THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
05/18/12 -- Vol. 30, No. 47, Whole Number 1702
George Jetson: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Jane Jetson: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Good News (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Angry Men (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Pop Culture and Classical Music (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
How Accurate Are Holocaust Films? (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
The Measure of A Man--The Mentalist Revisited
(television review by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
EMBASSYTOWN by China Mieville (book review by Joe Karpierz)
NORMAN MAILER THE AMERICAN (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
A UNIVERSE FROM NOTHING by Lawrence Krauss (book review
by Greg Frederick)
3D, THE AVENGERS, and 1701 (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
This Week's Reading (WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM and
MURDER IN THE PLACE OF ANUBIS) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Good News (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Good news! Archaeologists in Guatemala have found calendars that
go "thousands of years into the past and future." This would seem
to deny the notion that Mayan calendars end on Dec. 21 (or 23),
2012. See: http://tinyurl.com/void-mayans. [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Angry Men (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I hear the Fox Network is bankrolling a film remake of TWELVE ANGRY
MEN. In his version at the beginning eleven liberal jurors want to
vote the man on trial "not guilty" and one conservative juror is
voting "guilty". [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Pop Culture and Classical Music (comments by Evelyn C.
Leeper)
The good news about kids today knowing nothing about the pop
culture of our generation is that Rossini's "William Tell Overture"
may actually become recognized as that, rather than as the "Lone
Ranger" theme, and Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" will not
immediately bring to mind the words "This is the cereal that's shot
from guns." [-ecl]
[And the bad news is that the issue will not even come up. Most
kids today have never heard Rossini or Tchaikovsky. "Lone Ranger?
Is that a Janelle Monae song?" -mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: How Accurate Are Holocaust Films? (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
A panel I attended a few years ago was discussing a somber
question. Of all the holocausts and racial and ethnic cleansings
that have gone on in history, why do we pay so much attention to
the Nazi Holocaust of the 1930s and 1940s? Why is it that there
are so many more films for example made about that one event? What
makes it unique? Rare is the year that goes by that there is not a
new film on the subject. That was the question being discussed.
People were saying that it had to come along in a time when there
was film to record it. But that did not really explain why the
Serbian ethnic cleansing in the breakup of Yugoslavia did is not
better covered. There are a few good films about the Rwanda
genocide, but not all that many.
My answer was that no holocaust should go unremembered lest it
happen again. But that this particular holocaust, the Nazi one,
was the only one so far that affected so many eloquent people. It
happened to people who could communicate some of the horror of what
happened. Film is one of the best media for teaching about the
Holocaust, but you also need talented people to make the films.
Now coincidentally I am involved in a conversation about
communication of the experience, about the worst that humans create
for other humans, through movies.
That exchange came back to me when I received the following piece
of mail. I thought my response might make for interesting reading.
Admittedly the subject is unpleasant, but I will try not to be
unpleasant. This is the mail I received:
==
Hi Mark,
I am currently writing my dissertation for my history degree, it is
about whether SCHINDLER'S LIST, THE PIANIST and ESCAPE FROM
SOBIBOR, show an in-depth to what the Holocaust was actually like
[sic]. I have just read your review on THE PIANIST, which I think
is a very accurate review! Briefly to sum my arguments up, I have
stated that although Spielberg portrays the atrocities of the Jews,
he does not show an in-depth [view of] the Holocaust, as I have
sources from survivors from Krakow-Plazsow and Oskar's wife Emilie,
who all quoted that the truth was much worse than the film.
However due to Polanski surviving the Holocaust and using
Szpilman's account, do you believe Polanski depicted the Holocaust
as it was in the sense of portraying to the audience the full
atrocities which the Jews were faced with in the Warsaw ghetto?
I would be very grateful to hear back from you, Thanks.
==
I gave my correspondent a short answer, but I would like to discuss
the issue in of cinematic depictions of the Holocaust in a little
more depth. (Side note: ironically I am writing this and
considering these issues on the afternoon before the coming of
Passover, the celebration of freedom and deliverance.)
