THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/16/13 -- Vol. 32, No. 7, Whole Number 1767
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Apology
Best Known Unknowns (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Nuclear Radiation is Correlated to Ice Cream Sales (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
POODLE SPRINGS (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
ENDER'S GAME Boycott (letter of comment by Dan Kimmel)
FORBIDDEN PLANET and THE INVISIBLE BOY (letter of comment
by Greg Frederick)
This Week's Reading (HOAX and FRANKENSTEIN: A CULTURAL
HISTORY) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Apology
My apologies for the lateness of the last issue. Something that
YahooGroups did broke its moderation system. Responding
affirmatively to whether we wanted the posting of the issue to be
sent merely got us the same question again. We eventually figured
a way around this, and we hope the problem will not recur. [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Best Known Unknowns (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Someone I know is collecting a list of little-known films that are
unknown gems. He is having people contribute to this list. At
first it seems like a reasonable idea. But the more I thought
about it, the more it seems self-contradictory. If a film gets
only one vote it probably will not make the list. If it gets a
bunch of votes it probably is not an unknown film. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Nuclear Radiation is Correlated to Ice Cream Sales (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
You never are really sure of yourself and what you know in science.
Science is pretty much made up of the least assailable explanations
for how things work. Every once in a while I hear something that
just kind of draws me up short. I find I thought I understood
generally how things work. But I didn't see this one coming.
Take a radioactive isotope like silicon-32. Well, silicon has 24
isotopes currently known. Silicon-32 is a radioactive isotope of
silicon. It is formed when radioactive argon breaks down and gives
up some of its radiation. Silicon-32 has a half-life of 170 years
(according to the article in Wikipedia, though the same article
lists it as 153 years elsewhere). The silicon atoms break apart
and release radiation energy. Giving off that energy they become
phosphorus. So atoms that were argon break down and emit radiation
and become silicon-32. Eventually that in turn will break down,
emit radiation, and will become phosphorus.
Each silicon-32 atom has an equal chance to break down over an
interval of time and it doing so it releases energy in the form of
radiation. If you double the amount of silicon-32 you will have
twice as much releasing radiation and twice much as radiation
coming from your sample. More to the point if you have half as
much silicon-32 it will release half as much energy. And if you
have a big lump of silicon-32 it will give out a certain amount of
radiation. In 170 years only half of what is in that sample will
be silicon-32. The rest will have given off energy and have broken
down into something else, phosphorus.
So the amount of radiation given off by a silicon-32 sample will be
cut in half in 170 years because in 170 years only half fill still
be silicon-32. Give it another 170 years and it will be cut in
half again.
Each time a decay happens, it is a discrete event. If you had just
16 atoms of silicon-32 there would be just 16 events of decaying of
silicon-32 atoms--we expect half in the first 170 years--and the
amount of radiation given off would be a step-function going
downward. But since you probably have a very large number of
silicon-32 atoms it is a step function with lots and lots of very
tiny steps and it looks very much like a smooth function. In fact,
it is behaving like an exponential function.
The formula for the amount of radiation at time Y years emitted is
simply:
R(Y) = R(0) * (1/2)^(Y/170)
Who says physics is complicated? That is all fairly easy.
Let me just let you enjoy the simplicity for a moment.
Happy now? Okay, it is time to pull the rug out. All that is just
really, really close to being true. But something else is
happening. There are some statistical variations in this data that
cannot be ascribed to random fluctuation. That might be a little
surprising. But there is a device that can predict the
fluctuations from this nice exponential curve before they even
happen. This device is one you have almost certainly seen before.
It is a calendar. The radiation seems to be lower than expected in
January and higher than expected in July. That is not supposed to
happen. But a team of scientists have measured the phenomenon and
discovered seasonal variation in radiation from multiple isotopes
of which silicon-32 is one.
Now the first thing one would suspect hearing this assertion is
that the discrepancy is due to laboratory temperature variation or
something silly like that. That is apparently not the case. There
is apparently some (very small) influence on the decay of and the
radiation emitted by radioactive isotopes and it is coming from the
sun.
