with three horns, two on its
forehead and one on its nose, and a big boney frill at the base of
its skull. This was a popular one. I think it was the film THE
ANIMAL WORLD that showed that this herbivore was mean enough to
actually take down a predatory Tyrannosaurus. That is real kip.
There were a bunch of similar-looking dinosaurs. It was a whole
family of dinosaur species. One beastie that looks somewhat
similar was the Torosaurus. Its horns pointed different ways and
its frill had large holes in it. It was thought to be a close
relative of the Triceratops. Well, it turns out it is a closer
relative than had been previously thought. It might even be called
a parent. With more specimens to study it seems that Triceratops
are juveniles who are Torosauri when they grow up.
John Scannella and Jack Horner at the University of Montana have
been taking a closer look at Triceratops fossils and all
indications are that a Torosaurus is what a Triceratops grows up to
be. They are not two related species; they are a single species
seen at two different stages of its development. So are we losing
Triceratops as a dinosaur? After all you name an animal for its
adult form, not its immature form. On the other hand a lot of
people know Triceratops was the animal just like they knew Pluto
was a planet. Torosaurus is much less a super-star.
What right now seems likely is that paleontologists do not want to
risk the kind of brouhaha that astronomers had with reclassifying
Pluto. It looks at the moment like the whole species will be
called Triceratops. That will probably keep the controversy down
momentarily. People will not feel they are losing Triceratops.
But I wonder if some may say that they know--and we all know--what
Triceratops is. This whole other thing does not fit our conception
of Triceratops. It is sort of a perversion of the idea of a
Triceratops to call it a Torosaurus one. Perhaps what is needed is
a Defense of Triceratops Act so that we can continue to have some
control over just what the word Triceratops means. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: A two-lesbian-parent family is functional and stable until
the children decide to meet the donor-father they share but have
never seen. Meeting him upsets the dynamics of the family. What
starts as a comedy about unconventional family relationships turns
into a drama with ironically more conventional relationships.
Annette Bening, Juliette Moore, and Mark Ruffalo star. Rating:
high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
Spoiler Warning: there are hints here of some of the plot
complications.
Nic and Jules (played by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) are the
same-sex parents of a family of four. Daughter Joni (Mia
Wasikowska). 18, and son Laser (Josh Hutcherson of BRIDGE TO
TERABITHIA), 15, have always been curious about the sperm-donor who
was apparently the father of both. Joni is old enough to be
allowed to make contact with the father and Laser convinces her to
do so. That was how the kids met Paul (Mark Ruffalo)--a co-op
farmer and restaurant-owner. Eventually all five get together over
a table. The conversations are uncomfortable and awkward. People
will start to say what they think and then pull back. Eventually
it becomes clear that Nic has been the surrogate father to the
family. She does not welcome the children's attention to a
potential second father, a male one, who might unseat her. The
presence of the children's real father strains and redefines all
relationships.
Lisa Cholodenko directs from an original screenplay she wrote with
Stuart Blumberg. In a year in which films seem mostly lacking in
any character depth we get five complex portraits of different
people. The film never passes judgment, positive or negative, on
the lesbian relationship at the center of the film. It just simply
accepts it and moves on. It would have been easy to make Paul a
saint or a bounder. He is neither the savior nor the destroyer of
the family relationships, though his presence brings to the surface
some of the weaknesses of the family. It is a curious touch that
both Jules and Nic have androgynous, if not male names. The dialog
is particularly good at defining Choldenko's characters. There is
a curious structure to the screenplay. Nic and Jules is each
interrupted during sex and has to cover it. Also most of the
important conversations take place over a table.
Nic and Jules, with obvious similarities, are still opposite types.
Nic is a doctor and formally chooses to be in a position of
authority. Nic is earthy and maybe a little New Age-ish. Together
they constitute a familiar ying-and-yang bond. While the
relationships seems that they would be different because of the
nature of the parents, things seem to fall into more conventional
and traditional situations. Nic could almost be a male father to
the family and Paul could be Jules's first husband. Paul has his
professional life together, but emotionally he is aimless. He has
a fling with the manager of his restaurant, but eventually it is
clear that it means little to him. Joni and Laser each comes under
the influence of friends trying to pull them in directions they are
not sure of. Laser's friend is macho and a little unsavory.
