THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
03/04/11 -- Vol. 29, No. 36, Whole Number 1639


 Frick: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
 Frack: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
All material is copyrighted by author unless otherwise noted.
All comments sent will be assumed authorized for inclusion
unless otherwise noted.

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Topics:
        Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups (NJ)
        Subscriber Publishes Book (announcement)
        Science Fiction Fan Wins Oscar! (and Other Oscar Comments)
                (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
        Answer to Last Week's Puzzle (by Tom Russell and
                Susan de Guardiola)
        Answers to the Previous Weeks' Puzzles (by Tom Russell,
                Arthur T., and Susan de Guardiola)
        Getting On in the World (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
        INCEPTION Reconsidered (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
        Notes on Travel and Arizona (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
        The Movies of the '00s (comment by Evelyn C. Leeper)
        THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
        Space Travel and Man Versus Machine Intelligence
                (letter of comment by Greg Frederick)
        Hugo Recommendations (letter of comment by Dan Kimmel)
        This Week's Reading (WANDERING LANDS AND ANIMALS)
                (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

==================================================================


TOPIC: Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups (NJ)

March 10 (Thu): "Paycheck" by Philip K. Dick, Middletown (NJ)
        Public Library, film at 5:30PM, discussion of film and story
        after film
March 24 (Thu): THE PHILIP K. DICK READER (selected stories),
        Old Bridge (NJ)
April 21 (Thu): STIFF by Mary Roach, Old Bridge (NJ) Public
        Library, 7PM

==================================================================


TOPIC: Subscriber Publishes Book (announcement)

Dan Kimmel, long-time subscriber, has published his fifth book,
JAR JAR BINKS MUST DIE... AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS ABOUT SCIENCE
FICTION MOVIES.  It is available on Amazon at
http://tinyurl.com/leeper-jar-jar.  [-mrl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: Science Fiction Fan Wins Oscar! (and Other Oscar Comments)
(comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

Shaun Tan won his first Oscar this year for "The Lost Thing".
Shaun was Guest of Honour at Aussiecon Four last fall, where he
also won a Hugo for Best Professional Artist, so he's been having a
*really* good year.  (Someone has noted that this makes Shaun the
first person to win a competitive Oscar; Roger Corman was Guest of
Honor at L.A.con III (1996) and received an Honorary Oscar last
year.  Ray Bradbury has received an Emmy.)

Melissa Leo has been criticized for using the "f-bomb", as everyone
is calling it.  (Apparently, even the word "f-word" is now
considered too strong!)  On the other hand, there were some very
refined speeches, such as David Seidler's and Colin Firth's for THE
KING'S SPEECH.  But surely I am not the only one who wishes that
Firth had gotten up and delivered his practice exercise from the
film, of which the only word that we can print here is "buggerty".
[-ecl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: Answer to Last Week's Puzzle (by Tom Russell and Susan
de Guardiola)

Last week I gave the puzzle:

Find a set of four, four-letter, words in which three of the
letters are the same in all the words and the other letter position
forms a four-letter alphabetic sequence.  The pattern might look
like this:  VOID WOID XOID YOID.  In this example the second, third
and fourth letters are the same and the first letter forms a four-
letter alphabetic sequence.  Which letter position is used as the
sequence is for you to find.

The answer is aves, awes, axes, ayes(!) or eves, ewes, exes, eyes.
[-tlr]

Susan de Guardiola sent in:

Here are a few answers for this week's puzzle:

     PAID, QAID, RAID, SAID
     JADE, KADE, LADE, MADE
     BARN, CARN, DARN, EARN
     EATS, FATS, GATS, HATS
     MOMS, NOMS, OOMS, POMS
     MUTS, NUTS, OUTS, PUTS
     AITS, BITS, CITS, DITS
     BANS, CANS, DANS, EANS, FANS (two runs of four)
     AINE, BINE, CINE, DINE, EINE, FINE (three runs of four)
     KATS, LATS, MATS, NATS, OATS, PATS, QATS, RATS (five runs of
         four)

This one is simple for anyone who's passionate about Scrabble (and
thus memorizes word lists and is used to running through one-letter
substitutions in one's head).  One key to coming up with pairs is
to identify a word with two vowels in a row, so changing one letter
still leaves you with a vowel.  EATS, OATS, OUTS, AITS, etc.  Then
test the surrounding consonants for either of the vowels.

