THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
12/21/12 -- Vol. 31, No. 25, Whole Number 1733
Napoleon: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Josephine: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Our Theme: Three Spectacle Films, Old and New (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
The Seven-Day Weather Forecast (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
KING KONG (1933) Observations (film comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
THE IMPOSSIBLE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
KING KONG (1933) (film comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE LIGHTS IN THE TUNNEL by Martin Ford (book review
By Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
Fun with Storms (comments by Kip Williams)
This Week's Reading (HOMER and American Presidents and
British Prime Ministers) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Our Theme: Three Spectacle Films, Old and New
We rarely have theme to our issues, but this time we do. We have
four articles about three spectacular special effects films: KING
KONG (1933), THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (2012), and THE
IMPOSSIBLE (2012). [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Seven-Day Weather Forecast (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The seven-day forecast says windy this afternoon with scattered
showers. This evening the skies will be overcast until the
asteroid strike. Then after that the rest of the forecast does not
matter. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: KING KONG (1933) Observations (film comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
Evelyn and I participated in an on-line discussion of that
venerable classic film KING KONG (1933). We watched the film and
made comments. We each wrote our observations. This article is
based on my comments. Evelyn's comments appear later is this
issue.
KING KONG is among my favorite films of all time. I am not sure it
is one of the three or four best films, but it is one of the
greatest films. The results of the filmmaking process may not have
made it one of the best films, but so much was invented and so much
imagination went into it that the result is greater than its story.
KING KONG was the STAR WARS of its day and more. Both films may
have had hokey stories but amazing visuals, both had huge
imagination in the design, and both were big inspirations for the
next generation of filmmakers.
That said, I would also say that much of this article will be
negative. I think we all have heard most of the good things to say
about KING KONG. The mistakes and problems are much less commonly
noted. It is frequently said that Willis O'Brien's stop-motion
animation in KING KONG is unsurpassed today. No disrespect to a
film I so greatly admire, but the fledgling visual techniques have
been surpassed. The film is full of problems with the visual
effects that you do not see in films like JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS.
For example when a screen image is made of multiple elements, they
are not well integrated. On my most recent viewing I noticed for
the first time that when the native chieftain and some of his
followers stand at the top of the wall their image jitters left and
right with respect to the wall. These days that is considered to
be a very bad problem. In 1933 I doubt that most of the viewers
noticed and cared.
There are other problems that would be better handled today.
Especially there is the concern for consistency in Kong's
appearance. O'Brien seemed to take little care to make the look of
Kong's face consistent from one model of Kong to another. One Kong
will have large nostrils, another will have smaller ones. The
viewer can distinguish at least three different looks for Kong's
face depending on which model is being used. For that matter
Kong's size is not uniform either. On the island Kong is
consistently eighteen feet tall, and O'Brien wanted to keep the
size at eighteen feet for the New York sequences. But co-director
Merian C. Cooper wanted to adjust the size of backgrounds that
would show off Kong to best effect, so Kong's scale changed from
scene to scene.
When dinosaurs are shown in rear projection the images make them
look three or four times a realistic size. When Denham and company
walk around the stegosaurus it is huge. Having the actors walk a
treadmill does not really work. The speed of the treadmill is not
well matched to the image in the background. Later the
brontosaurus neck in the water just looks like a rigid model.
Still much of this gets lost of the excitement.
One problem with the visuals that I have always found amusing and
nobody else seems to notice: When Kong climbs onto one of the roofs
in Manhattan you see the top part of an electric sign with vertical
lettering behind him. The sign is dark, then it flashes M; then it
flashes MA; then without taking time to light up any more letters
it goes dark ands starts over. So even if you could see the whole
sign it would only say "Ma".
As original as KING KONG was, it was in large part a reframing of
THE LOST WORLD (1925). The 1933 film borrowed heavily from the
plot of the 1925 film and from the book THE LOST WORLD, and it
major modifications are there because directors and producers
Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack where projecting
themselves into to the story with Carl Denham being an amalgam of
the two of them. (Incidentally, Merian C. Cooper had a life so
amazing and exciting even a Steven Spielberg could not do justice
to it.) The plot of Kong is really what you would get if you took
that of THE LOST WORLD and forced in a filmmaker like Cooper and
Schoedsack.