A paper entitled "Analysis of Gamma Radiation from a Radon Source:
Indications of a Solar Influence" has been published P. A.
Sturrock, G. Steinitz, E. Fischbach, D. Javorsek, II, J. H.
Jenkins. Members of the team are from Purdue, Stanford, the Israel
Geological Survey, and Edwards AFB. The paper says that the
interference is cyclical and the cycle is the year.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1205.0205v1.pdf
I cannot tell you much beyond that, but that in itself is fairly
surprising. Something about summer makes silicon-32 emit radiation
more and winter makes it emit less. It does not make sense, but
there you have it. [-mrl]
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TOPIC: POODLE SPRINGS (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
In response to Evelyn's comments on POODLE SPRINGS in the 08/09/13
issue of the MT VOID, Kip Williams writes:
Chandler wrote something like the first sixteen pages of it, and I
don't think he left any notes apart from (IIRC) saying he expected
the marriage would fizzle before the end of the book. Parker, like
many moderns who try to fill in for famous writers, can get their
description right, and dress the character all dressed up and wind
them up and set them down to run, and then they just slowly lose
the momentum of the first pages and grind to a stop before the text
ends.
The only fake Chandler that ever came credibly close to measuring
up to the original was GUN, WITH OCCASIONAL MUSIC by Jonathan
Lethem, and that's because in addition to the character and the
setup and the situation, he also had the overwhelming feeling of
loss and futility that haunts Marlowe. Compared to his feat, most
of these other writers seem on a par with fanboy artists who only
ever draw their creations striking a pose, with their name
carefully lettered below (and of course, an exclamation point!).
[-kw]
==================================================================
TOPIC: ENDER'S GAME Boycott (letter of comment by Dan Kimmel)
In response to Dale Skran's comments on the ENDER'S GAME boycott in
the 08/09/13 issue, Dan Kimmel writes:
I'm with Dale. Attempting to punish Card by rendering him
unemployable is nothing less than creating a new blacklist. The
answer to bad speech (Card's homophobia) is *more* speech. Use it
as a teaching moment. As Card has already admitted--in an entirely
self-serving statement--he's lost the debate on gay marriage.
Boycotting the film won't hurt Card much, if at all, as he's
already been paid, but it will harm lots of innocent people.
Indeed, Lionsgate--chief producer of the film--has long offered
benefits to their employees in same sex relationships. (And, in
response to the incipient protest will be doing a benefit screening
of the film for a gay cause.)
As someone who has written about the Hollywood blacklist of the
1940s and 1950s I find it abhorrent to take away someone's
livelihood because you disagree with his views. Those trying to
purge "Reds" in Hollywood were no less self-righteous than "Geeks
Out." You can read my longer blog post on the subject at:
http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/4504441-orson-scott- card.
Oh, and Dale is wrong on one thing. While it's not there in
ENDER'S GAME Card's homophobia does pop up in at least some of his
books, as in his mainstream thriller LOST BOYS. [-dk]
And Evelyn writes:
In my review of Card's 1997 book PASTWATCH: THE REDEMPTION OF
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, I wrote:
I also thought it ironic that, given that one of Diko's co-
travelers thinks the native American cultures superior, he
nonetheless makes a speech (on page 183) about how mating without
marriage is a repudiation of the community. The Americans he is so
eager to save didn't necessarily feel this way. Why does Card
insert this? To preach at the reader. Which is why I find the
thoughts (on page 187) of a character thinking about the expulsion
of the Jews from Spain particularly ironic: "No, the Jews had to be
expelled because as long as the weaker Christians could look around
them and see unbelievers prospering, see them marrying and having
children and living normal and decent lives, they would not be firm
in their faith that only in Christ is there happiness. The Jews had
to go." I wonder how many other readers realize that Card has hit
on the real reason that many people are against same-sex marriages.