Let me start with why visual representation Holocaust seems to fail
in most films. I don't think it is possible to convey the
Holocaust accurately in a live-action film. On a superficial level
you probably cannot even get an accurate physical representation of
the people. You would need to get actors who look emaciated like
the films we have seen of the victims. Even Computer Graphic
Imagery is not really ready to solve this problem. Just the idea
of introducing CGI is repellent. The people in these films seem
too healthy and whole. Every frame in the camps seemed ersatz in
the TV mini-series THE HOLOCAUST. I am thinking of scenes like a
somewhat robust-looking Fritz Weaver marching off to his death and
trying to be positive about it. It just did not work.
For practical reasons the vast majority of films I have seen on the
subject of the Holocaust were about the survivors. You cannot talk
to the non-survivor victims of the Holocaust. You can talk only to
survivors (and even that will not be possible much longer). Yes
the survivors certainly experienced the Holocaust. But they did at
some point realize that they had experienced the horror and it had
not defeated them. I would think that that would color their
attitudes and their remembrance of their entire experience. I have
seen few films about the majority who did not survive and so never
experienced the knowledge of surviving. I cannot believe the
experience of realizing you have survived does not impact your
memories. I guess it is like having cancer and dying from it is a
very different experience from having it and being cured. When you
remember it, you know it has a happy ending (for want of a better
term).
Of course there is no single Holocaust experience. The experience
of dying slowly of Typhus is very different from the experience of
a quick unexpected death, perhaps being shot. But there are
definitely films that show more authentic representations of the
experience.
As to THE PIANIST I think that Polanski did as good a job as he
could, having been there, albeit surviving. But he did not show
the worst of the Holocaust. Certainly THE PIANIST is far more
accurate a depiction than LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL or SEVEN BEAUTIES,
films that almost turn the experience into a kind of comic game.
In my opinion both of these films are reprehensible. As for
whether the full atrocities can be depicted on the screen, I just
doubt it. I liked the film THE PIANIST, but it is a story of a
Holocaust survivor, and such people were a small fraction of the
Holocaust victims. Szpilman had a hard time staying alive, but his
experience would have almost certainly been a lot worse in a
concentration camp. And he would have been unlikely to survive.
Similarly SCHINDLER'S LIST has the Holocaust as a background, but
the Schindler Jews had found a shelter and haven from what was
happening to most other European victims. ESCAPE FROM SOBIBOR's
title speaks for itself. It climaxes with this rousing mass escape
from the camp. The bleakest dramatic film on the subject that I
remember seeing was THE GREY ZONE, written and directed by, of all
people, Tim Blake Nelson. I think that it might be the most
accurate account. But I really think it is a case that there is no
cinematic substitute for the actual experience. That may not be
entirely a bad thing. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Measure of A Man--The Mentalist Revisited (television
review by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
You may have read my recent article [in the 03/30/12 issue of the
MT VOID]--"Hypnotized By the Mentalist"--a compendium of my
thoughts on THE MENTALIST. As my family continues to run through
the DVDs, I happened on an episode that I have missed on live TV,
and that is of special note. In my earlier article, I speculated
that Patrick Jane is, although not in any way supernatural or
superhuman, someone far out on the bell curve--a 1 in a billion
genius. In fact, in the season 1 episode "Red Tide" Jane informs a
rich, powerful man that "he has no superior." The direct meaning
of the statement is that Libson is not Jane's boss, but it seems
also to have a double meaning, literally stating that Jane "has no
superior." This episode occurs before #11, "Red John's Friends"
where Jane first begins to realize how capable a foe Red John
actually is, and perhaps to start to doubt that he, Jane, truly has
no superior.
In any case, episode #21, season 2, "18-5-4" was new to me, and is
especially interesting as it provides a yardstick for gauging just
how intelligent Jane really is. This episode is also of special
interest to SF fans as it is the only episode in the series (that I
am aware of) that is authentic SF, as opposed to a SF-flavored
story using the tropes of SF. "18-5-4" is also of special interest
since some of the characters are substantially derived from the
idea-space of William Gibson (NEUROMANCER and others) and Olaf
Stapledon (ODD JOHN).