All words are Scrabble-legal.  [-sdg]

==================================================================

TOPIC: Answers to Previous Weeks' Puzzles (by Tom Russell,
Arthur T., and Susan de Guardiola)

Two weeks ago, Tom Russell proposed:

Our old dictionary has the two-letter word jo meaning "sweetheart".
(See also http://www.yourdictionary.com/jo)  If you back up one
letter in each place the J becomes an I and the O becomes an N (in
the same way HAL relates to IBM), so JO becomes IN, another two-
letter word.  How many other such "ladder" pairs of two-letter
words can you find?  You should be able to find up to five more
such pairs of words.

Arthur T. sent in:

Some people see puzzles like this as a memory challenge.  Others
see it as a programming challenge.

My program (and my database of words) said:
     14 pairs found of 2 letters.
     30 pairs found of 3 letters.
     12 pairs found of 4 letters.
      4 pairs found of 5 letters.
      2 pairs found of 6 letters.
      0 pairs found of 7 letters.

There are quite a few words in there that aren't in my standard
dictionary, but are in my anagram dictionary (which is what I
search for this kind of puzzle).

Arthur's results:

ad-be, ah-bi, an-bo, ax-by, de-ef, he-if, hm-in, in-jo, ne-of,
no-op, od-pe, oh-pi, sh-ti, to-up

add-bee, ads-bet, aha-bib, ana-bob, dee-eff, des-eft, dud-eve,
end-foe, eng-foh, eta-fub, her-ifs, hmm-inn, ids-jet, ins-jot,
its-jut, mho-nip, nah-obi, nee-off, nod-ope, nor-ops, nos-opt,
odd-pee, ods-pet, ohm-pin, oho-pip, ohs-pit, ons-pot, rho-sip,
ton-upo, tor-ups

adds-beet, anna-boob, ants-bout, char-dibs, deer-effs, gnar-hobs,
inks-jolt, knar-lobs, odor-peps, ohms-pint, snog-toph, star-tubs

adder-beefs, sheer-tiffs, sneer-toffs, steer-tuffs

anteed-bouffe, steeds-tuffet

[-at]

[If, like me, you don't count anagrams, there would be fewer
results.  -ecl]

In response to the first puzzle three weeks ago (02/11/11), Susan
de Guardiola writes:

I'm surprised that anyone who reads fantasy had to check on
"pell"--it's the thing a knight hits while learning to fight.

Likewise, "bot" and "bots" are not SFnal inventions--a bot is the
larva of a botfly.  [-sdg]

==================================================================


TOPIC: Getting On in the World (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

Our local two-year community college has just renamed itself a
University.  I guess even schools graduate and go on to bigger and
better things.  The community colleges which served a specific
function are quitting that function and trying to compete with
bigger schools.  Any day now I expect to see TV programs like Ding-
Dong University.  [-mrl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: INCEPTION Reconsidered (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

I was very much looking forward to the film INCEPTION when it came
out having liked just about every film writer/director Christopher
Nolan has made going back to FOLLOWING and MEMENTO.  I was fully
confident that he would continue to add to a string of winners.

When I came out of actually having seen the movie INCEPTION indeed
I was nearly bowled over by what I had seen.  This was a complex
science fiction idea carried out to its ultimate implications.  It
was no simple film.  There were even nice little bits like actually
filming the unending staircase from M. C. Escher.  The film was
demanding of the audience to be appreciated.  But it was also an
interesting enough idea that I was willing to go with it.  So at
the time I was impressed with the film and rated it a high +2 or
8/10.