I wonder if Card realized it. [-ecl]
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TOPIC: FORBIDDEN PLANET and THE INVISIBLE BOY (letter of comment by
Greg Frederick)
Thanks for including those podcast links. I was listening to the
Martian Drive-In one and heard about the connection between THE
INVISIBLE BOY and FORBIDDEN PLANET. I have seen both films,
FORBIDDEN PLANET many times and THE INVISIBLE BOY probably only
once all of the way thru. But I must have not paid attention to
the sequence when the boy asks about Robbie. And his father tells
him this story about a professor (but the father seemed not to be
convinced that this story was really true) who may have built a
time machine and traveled to the future (300 years into the future)
and came back with a robot in separate parts. So, THE INVISIBLE
BOY is a direct sequel to FORBIDDEN PLANET. That is very
interesting. [-gf]
Mark replies:
That's true. The two films had the same producer, Nicholas
Nayfack, and the same two writers, Irving Bloch and Cyril Hume.
And while it has the feel of a last-minute addition to THE
INVISIBLE BOY, they have a fairly sophisticated idea to tie the two
stories together and make THE INVISIBLE BOY a sort of sequel to
FORBIDDEN PLANET. It is hard to imagine another film and its
sequel that are so different. I guess it is true of THINGS TO COME
and its shabby supposed sequel THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
HOAX: HITLER'S DIARIES, LINCOLN'S ASSASSINS, AND OTHER FAMOUS
FRAUDS by Edward Steers, Jr. (ISBN 978-0-8131-4159-6) talks about
six famous hoaxes. Interestingly, Steers talks a lot about
"forging" and "forgeries", but while the hoaxes may include
forgeries, they are really something different. For example, for
Hitler's diaries, the hoaxer had to forge Hitler's handwriting and
signature, but he also had to invent the content. the same is true
of all the hoaxes here: they required creativity as well as skill.
The hoaxes are "Oath of a Freeman", evidence that FDR knew ahead of
time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Hitler diaries, the Shroud
of Turin, Piltdown Man, and the missing pages from John Wilkes
Booth's diary. And while the hoaxers managed to fool a lot of
experts for quite a while, it is usually the creativity part that
they get caught on. For example, the evidence in the Pearl Harbor
hoax has Churchill and Roosevelt calling each other by their first
names--they never did that. The Hitler and Booth diaries had their
authors someplace on a day they were known to be somewhere else
entirely, or repeating errors made in secondary sources that the
(purported) authors would not have gotten wrong. The Shroud of
Turin has the proportions wrong for a three-dimensional body
projected onto a draped two-dimensional surface.
If all the characters in the hoaxes are hard to keep straight, it
is because the hoaxes tended to be designed that way. In order to
avoid detection, the hoaxer would use various people (real and
fictional) as the purported sources of the items, and try to sell
them to A through B, with some assistance from C.
I am fascinated by these sorts of hoaxes, also commemorated in
films such as THE HOAX (about the "authorized" Howard Hughes
biography) and audio dramas such as "The Salamander Letter" (about
the hoaxer of "Oath of a Freeman". So it is not surprising that I
liked this book. And in addition, each chapter has a short list of
"Suggested Reading" to learn more about the subject of the chapter.
Synchronicity alert: I read the chapter in this book on the
Piltdown Man on Friday; on Saturday I watched a documentary about
the artist Robert Williams in which he discussed at length his
painting about the Piltdown Man. (Also on Friday, someone ordered
a copy of THE WOMBLES from me, and then that evening I was
listening to a several-weeks-old "History of England" podcast by
Peter Crowther, and he mentioned the Wombles!)
FRANKENSTEIN: A CULTURAL HISTORY by Susan Tyler Hitchcock (ISBN
978-0-393-061444-4) is probably good enough for someone who is
unfamiliar with the subject, but it does seem to have some errors
in the sections I knew something about. For example, Hitchcock
says Hammer's CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN takes place in London (it is
central Europe), and she says the Rialto had ten showings of the
DRACULA/FRANKENSTEIN double feature a day (that would be 26 hours
for the films alone--she probably meant five showings of the two
films). [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
The man who lets himself be bored is even more
contemptible than the bore.
--Samuel Butler