In the story, Jane investigates the murder of Noah, a mathematical
genius found dead with one finger removed. It gradually evolves
the Noah, who graduated from high school at age 15 and obtained his
first college degree at age 17, had been working on some complex
problem. This leads to the investigation of Toman Bunting, a
master chess player whose puzzle store-fronts for a firm that
develops encryption technology for anyone who will pay for it.
Bunting has a female Asian bodyguard straight out of a Gibson
novel, and is so well connected that when arrested for a serious
crime, the state attorney general calls to tell Lisbon to let him
go.
Jane easily solves an interlocking chain puzzle Bunting describes
as hard, and starts a chess game with Bunting. Jane plays Bunting
throughout the episode while solving the crime, for the most part
without the usage of a chessboard. At the end of the episode Jane,
having defeated Bunting's schemes, tells him that it will be
checkmate in 3 more moves. This has double meaning, as Jane is also
telling Bunting that although Bunting may appear to have legal
options to pursue his goals, this will come to naught.
Bunting has hired three individuals--Noah, a Dutchman, and Oliver
McDaniel--to build a universal decryption device. Unlike in some
other MENTALIST episodes which feature a fantastic device that
later turns out not to work, the universal decryptor does really
work, and the struggle to control the device is the core of the
plot. The scenes involving Jane and Lison's initial interview with
McDaniel, in which they find him living in a mental hospital, echo
similar episodes in ODD JOHN, as well as provide a riff on DR. WHO.
Oliver McDaniel is a school chum of Noah's who finished college at
age sixteen, and grad school at age nineteen, and attempts to trick
Jane with a series of clever ploys. The net of all this is that
Jane easily out-thinks two certified mathematical geniuses, and one
self-appointed puzzle master, who if not a genius, is certainly
very smart. Jane may not have their mathematical background, but
his natural ability and training allows him to solve their puzzles
without great effort, while at the same time playing (and
apparently winning) a chess game with an apparently very good
player while not using a board, suggesting Jane operates at the
Grandmaster level at a minimum.
Jane often says that anyone can duplicate his feats of memory by
using the memory palace technique, and it is worth noting that in
1944 de Groot showed that chess masters do not have better memories
than ordinary mortals do. Instead, they rely on special techniques
and mental shortcuts to remember long sequences of moves, in a
fashion similar to the memory palace technique and also to a
technique called "chunking". However, as is well-known, playing
chess on a high level requires considerable raw intelligence as
well as much training, so Jane must have both, unless he is self-
taught in chess, which is certainly possible.
Jane has said that he never went to high school, and thus there is
no way to compare his abilities to those who have risen through the
academic ranks. However, it is worth taking a look at a short
quote about the famous mathematician John von Neuman's mental
abilities from the wiki article:
Von Neumann had a photographic memory. Herman Goldstine writes:
"One of his remarkable abilities was his power of absolute recall.
As far as I could tell, von Neumann was able on once reading a book
or article to quote it back verbatim; moreover, he could do it
years later without hesitation. He could also translate it at no
diminution in speed from its original language into English. On one
occasion I tested his ability by asking him to tell me how The Tale
of Two Cities started. Whereupon, without any pause, he immediately
began to recite the first chapter and continued until asked to stop
after about ten or fifteen minutes."
It is certainly possible that Jane has powers of recollection
similar or superior to Von Neumann, and is simply prevaricating
when he suggests that anyone could replicate his feats using memory
tricks. There is another curious similarity between Jane (who
always wears a suit with a vest) and Von Neumann, as can be seen
from the following wiki article quote:
Von Neumann took great care over his clothing, and would always
wear formal suits, once riding down the Grand Canyon astride a mule
in a three-piece pin-stripe.
One of the mysteries of THE MENTALIST is the full story of Jane's
education. The season 2 episode "Throwing Fire" contains
flashbacks of Jane being trained in the art of human observation
and deduction by his con-man father, but there must have been a
long period of self-guided training after Jane left his father.