That warm feeling about the film stayed with me for about a day.
Then it started to hit me that something about the film had struck
me as somehow very cold and emotionless.  Well, some key scenes of
the film take place in snow, an image that always has a strong
emotional impact on me, perhaps because I was raised in
Massachusetts and have learned to hate the snow and what it does to
people emotionally.  I think I was meant for warmer climes.  But it
was more than that.  The characters seemed cold and aloof.  I saw
little reason to worry about main character Dom's fate.

Dom (the Leonardo DiCaprio character) just did not seem to be
emoting very much.  Perhaps he felt the role called for him to be
cold and professional.  In the plot he is fighting desperately to
be able to go home and get back to his children.  We are told that.
But we don't see his face soften when he talks about them.  He does
not really talk about them except to mention them as his children.
Nor is there any chemistry when he is with his wife.  Essentially
his children become the MacGuffin of the film.  Having loved ones
myself I can project onto Dom my emotions, but they are not coming
from the character.

DiCaprio does know how to breathe life into the people he plays.
He had played characters before that one could feel for.  Legions
of teenage girls seem to have fallen in love with him as Jack from
TITANIC.  He was at least acceptably emotive in THE GANGS OF NEW
YORK.  And director Christopher Nolan got good performances from
his two obsessed stage magicians in THE PRESTIGE.  Here in
INCEPTION the main people we focus on are cold chess pieces.
Without characters the story cannot really be compelling, it can
only be intricate and require the viewer's full concentration.
That is not really the same thing.

In a later editorial I mentioned that if I were to go back and
reconsider the film I might well change the rating downward.  Two
or three people commented on the editorial saying they liked
INCEPTION as it was and did not think it should be down-rated.  One
friend who said this is a very vocal critic of Stephen Spielberg.
But Spielberg has always been very good at developing his
characters as people the audience can empathize with.  Characters
like Roy Neary, Indiana Jones, and Alan Grant are opened to the
viewer and you see the faults and what makes them tick.  You see it
in their actions.  Spielberg is not afraid to give Indiana Jones
fear of snakes and makes him something of a jerk at times.
DiCaprio's Dom Cobb reveals too little of himself to make him more
than a stranger.  That is either the fault of the writer or the
director, but in this case both are Christopher Nolan.

So I watched INCEPTION again and was reminded of the film's
virtues.  Indeed this is an absurd view of the mechanics of dreams.
I am not convinced that nested dreams within dreams are a
phenomenon that actually happens in the real world--if that is
where it would happen.

So is what is worthwhile in the film the warping cityscapes and the
zero-gravity hallways or is it the people experiencing these
conditions?  Well, both are important.  Not that it is so important
what I think of the film.  (I am not that narcissistic.
Christopher Nolan is most definitely not hanging on what I have to
say.)  But my opinion of the overall value of the film has not
changed.  On seeing the film again it re-affirmed the faults I had
originally seen, but I also see more that is good.

On a lighter note, on re-watching the film I had this image of
Robert Fischer (the Cillian Murphy character) waking up on that
plane and trying to tell the others with a speech like "This was a
real, truly live place.  And I remember that some of it was not
very nice, but most of it was beautiful.  But it wasn't a dream--it
was a place. And you--and you--and you--and you were there."
[-mrl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: Notes on Travel and Arizona (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

We recently visited relatives in Scottsdale and I found myself
noticing a lot of things.

For starters, Continental Airlines is losing it.

For a long time they were one of the best airlines.  They were one
of the last on which food was free, for example.  But now--possibly
due to their merger with United--they are going downhill.

Flying from Newark to Phoenix, headsets (actually earbuds) were
free, but the entertainment system cost $6 to activate for your
individual screen (or audio channels).  Flying back, from Phoenix
to Newark, earbuds were free if you picked them up from the bin in
the gate area, but $3 if you bought them on the plane.  There was
no activation fee; however, you did have to watch them reboot the
entertainment system four times before it worked.  (It runs on
Linux.)