Joni's best friend is fascinated by sex. Joni and Laser are each
more mature than his/her friend.
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT was made for a minimal five million dollars;
it has no special effects, is not shot in 3D, and no cars were
damaged in the making of this film. With some fairly deep drama it
is very uncharacteristic of the films of 2010. It may even remain
memorable after the December flood of Oscar hopefuls. It has some
of the best writing you will find this year. I rate it a high +2
on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10. It should be noted that in the
words of the MPAA, "Rated R for strong sexual content, nudity,
language and some teen drug and alcohol use."
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0842926/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10012141-kids_are_all_right/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: SOUL KITCHEN (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The ups and downs of a restaurant in Hamburg are the
subject of this comedy directed by Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih
Akin. The Greek-German owner of the restaurant neither knows what
to do with the restaurant or his life. Balancing his friends, his
delinquent brother, his customers and his girlfriend gives him more
than he can handle and gives us the texture of multi-cultural
Germany. This film is frequently likable but is never really
intriguing. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
Zinos Kazantsakis (Adam Bousdoukos), a German-Greek living in
Hamburg, runs Soul Kitchen, an unpretentious restaurant serving
German lowbrow favorites like fish sticks, pizza, and schnitzel.
These are basically all just heat-and-serve dishes. In addition to
running the restaurant, he has a brother and friends who are more
trouble than they are worth. His brother Illias (Moritz
Bleibtreu), recently returned from prison on parole, is turning to
robbery to support his rock band. His girlfriend Nadine (Monica
Bleibtreu) is moving to Shanghai for an extended stay in her job as
a foreign correspondent.
In the middle of this upheaval Zinos gives himself a back injury
that will get in the way of him cooking. He brings in a new chef
who wants to turn the menu highbrow, though the clientele still
want their pizza and schnitzel. Chef Shayne (Birol Ünel), can take
fish and chips and rearrange it so that it looks like something
from a fancy haute cuisine restaurant. Soon Zinos is getting
customers who want the very fancy dishes that Shayne can create.
But this group does not seem to go with his brother's rock band.
Zinos finds himself being pulled in several directions and several
subplots work themselves out, perhaps a little too conveniently at
times. In the back of Zinos's mind are always his tax problems and
getting the restaurant going, but the script keeps several plots
running at the same time. Will the restaurant go back to plain
fare, turn into a music club, or be a nouvelle cuisine upscale
restaurant? Or will it be taken by the Tax Office?
Director and co-writer Fatih Akin won awards including the Cannes
Film Festival best screenplay award for his 2007 THE EDGE OF
HEAVEN. That film was reputedly a very serious effort. While one
would not call SOUL KITCHEN a lightweight film, it is a comedy with
generally lighter moments. Akin keeps the pace up except when the
film stops for a piece of party music. But none of the plot lines
is ultimately totally satisfying. Some are downright predictable
or clichéd. It is hard to feel much for anyone in the film but
perhaps Zinos. Many of the gag situations do not go anywhere.
When the chef puts aphrodisiac in the food the club has one night
of being steamy, but there later seems to be little effect or even
mention of the odd night at the restaurant. Toward the end the
script starts feeling contrived. Akin knows where he wants the
story to go, but it is a long way from there too near the end. One
can too much see his fingerprints on the plot from pushing it
toward the ending he wants.