Jane appears to be an auto-didact, spending much of his time
between cases on his coach reading. The books he reads sometimes
have a bearing on the cases, but for the most part their contents
are unknown. Jane seems to have a considerable store of odd facts
at his fingertips, including, for example, a database of brands and
lists of cellmates at prisons, and to possess an encyclopedic and
perfect knowledge of Shakespeare plays, which figures into some of
the plots. He sometimes seems to forget things, but since Jane
often lies, it is always possible that this is simply to avoid
revealing how strong his memory actually is.
Another reason for the strength of Jane's abilities is surely
constant practice, honed by the intelligent, devious, and ruthless
adversaries he pits himself against as a consultant to the CBI.
Rather like Captain America or Wolverine, who are great fighters in
large part because they do little else but fight, Jane routinely
uses all his mentalist abilities, surely constantly pushing to
perfect his skills, driven by the sure knowledge that he will need
every trick to survive his final encounter with Red John.
The only apparent limit on Jane's abilities is that he cannot crack
safes, and in a recent season 4 episode relied on an old friend to
accomplish this task. However, Jane has demonstrated many times
great skill at picking ordinary locks. His command of escapology
may not match that of Houdini, but he does have considerable
ability in this area, enough so that in the season 2 episode he is
able to escape from prison. Other episodes show him as a brilliant
pinball player and a pool shark. One season 3 episode has him
quickly pointing out what day of the week a date from decades ago
fell on. This is an old mentalist trick that can be duplicated by
the editor of the MTVOID himself, one Mark Leeper and many others,
so I merely mention it for completeness. Another season 3 episode
has Jane playing a bass with a professional orchestra for fun,
improvising so fluidly that he appears professional in his skills.
He has completely given up an ordinary life, avoiding dating
(except once with Christina Frye) and sleeps in a bare room
decorated only by a single mattress and Red John's smiley face.
It is also interesting to compare Jane to the great pulp hero,
Clark Savage Jr, also known as "Doc Savage." Savage was the "man
of tomorrow," with the equivalent of many Ph.D.s, who trained every
day for two hours. Like Jane, he lived as a monk, avoiding women
and devoting himself completely to adventuring and good deeds.
Unlike Jane, Savage was a physical powerhouse and a skilled
fighter, and also an inventive genius. One similarity is that both
surrounded themselves with a team that they utilize on their
adventures. Savage's team consisted of Monk, a chemist, Ham, a
lawyer, Renny, a civil engineer, Johnny, an archeologist, and Long
Tom, an electrical genius. Monk is an ape-like fighting machine,
Renny sports fists so large they can be used to batter down doors,
Ham a sword cane, and Johnny has a knowledge of the eastern
fighting arts.
Jane's team at the CBI--and it is his team, willing to do anything
for him, as has been demonstrated in many episodes, consists of
Lisbon, Cho, Van Pelt, and Rigsby. Rigsby is man-mountain with
expert knowledge of arson, although perhaps a bit slow on the
uptake.
Cho is a former member of the Avon Park Playboys street gang and
ex-army special forces. With this background, it should come as no
surprise that Cho is an expert shot and a tough street fighter.
However, his greatest skills are as a cold, relentless, implacable
interrogator and the imperturbable facade that earned him the
Playboy nickname "Iceman." When pushed or personally threatened,
Cho sometimes reverts to his gang background and hands out private
street justice with great gusto and ruthlessness.
Grace Van Pelt is a tall, athletic, and beautiful small town girl
anxious to prove herself at the CBI. Her computer skills boarder
on the preternatural (mainly thanks to Hollywood movie magic) but
she is sometimes deceived by a bad guy. On occasion she has lied
or played a part so well that some fans of the MENTALIST speculate
that she is really Red John, something I think unlikely. Lisbon is
"small but fierce." Her contributions are mainly as a leader and
as a detective, but she clearly enjoys the chase and the capture,
often bringing down prey much larger than herself, and is
frequently underestimated by the bad guys, whom she prefers to bag
with a hidden TASER or her trusty side arm. In season 3 she
mentions that she ran track in high school and concludes "I'm
fast." Lisbon earned the nickname "Saint Theresa" in a prior life
for her good deeds in bringing in the worst of the worst criminals
in difficult cases. Jane has no need of a chemistry expert as the
CBI crime lab supplies a department of such folks.