The illuminated seat belt signs did not work on the return flight,
meaning you never knew when you could get up and walk around.

The aisle seats have some sort of block under them that takes up
half the underseat width where you would stow your carry-on.  They
charge for meals.  On the flight out we did not even get a small
bag of pretzels.

On the Spanish version of the flight map, by the way, Los Angeles
is spelled the same, but retains the accent over the 'A'.
Vancouver is Vancuver, St. Louis is San Luis, and New York is, of
course, Nueva York.  But Georgia is not Jorgia, and Texas is not
Tejas.  There seems to be little logic to what is translated and
what is not.  Washington does not become Huashinton, but
Pennsylvania becomes Pensilvania.  British Columbia becomes
Columbia Británica, not Colombia Británica.  It is still Salt Lake
City and Panama City (FL), although the latter picks up an accent
of the last 'a'.

Speaking of Spanish, in Scottsdale there is a restaurant named El
Loco Patron, with a tilde over the 'o' in 'Patron'.  There is not
such thing in Spanish as a tilde over an 'o'.

We ate at Carolina's, which has great tortillas, and good food in
general.  But is it pronounced like the states, or "Car-o-leenas"?

Last year I mentioned that the Tucson airport offers free WiFi; so
does the Phoenix one.

The saddest note may have been the passing of Bookmaster, a great
used book store.  I had heard that the southern store had moved
from Scottsdale Road (the thirty-mile spine of the three-mile wide
town) to a presumably cheaper location, but now both locations are
closed.  There are still a few used and antiquarian bookstores in
Scottsdale and Tempe, and still Bookman's in Tucson, but Bookmaster
is a real loss.  [-ecl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: The Movies of the '00s (comment by Evelyn C. Leeper)

Mark recently (in the 01/28/11 issue) had an article on the top SF
films of the '00s.  (Normally I'd write a decade as, e.g., "the
1950s", but "the 2000s" is too ambiguous.)  There has been a fair
amount of response, so I thought I would give my own similar, but
slightly different list.  Or rather, two lists.

The first I'll call "The Ten Best SF Films of the '00s No One Has
Heard Of"; in chronological order they are:
     THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE (2001)
     CYPHER (2002)
     ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004)
     NOTHING (2003)
     PRIMER (2004)
     H. G. WELLS' THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005)
     THE MAN FROM EARTH (2007)
     TIMECRIMES (2007)
     SLEEP DEALER (2007)
     SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (2009)

A note on H. G. WELLS' THE WAR OF THE WORLDS: 2005 was the "Year of
Three Martian Invasions".  There was, of course, Steven Spielberg's
film, WAR OF THE WORLDS (no leading definite article).  There was
also a feature-length version by C. Thomas Howell, H. G. WELLS WAR
OF THE WORLDS (no definite article, and no apostrophe).  But there
was also a three-hour version by Thomas Hines, H. G. WELLS' THE WAR
OF THE WORLDS (apostrophe *and* definite article).  (The 1953
version was THE WAR OF THE WORLDS.)  It is the Hines to which I
refer, the only version set in Edwardian England, and done using
filmmaking techniques as true to that time as is possible, or at
least to the general era.  (Shortly after I wrote that, I
discovered that the three-hour version was a rough cut, and that
the intent was to "improve" the special effects, etc.  A director's
cut has been released but seems to be unavailable; frankly, I think
the "primitive" special effects add to the charm of the film.)

I will admit that THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE
SPOTLESS MIND are at least somewhat better known than the others on
the list, but when compared to films like THE LORD OF THE RINGS or
IRON MAN, they qualify as at least moderately obscure.