There are endearing moments in this German-language film, but it
feels like with a little more direction it could have been more
than it is. Do stay for the closing credits. I rate SOUL KITCHEN
a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10. SOUL KITCHEN will be
released to theaters on August 20.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1244668/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kitchen-party1997/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: OLD-NEW LAND (ALTNEULAND) (letter of comment by Fred Lerner)
In response to Evelyn's comments on OLD-NEW LAND in the 07/30/10
Issue of the MT VOID, Fred Lerner writes, "You didn't mention my
favorite scene in ALTNEULAND--the ones in which the viewpoint
characters, visitors to this Zionist utopia, are taken to a school
and marvel at the ability of the children to count to ten in
Hebrew. For in this Zionist utopia, the everyday language, like the
rest of the nation's culture is--German." [-fl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Mel Gibson, Connecting the Dots, Non-Profits, Scanning
Books, and Civil War Poetry (letter of comment by John Purcell)
In response to the 07/30/10 issue of the MT VOID, John Purcell
writes:
If you haven't heard about what's recently wriggled up under Mel
Gibson's kilt, you really shouldn't concern yourself. It's pretty
stupid, and just another example of modern America's obsession with
celebrity. Like you, I could care less. But we have teenagers at
home, so Valerie and I absorb loads of drivel through cultural
osmosis. It's much more dangerous than pet dander, you should know.
At least you can do something about cat and dog dander. The
stupidity of the masses--well, that's another matter entirely.
You are absolutely right, Mark, about modern security needing to be
able to "connect the dots" more effectively in order to deter
terrorist threats. With so many entry and exit points in this
country, to say nothing about how the Internet contributes to
terrorism, this is a very tall order, so sorting through the chaff
to find that proverbial needle in the haystack is getting harder to
do every year. None of us cares to see Big Brother become reality
more than it has already, but intelligence gathering must be one of
the most unglorified and tedious jobs in existence. The fact that
they can nail anybody nowadays says something about their
abilities. It is definitely a tough job.
Say, do you think teaching at a Community College in Texas is
considered working for a non-profit organization? Just a thought.
I think Bill Higgins just stumbled upon this year's best seller.
Just wait until that book comes out in a movie next year. Betcha
it stars Jake Gyllenhall as delta d sub phi, and his romantic
love/hate interest is a space alien Mata Hari-type spy named
"oji'" played by Britney Spears. Run--now--for your lives, people,
while you still have feet that work!
I own a copy of Herman Melville's Civil War poetry book, BATTLE
PIECES, in my office at school. Some of the poems are definitely
romanticized, but many are rather effective. Haven't read all of
them, but it would make a good companion volume to Paul Negri's
CIVIL WAR POETRY: AN ANTHOLOGY. Judging by the review, it would
best be purchased from a used book store. [-jp]
And Mark comments:
I chose the example of Mel Gibson because it was topical at the
moment, but it is really scandal-sheet material. We do not follow
Gibson news all that anxiously.
The task of "connecting the dots" to bring together related
pieces of intelligence is probably NP-complete. There is no good
way to find all pieces of data relevant to each other on a given
issue and even if you bring two ideas together it take some
interpretation to decide if they are relevant to each other.
Though I hate to say it, it seems what you need to do is hire
people who have good intuition on top of experience.
I hate to admit that I really don't understand something so
basic, but I still am not sure I understand the distinction
between a for-profit organization vs. a non-profit organization.
If you pay the managers and staff of an organization, they are
making money from what they are doing. Isn't that money a
profit? It is not being plowed back into the organization, it is
being given to the people who run the organization. I am sure
you are not just volunteering your time to the college.
Readers interested to see more of the Melville Battle Pieces can
find some of the pieces at http://tinyurl.com/24x7ou7.
The poem "The Portent" gave the name to a chapter in Ken Burns's
THE CIVIL WAR: the chapter about John Brown was entitled "The
Meteor".
Ray Bradbury warns that we are still headed toward the world he
described in FAHRENHEIT 451. I am unconvinced. It took me five
minutes to find BATTLE PIECES on line. I wonder how much time it
would have taken to find a copy in 1953 when the book FAHRENHEIT
451 was published. -mrl]
And Evelyn notes, "Negri's book is a 'Dover Thrift Edition' with a
cover price of $2.50, so it's not clear that it would be a whole
lot cheaper in a used book store." [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Scanned Books (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
In response to Bill Higgins's blog comments on scanned books in the
07/30/10 issue of the MT VOID, Kip Williams writes:
Sadly, there are plenty of books that are about as bad as the
"worst excuse for a book" that Bill Higgins mentions. I'll agree
that munging mathematical expressions is pretty grave and renders a
math book pretty valueless, but they manage to do almost as much to
ruin books in other fields.