Part of what makes Jane so compelling is that unlike Doc Savage, he
displays a believable range of emotions. His sadness hangs heavily
on him, and is often pointed out by other characters. Jane is
visibly stressed by the extreme pressure of going up against Red
John. He also sometimes fails to completely conceal his concern
for Lisbon.
Another curious connection to Doc Savage is that Doc set up a
"Crime College" where criminals could be cured of evil via surgical
technique of Doc's invention. Many of these criminals found their
way into Doc's employ afterwards. THE MENTALIST season 1 episode
"Red Brick and Ivy" concerns itself with a machine that can
"recalibrate" the mind from good to evil and back again. Jane
jokes that if the machine works, it will "put us out of business."
Fortunately for Jane the machine turns out to be a fraud.
That wraps it up for now. The first three seasons are available on
DVD if you want to catch up. Although there are many stand-alone
episodes, I recommend watching them in sequence so that you can see
the Red John story unfold as it was intended. I'll also add that
having just re-watched the first three seasons, the MENTALIST is
still going strong. [-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: EMBASSYTOWN by China Mieville (copyright 2011, Ballantine
Books Del Rey, $16.00, 345pp, ISBN 978-0-345-52450-8) (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
So, as I perused the list of Hugo-nominated novels this year, I was
struck by the fact that I was actually looking forward to reading
them. Or, maybe, more appropriately, I wasn't looking at them and
thinking, "You have *got* to be kidding me--do I have to read
*that* dreck?" To be honest, I'd only heard of the Jo Walton book
by word of mouth and reputation, and it does intrigue me somewhat.
And full disclosure up front, I will not be reading the George R.R.
Martin book; I did not read the other four doorstops, and it's too
late in the game for me to start now. I'll be content watching the
HBO show.
So, what to choose first? I wanted to start with the Mira Grant,
but as luck would have it my wife shipped it off to my daughter at
college in Colorado as part of a care package, so that idea was out
(side note--my daughter, and thus the book, will be back tomorrow
as I write this, so it will be next, assuming it isn't buried
somewhere in her stuff). I'd heard good things about EMBASSYTOWN,
and since I liked CITY & THE CITY, I decided to start with it.
I made the right choice.
I'd heard this called "the long awaited and rumored space opera
from China Mieville", but that's really not quite right. It
happens on a distant planet and involves aliens, but I wouldn't
call it a space opera.
The book takes place in what is presumed to be a distant future--
the time frame is never really established. We presume that it is
way out in the future, as there is travel between the stars.
Humanity has colonized a distant (again, we must presume distant)
planet named Arieka. Our protagonist is Avice Benner Cho, who grew
up on Arieka and is an immerser--one who has the ability to travel
in space, or the Out. She has left and come back, which is unusual
in and of itself. Immersers usually don't come back to their home
planet once they leave.
The natives of Arieka are called the "Hosts", and they have an
unusual Language that cannot be spoken or understood by most
people. The genetically engineered Ambassadors are the only ones
that can speak and understand the Language of the hosts. Humans
and Hosts live together in peace for thousands of hours (time is
not measured in years), until an unusual Ambassador arrives who
throws everything out of balance. I should point out that
Ambassadors, while a single unit, actually come in pairs, because
in part that is the only way to speak the Hosts' Language. This
particular new Ambassador, EzRa, is different, and it turns out is
the pawn in a very dangerous political game that could destroy all
civilization on Arieka.
The central theme of this book is language. The Language of the
Hosts is really a different concept than that of our language, and
it is very difficult to describe--at least for me. It is at the
center of their civilization, the center or their relationship with
the humans, and indeed the center of the political struggle and the
war that takes place during the book. Indeed, the teardown and
rebuilding of society *centers around the use of language*, a
concept which I'd not encountered before. It's a wonderfully
original idea, and Mieville implements it beautifully.
At first I was bored with this book. The idea of the language was
interesting, but nothing much was happening. When the major event
occurred that sent things spiraling out of control, I was
completely surprised and utterly pleased. Things moved at a good
pace after that, and the ideas that Mieville introduced going
forward from that point were interesting and insightful. The
solution to the problem and the conclusion to the book were
entirely satisfying and well executed. This is a terrific book.