The second list is "Directors to Watch"; some of these are well
established, others are still working on the fringes:
     Darren Aronofsky
     Joel and Ethan Coen
     Guillermo del Toro
     Vincenzo Natali
     Andrew Niccol

[-ecl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: In this Israeli comedy-drama the title character works for
a Jerusalem bakery from which an immigrant worker disappeared.  The
bakery did not know the woman had been gone.  When she is
identified as being the victim of a terrorist attack two weeks
earlier, the company's indifference to her becomes a major public
relations fiasco.  The HR Director, whose own family life is
falling apart, gets the assignment of taking the body back to her
remote home in Romania.  This begins a whimsical odyssey in which
the HR Director will himself find the resources to be a little more
human.  Eran Riklis directs a screenplay by Noah Stollman based on
a novel by Abraham B. Jehoshua.  Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10

With most comedy-dramas the approach is to draw the viewer in with
the comedy and then once he is hooked tell him a serious story.
THE HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGER works nearly the opposite way.  Most of
the levity is the second half of the film.  Until that point and
around that point it is telling a fairly serious story.  But the
film takes time out to take a sort of bemused and amusing look at
the Romanian hinterlands.  There, in some ways, this film
approaches the tone of EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED.  There is not so
much illuminated here, but the film does build to an unexpected and
poignant irony.

To start with only one character is given a name.  Yulia had worked
for a Jerusalem bakery for years and yet nobody seems to really
know who she was.  When she is identified as the victim of a two-
weeks-previous suicide bombing a reporter asks how could she have
been dead two weeks without her supervision knowing it, the issue
becomes a serious black eye to the company.  The Human Resources
Manager is made a scapegoat.  He agrees that he will take Yulia's
body back to her home in a remote part of Romania and will
represent the company attending the funeral.  As an unwelcome
travelling companion comes the reporter who publicized the
situation.  Along the way they acquire another companion, Yulia's
disaffected son.  The manager will remain a resources manager, but
along the way he will become a little more human.

In fact, the biggest life-changes seem to be in Yulia's son.
Unfortunately, we learn some but too little of his emotional state.
He begins as a bit of a cliché, blocking out the world with loud
rock on his ever-present earphones.  He will transform, but we are
never really sure what wins him over.  Some how we measure the
changes in the manager by how he is accepted by the boy.  The
manager is in a difficult position.  The more he helps Yulia's
family, the less likely he will be back to Jerusalem to see his
daughter's ballet recital.  Either Yulia or his daughter will not
get his attention.  He is in a position where one or the other will
lose.

Knowing each living character only by their title or position was
probably intended to say something about the dehumanization of our
culture.  That really does not work.  More dehumanization does not
make the situation any better.  This film seems like it is trying
to say something significant, however exactly what does not really
come across.  As a portrait of a very diverse set of people coming
together in a single story, the film is amusing.  But no crucial
insights come out of the tale.  In the end, in spite of learning
more about Yulia, she is still an enigma.  She is a different woman
than we had expected, but we are still not sure we know who she
was.  I rate THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER a high +1 on the -4 to +4
scale or 6/10.

Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1311075/

What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_human_resources_manager/

[-mrl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: Space Travel and Man Versus Machine Intelligence (letter of
comment by Greg Frederick)

Greg Frederick writes, "By the way, 'Nova' has had a very
interesting series of shows on TV over the last three weeks or so.
One show was about the possibility of space travel to Mars.
Another was about IBM's research into developing a computer program
called "Watson" (named after an early founder of the company)."
[-gf]

Mark responds, "We didn't watch the 'Jeopardy' episodes, but we did
see the 'Nova' on Watson and 'Jeopardy'."  [-mrl]

Evelyn adds, "And I notice that one of the Congressmen from New
Jersey, Rush Holt, just beat Watson at 'Jeopardy'."  [-ecl]