In fiction, the constant running menagerie of strange typographical
characters that used to be members of the set of 26 letters and 10
digits (that shouldn't be so damn hard to figure out) make insane
hash of great literary masterpieces.
Scholarly books go into convulsions at the introduction of italics,
and each footnote brings a seismic crash that sends ripples out for
the next page or two, with broken paragraphs randomly interposed
between words of a sentence.
A book that was in columns simply turns into word soup.
The laudable aim of including illustrations (I'm looking at a free
download of ALICE IN WONDERLAND now) causes the interposition of
entire scanned pages in the midst of OCR text. This can really
throw off the rhythm when I'm reading my daughter to sleep.
The list can go on. Parentheses drive OCR crazy. Any character
can end up being substituted for any other. The worst offenders
are at archive.org, and the best-groomed free books are at Project
Gutenberg, which has volunteers proofing stuff for them. Let the
reader beware. [-kw]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE CUBS AND THE KABBALIST by Byron L. Sherwin (ISBN 978-0-976-
48740-1) is okay, I suppose, but had a few problems. First of all,
the story involves a lot of Jewish ritual and so on. Now, when
someone write a book that involves a Catholic mass, she doesn't
usually explain everything to the reader--she assume that either he
already understands it, or that he will figure it out on his own.
But all too often, an author writing about Jewish rituals feels
obliged to explain it all in infodumps. And so it is with Sherwin.
In fact, he is so thorough (obsessive?) in explaining that at one
point Rabbi Jay Loeb (his main character) explains to his *Jewish*
guest the meaning of Succoth, the sukkah, and everything else.
Connected to this (call it first-and-a-halfly), Sherwin also has
massive infodumps of baseball history.
Secondly, Sherwin seems to have an agenda similar to other Jewish-
oriented science fiction or fantasy (e.g., PLANET OF THE JEWS), in
that it is not just about the magic but about becoming more
religious. In THE CUBS AND THE KABBALIST, the rabbi does perform
some "magical" rituals, but he also insists that the players must
repent of their sins, give more to charity, etc.
And lastly--and this is true of a lot of authors--Sherwin is a bit
sloppy with details. He needs to have someone who has no
identification get from Chicago to New York. He apparently
recognizes this is a problem, but then just says, "Luckily, none of
the airline personnel asked Greenberg for a photo ID, as he didn't
have one." Even if he is a well-known sports figure, I cannot
imagine the staff at O'Hare would just let the ID requirement
slide. Sherwin also seems to think that the mayor of Chicago can
proclaim a city-wide day of prayer for the Cubs (First Amendment,
anyone?), and what's more, get *all* the religions to agree to it.
(Oh, and the subtitle of the book--plastered across the cover--
gives away the ending. That is, of course, assuming there was ever
any doubt about it.)
On the whole, then, this is probably of some interest to Jewish
Cubs fans, but they will find a lot of unnecessary explanations
(sort of like if in a current science fiction novel about space
exploration the author felt it had to explain gravity and a
detailed history of the space program). I suppose a really diehard
non-Jewish Cubs fan might enjoy it and find the Jewish explanations
useful, but I doubt a Jewish non-fan would find it at all
interesting.
Interestingly, at just about the same time (late 2005/early 2006)
Harper Scott's book HOW I HELPED THE CHICAGO CUBS (FINALLY!) WIN
THE WORLD SERIES. I haven't read this; the reviews seem more
negative than those of Sherwin's book. The synchronicity may have
been because of the 2003 incident where the Cubs' almost guaranteed
pennant win was taken from them by, of all people, a Cubs fan who
interfered with the ball in an attempt to catch it. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Playing golf is like chasing a quinine pill
around a cow pasture.
--Winston Churchill