So yes, we've started out with a bang. Let's hope the run of good
books continues. [-jak]
==================================================================
TOPIC: NORMAN MAILER THE AMERICAN (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: One of the great chroniclers of the American culture and
politics of his time was the novelist, essayist, social critic, and
political candidate Norman Mailer, one of the most controversial
figures of the 20th century. For most of his life, but
particularly the 1950s to 1970s, he documented his times and
focused the quiet rage of the public, often turning it violent.
Staccato and compelling, this fast-paced biography recounts some of
his views and opinions--writings that alienated people and won
supporters. It also focuses on his out-of-control life style. The
parallel stories of public and private life are documented with
extensive interviews and contemporary documentary film footage.
Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
There are people you appreciate are around; there are people you
wish they did not exist. And there are people that you are glad
they exist, but hopefully will never be around you. Norman
Kingsley Mailer, who lived from 1923 to 2007, was a chronicler of
his time, particularly the 1950s to 1970s. The breadth of the
subjects that he wrote about--and, incidentally expressed
contentious and often maddening opinions on--is simply stunning.
He is the author of ten novels and numerous works of non-fiction
and was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize; he was a
journalist, he wrote essays, poetry, plays, and movies. Mailer was
a founder of the New Journalism movement and one of the three
founders of New York's "The Village Voice". He even directed
films. In his time almost every American benefited from his
writing shaping the thinking in the country. And all but a few
benefited from not having him in close proximity. He was a violent
drunk, a heavy drug user; he bedded a very large number of
beautiful women and married six of them. He had nine children.
His angry writings attacked much of society and the people in it.
Mailer wrote about the history of his time writing about Adolf
Hitler, the World War II soldier's experience, the Kennedys, the
1968 national party conventions, civil rights, the murderer Gary
Gilmore, political power in America, Marilyn Monroe, Muhammad Ali's
"Rumble in the Jungle" with George Foreman, and the list goes on
and on.
NORMAN MAILER THE AMERICAN, directed by Joseph Mantegna (not to be
confused with actor Joe Mantegna), is the fast-paced and sizzling
story of the life of Mailer. There is a lot of content packed into
102 minutes. Mantegna balances both Mailer's provocative
professional life with a torrid personal life. Interviews include
close family members from his six marriages and other sex partners,
political and personal enemies, and interviews with the Mailer
himself.
As the film recounts Mailer loved to alienate people. He was a
small man, only about five feet tall, but he loved to provoke
fights. In one famous incident on the normally placid Dick Cavett
Show he took on Cavett, Gore Vidal, and much of the audience in
angry contention, calling them all idiots. Mostly his fights were
battles of rhetoric that purveyed his rage and hate, but he was not
above pushing people close to him into physical fights. For
reasons even his friends could not explain he turned a favorite
game of his to be almost deadly. While playing bullfight with
friends being the bulls, he stabbed his current wife with a knife
telling his friends, "Let the bitch die." Later he and a cadre of
friends, associates, and literary luminaries convinced his wife--
who had nearly died--not to testify against Mailer. Few people
could have so fast-paced and juicy their biography fill a full-
length film. He was at once a genius and totally out of control.
One problem with the film is it may be just a bit over-stuffed.
There is more material than Mantegna could handle in standard
feature length. Frequently one is not quite sure if the life
details just heard are about the current book named or the previous
one. But Mantegna seems to remain detached from the man, reporting
the facts and not judging, something that the man who was his
subject would have been completely unable to do.
Mailer himself said he loved America and hated it. This biography
of him is one of this year's most rambunctious documentaries. I
rate NORMAN MAILER THE AMERICAN a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or
8/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1683463/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/norman_mailer_the_american_2011/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: A UNIVERSE FROM NOTHING by Lawrence Krauss (book review by
Greg Frederick)
This book is a short read about how the Universe could have come
from nothing. Krauss is a particle physicist who also deals with
cosmology so he covers both ends of this immense spectrum.