Greg continues, "Franklin Chang Diaz, a former astronaut and now a
astro-physicist is developing a new type of rocket engine with NASA
called the Vasimr.  It uses plasma (ionized gas at a million
degrees) as the propellant.  They take Argon gas and use radio
waves to strip off the electrons and ionize the gas.  Then a
magnetic field insulates and isolates the plasma to funnel it to a
charged nozzle that repels the ionized gas out the end of the
nozzle at tremendous speeds.  In Chang's own words: 'We use a
magnetic force field to contain the plasma and electromagnetic
waves to heat it (so nothing really touches it).  The magnetic
field acts as an invisible "duct," which of course, being a force
field, does not melt.  We call this "duct" a magnetic nozzle and it
is one of the key components on the VASIMR engine."'  This plasma
drive engine can propel a spacecraft at 35 miles a second or
126,000 MPH.  The fastest spacecraft ever built so far is the New
Horizons probe that is now on its way to Pluto at 35,800 MPH.  The
plasma drive is more than three times that speed.  It can take a
six-month one way trip to Mars and reduce the time to about two
months.  It would be like traveling from New York to LA in 1.5
minutes."  [-gf]

Mark replies, "It sounds like at base it is run by electricity.
What kind of consumption does it have, I wonder.  Are there
batteries big enough to run it?  Of course it could use solar
cells.  That might make it more effective going sun-ward from the
earth rather than to the outer planets.  Does it look like they
have sufficient energy sources?"

Greg goes on, "IBM has created and refined over four years a
computer program along with a specially built computer called
Watson to compete with contestants on 'Jeopardy'.  The 'Jeopardy'
shows will air on 2/14/2011 - 2/16/2011.  This computer has 2800
processors and is equivalent to about 6,000 PCs.  It is not
connected to the internet but has stored vast amounts of data about
art, films, history, science, etc.  It has a voice but does not
hear human speech it only receives the answers and questions from
the host thru electronic data sent as an email for example.  On
Jeopardy the host provides an answer and the contestant must come
up with a question for that answer in about three seconds.  Besides
all of the data it has stored there are thousands of rule sets
embedded in it's programming.  But it still was making dumb
mistakes until a few years ago when IBM researchers incorporated
new machine, pattern-recognizing, learning algorithms into it.  It
can learn from its mistakes and improve its performance.  IBM has
been having it's employees play 'Jeopardy' against Watson over the
past few years and it has been getting better and better.  Next
week it will play against the two best money winners that
'Jeopardy' has had in the last ten or twenty years.  The real
reason for this is not just to beat a human at 'Jeopardy' but to
get publicity for their new program that could one day be an
electronic assistant for a doctor or for the military or for NASA.
Tune into the show next week and see what happens on live TV when
man verses machine again."

Mark replies, "I saw after the fact.  When it makes mistakes they
are interesting mistakes and very different from the mistakes that
a human would make."  [-mrl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: Hugo Recommendations (letter of comment by Dan Kimmel)

In response to Dale Skran's Hugo picks in the dramatic category in
the 02/25/11 issue of the MT VOID, Dan Kimmel writes:

I'm going to disagree strongly with his long form picks but first I
want to say, "Here, here" to his comments about short form.  I was
involved in the early discussions on how to split this--although
not on the official committee--and I, too, thought that what was
needed was a category for best TV show (series, not episode) to go
along with a movie category.  I won't go over the strained
arguments that prevailed over that commonsense solution, but yes,
this is broken and ought to be fixed.

Now as for long form I think HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is one of the
more overrated films of the year.  It's a perfectly acceptable
animated film for kids, but it's formulaic and has accents for the
Vikings that were so wrong they proved distracting.  SALT was a fun
thriller but not really SF, unless you consider brainwashing to be
"science fiction."

Clearly the year's best SF film was INCEPTION and I'll be surprised
if it doesn't get the Hugo.  Other contenders for the ballot
include little seen films like SPLICE, PREDATORS, and NEVER LET ME
GO.  Among the animated films I'd go with TOY STORY 3 and
DESPICABLE ME.  All good films, but INCEPTION was clearly the class
of the field for 2010.  [-dk]

==================================================================


TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

WANDERING LANDS AND ANIMALS by Edwin H. Colbert (ISBN
978-0-486-24918-2-6) was February's choice for our [mostly science]
book discussion group.  I recommended it; the reason I like it is
that it has an epic sweep the same way that Olaf Stapledon's LAST
AND FIRST MEN has.  Both cover millions of years and the evolution
of species over that time.  It is not the individual that is the
character but the collective, the species.