Scientists know that even empty space without matter or visible
energy present is not really totally empty. At the Quantum
Mechanical (atomic particle) level there are virtual particles
being created and being annihilated all of the time in what seems
to be empty space. These virtual particles for example--photons,
electrons, positrons--will appear from nothing and then disappear
so quickly that we do not directly detect them but they can be
indirectly detected. Virtual particles affect the spectrum
(influencing the electron orbiting the nucleus)--for example, of a
hydrogen atom--and can be detected doing this to a high degree of
accuracy.
So, the idea that something can come from what seems like nothing
is more than possible it actually happens all of the time we just
do not notice it. The author goes on in his book to argue that
there are at least three types of Universes, and these types are
close, open, and flat. The current evidence supports the
prevailing theory that our Universe is 13.72 billion years old and
it is a flat and expanding Universe. A flat and expanding Universe
is what is expected to occur if our Universe came from nothing or
at least almost nothing. The latest data from the background
microwave energy signature left over from the Big Bang and
estimates of the amount of mass in the Universe point to a flat
Universe. Krauss details most of the background needed to
understand the possible beginnings and evolution of our Universe.
I recommend this book to those who like to understand one of the
big questions facing humans for centuries. [-gf]
==================================================================
TOPIC: 3D, THE AVENGERS, and 1701 (letter of comment by Kip
Williams)
In response to Mark's comments on 3D in the 05/11/18 issue of the
MT VOID, Kip Williams writes:
The View-Master company used several sorts of 3D. The best was
natural three-dimensional photography with a stereo camera. They
used it for nature reels, TV shows, some movies, and (using model
photography) various cartoon characters.
Second best was material drawn as cartoons, and carefully
photographed for left- and right-eye views. I suspect they did not
shoot these through a multi-plane camera, but carefully arranged
the items on two pages, using photocopiers for exactness, and
colored them with something like Chartpak color [self-adhesive]
film. The suspicion comes from a set where some area of color
wasn't the same on both sides.
Third best was the crummy paste-up, used with stuff that had been
photographed flat. A background photo. A floating slab with
another photo on it. Floating text in front of that. Big whoop.
Worst of all, every so often something would go out completely
flat. They made a historic 3-reel set of stereo slides of, if
memory serves, Abe Lincoln. There were one or two that weren't
real stereo to begin with (the problem is not new), and these were
included and passed along uncritically. There may have been a
footnote that these pictures were so good they used them even
though they did not possess the one indispensable element that
should be the main reason for existence of any View-Master photo.
I guess there could be one worse than that, though that's in the
eyes of the beholder. Once in a while, stereoscope slides got
reversed, leading to a sort of crash of the dimensions. Objects
that should be closer are tracked as if they are farthest away, and
backgrounds are shoved to the front, minus cutouts for the now-
embedded foreground items. It sounds sort of cool, but the cortex
doesn't know what to do with it, so it's mostly irritating. If you
look at a hologram from the back, it's neater, because the embedded
foreground bits move within their confining backforeground. (I
tried reversing my 3D glasses in THE AVENGERS, but didn't get this
effect--just doubled items.) [-kw]
Mark responds:
I guess what I remembered in View-Master were the third category.
At the time I might have noticed the other kinds, but the
"pasteboard stand-ups" type of 3D is what stuck with me. [-mrl]
On response to Mark's review of THE AVENGERS in the same issue, Kip
writes:
In your review, you came perilously close to quoting some version f
a joke I've been telling for years, where an assistant says to Stan
Lee, "Um, we've had the villain shot, stabbed, strangled,
decapitated, quartered, blown up, atomized, the atoms disassembled
and neutralized, and each one sent to a different galaxy, and then
we went back in time and made those galaxies stop existing." "So?"
"Well, I was wondering if we were planning on killing him off."
"Nah, just leave it hanging." [-kw]
Mark replies:
I had never heard the Stan Lee story, but it appears he is aware of
the situation. Stan Lee has some bizarre ideas. He seems to like
the theme that one man can make a difference, but it does not mix
well with a fantasy genre. I mentioned it in my review of
DAREDEVIL (where the comment was rescued by member Bill Higgins for
occasional use in his signature file). I said:
In his angst Daredevil asks himself the question, 'Can one
man make a difference?' And I think the film answers
inspirationally with a resounding 'Yes, one man with
radioactive mutant super-powers can make a difference.'