Back in 1972, when this was written, continental drift (a.k.a.
plate tectonics) was still relatively new, and the KT asteroid
still unknown.  Colbert notes that the initial paleontological
evidence for continental drift, a.k.a. tectonic plates, was
explained in other unlikely ways, but geological evidence suggested
Gondwanaland and it explained the paleontological evidence much
better as well.

Although the KT asteroid was not known in 1972, there were
speculations that it was some sort of global catastrophe that
killed off the dinosaurs, and Colbert asks a question still
unresolved: "Why the dinosaurs should have become extinct at the
end of Cretaceous time is one of the great puzzles of geologic
history.  ...  [Why] did all of the dinosaurs die out at the end of
Cretaceous history?  Why did not some of them survive, as did their
close cousins the crocodilians?" [page 202]

Colbert chooses his words very carefully.  He writes, "A theory, to
be valid, must satisfy all aspects of the subject upon which it
touches." [page 13]  Note that he does not say that a theory is
"correct", but that it is "valid."  All those who talk about how
evolution is "just a theory" need to understand what a theory is
and what it means to be valid.

Colbert writes about digging for fossils in Antarctica, saying, for
example, "It was interesting, however, to note the variability of
temperatures within the hut.  At floor level, water if spilled
would freeze; at waist level the temperatures were usually about 40
degrees; at shoulder level a comfortable 70 degrees was common; and
at the top of the arched hut the temperature was commonly 90
degrees and more." [page 48]

On the other hand, sometimes the information Colbert had at the
time was incomplete. There were many instances where fossils of a
certain type might be expected on a given continent but had [have?]
not yet been found.  Other speculations have since been disproved--
for example, "It has recently [as of 1972] been suggested, upon the
basis of geophysical evidence, that most of China, and perhaps
Indonesia, may have been a part of Gondwanaland, forming a
northeastern extension of the ancient continent, to occupy much of
the area between Africa and Australia." [page 65, also page 152]

He has a sense of humor; after having discussed all the fossil
evidence of Lystrosaurus on various continents for several
chapters, he says, "By now the reader probably is sick unto the
point of ennui of Lystrosaurus, yet there is no getting away from
this useful reptile." [page 71]

[By the way, I indicate page numbers because the index is skimpy-
there are some entries in the index for "India", but not for all
the mentions of India in the text.]

When we visited Newfoundland, we saw evidence of the continental
drift Colbert is writing about.  We toured the Tablelands, where
the Earth's mantle is exposed.  Our guide used an analogy with an
apple: the skin is the crust, the pulp is the mantle, and the core
is the core.  The Tablelands is a piece of the mantle.  As he said,
"Here the earth is flipped inside out."  How did this happen?
"Continents are big rafts floating on magma."  What is now the
Americas is called Laurasia, and Eurasia/Africa is Gondwanaland.
The Atlantic was Iapetus.  Laurasia and Gondwanaland collided a
billion years ago (the sign there said 450 million years ago,
though).  Normally you have subduction (both plates move downward),
but here parts of Gondwanaland rode up on top of Laurasia.  After
250 million years, they split apart, but on a different line,
leaving pieces of the mantle from Gondwanaland behind.  The
glaciers scoured off the crust, exposing the mantle.  It is not
unique, though--all of the Appalachian, Long Range, and Caledonian
mountains are the same range formed from this piece of mantle.

Of course, Newfoundland is weird in many ways besides having
exposed mantle and being partially covered by the European tectonic
plate.  It, along with Labrador, was an independent country until
1949.  Its time zone is a half hour off from adjacent time zones.
Its cell phone service is not shared by any other company.  And its
provincial flower is carnivorous.  [-ecl]

==================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
 mleeper@optonline.net


           I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented
           dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could
           have invented the Nobel Prize.
                                           -- George Bernard Shaw