I think that is a message we all needed in these troubled
times."
[-mrl]
And in reference to that same issue's number, Kip adds:
1701: Trek reference! [-kw]
Mark responds:
Does that mean we have had one MT VOID issue for ever starship,
cruiser, escape pod lifeboat, garbage scow, troop ship, etc. in the
Federation? [-mrl]
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TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM: THE NATURAL HISTORY OF INNOVATION by
Steven Johnson (ISBN 978-1-59448-771-2) has a structure that lends
itself to summary by chapters:
Reef, City, Web: In reefs, in cities, and in the World Wide Web,
there is "superlinear scaling": doubling the size of a reef more
than doubles the variety of species, and similarly for cities and
for the Web.
The Adjacent Possible: What is possible is constrained by current
conditions, but each piece of progress makes even more possible.
Johnson uses the analogy of a room with four doors, each opening
into another room with four doors, and so on. A simpler example is
that before high-quality metals are developed, you cannot make
delicate machinery. But once you have brass and steel, a lot more
becomes possible.
Liquid Networks: This is mostly about the idea of allowing people
to form ad hoc connections--as with open-plan offices--that may
encourage ideas. This to me is more aptly termed "fluid networks".
The Slow Hunch: We think of science and technology as being full of
"Eureka!" moments, but in fact most big ideas come about gradually.
Even if at the end there is a sudden "coming-together" of all the
pieces, it took time to assemble the pieces.
Serendipity: Ideas often occur when we are not looking for them.
Many scientists say they got their ideas, or their solutions to
problems, when they stopped working and went for a walk.
Error: Evolution only happens when errors are introduced into DNA.
If DNA replication were perfect, there would be no change. And
many ideas come from "failed" experiments or accidents.
Exaption: Creativity is greater when many different disciplines are
brought together simultaneously, either in a group or within one
person.
Platforms: This chapter would have made more sense if Johnson had
not relied so heavily on the examples of jazz and of Twitter,
because I am not all that familiar with either. It seems mostly an
extension of the "adjacent possible" he talked about earlier.
The Fourth Quadrant: (I cannot summarize this because it seemed to
consist of a lot of confusing diagrams with orthogonal
characteristics defining quadrants, but why these particular
characteristics?)
As Jorge Luis Borges once said, "Writing long books is a laborious
and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred
pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes.
A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and
to offer a summary, a commentary." Or as Mark said, this book
might have made a good ten-page article.
MURDER IN THE PLACE OF ANUBIS by Lynda S. Robinson (ISBN 978-0-345-
38922-X) is the first in a series of mystery novels set in ancient
Egypt during the reign of Tutankhamun. One might suspect that this
period was chosen because Tutankhamun is about the only Pharaoh
most Americans are familiar with. (Second place would be held by
Rameses II, but that would get you all involved with all those
Hebrew slaves.) Tutankhamun's reign was an era that has some
inherent interest, though, as Egypt returns to the worship of the
old gods after the brief period of monotheism under Akhenaten, and
all the intrigues and in-fighting that arise from whipsawing
people's religions around are present.
However, Robinson assumes her audience is fairly ignorant of
ancient Egypt, and there appears one infodump passage after
another. There are descriptions of furniture, descriptions of
buildings, explanations of the irrigation plans, explanations how
the food supply works, and so on. None is very long, but after a
while, they become a bit annoying. And for all the atttempts at
authenticity, it seems as though the attitudes of the people are
very 20th-century. (The book was written in 1994.)
The mystery is okay, though an attempt to introduce additional
suspects very late in the book seems awkward--it is Father Knox's
first commandment that "the criminal must be someone mentioned in
the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts
the reader has been allowed to follow."
(Yes, I know that Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, among
others, have violated several of Father Knox's commandments.
Nevertheless, it is not something that should be attempted by
authors of lesser skill.)
MURDER IN THE PLACE OF ANUBIS is okay, though I cannot say I am
eager to rush out to read any of the others in the series. [-ecl]
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Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Never have more children than you have car windows.
--Erma Bombeck