In Arthur Conan Doyle's novel THE LOST WORLD he had the expedition
bringing back a pterodactyl that gets loose in London, but is
hardly noticed. To make it a more visual story and one with more
easily accomplished special effects the 1925 film instead had the
captured animal be a brontosaurus (now called "apatosaurus").
Willis O'Brien was more experienced at animating sauropods like the
apatosaurus. For KONG the filmmakers made the captured and later
escaped animal a giant ape, of course. And there were the other
obvious changes. They changed the nature of the expedition for
KONG also. It was not a scientific expedition but a filmmaking
excursion.
Personally, I keep wondering where on Kong's island the great ape
could possibly live. We know he lives someplace relatively near
the gate. It does not take him very long to respond to the Kong
Gong. It takes about thirty seconds of screen time, which seems to
mean he was impossibly close by. On the other hand Kong seems to
get in a life-and-death fight every hour or so. In one day he
fights three different breeds of prehistoric beasts. He manages to
always survive because he is the biggest, meanest thing on the
island. But if you watch the fights it is always a near thing. He
could not survive long in this environment, and an animal of his
weight being that active would need to take in a lot of biomass
energy in his diet. It is not clear he could ever move his body as
energetically as he does just due to square-cube law restrictions.
So for me this is no less a mystery, and no more, than the question
of where his mate and his parents are or were. I hate to say it
but I guess the best answer to this sort of question is that it is
just a story. If we can accept that there is just one giant ape on
this island no mates no (or perhaps one) offspring it is not so
hard to assume he Kong has found a safe place to live and enjoy
being worshipped by the natives. They even have dances in his
honor though I have never figured out where the natives got the fur
they use for the Kong dance.
In some ways the script is contrived. For example the natives come
to kidnap Ann. They climb the ship's ladder and Ann is
conveniently standing right there. It is not at all clear how they
would have nabbed her if they hadn't been so lucky. They were not
really prepared to scour a hostile ship for her. But Ann was just
where she would be in the most danger. Later in New York Kong
seems to have to look in only two or three hotel rooms to find Ann.
What are the chances of that in Manhattan?
Let me switch sides and defend the film on a couple of points. One
question I hear frequently asked is if the natives wanted to keep
Kong out of their side of the wall, why did they ever put a gate in
so wide that Kong could get out through it. It is a smart-alecky
question and people who ask it rarely stick around for an answer.
I think it makes perfect sense. They expect the bolt to be strong
enough to keep Kong out, but if Kong ever got over or through the
wall suddenly Mr. Wall would be no longer their friend. Getting
Kong back to his usual side would be a hard enough task even with a
Kong-size gap in the gate. It is all-important to avoid being
trapped on one small strip of the island with an angry ape-god.
It is frequently asked what Kong has done with his previous brides.
There has been the suggestion that he might eat them. Gorillas are
generally assumed to be herbivores, but the truth is nobody is
certain if they really are or not. Monkey DNA has been found in
the dung of some gorillas. That is considered evidence that they
sometimes eat smaller animals, though that has not been observed
and is not really proof. My opinion is that he plays with them to
death not unlike what small children will do with pets. (Well, no.
My opinion is that it is just a story, but if I had to find a
likely explanation, that would be it.) Remember in the 1933
version of the story Ann is in mortal peril the entire time she is
with Kong. Unlike EVERY later version of the story, in 1933 Ann
shows absolutely no sympathy for Kong. To her Kong is all threat.
It is surprising that she does not protest more when after several
men have been killed trying to save her from Kong, Denham turns
around and is ready to use Ann as bait to get the monster. Later a
reporter says, "Denham's taking no chances." Is he kidding?
Denham does nothing BUT take chances.
It is somewhat ironic that Carl Denham tries to calm the Broadway
audience by telling them the Kong's bonds are made of "chrome
steel." Chrome steel is really stainless steel. It looks better
than standard steel because it will not rust, but it is not as
strong. If Carl Denham had used carbon steel instead of chrome
steel he might have ended up a millionaire. (I guess he does end a
millionaire in SON OF KONG).
Denham's plan for entertaining a Broadway audience is to show them
Kong and then to just stand up in front of the audience and tell
the story of the capture. Can you imagine how dull an evening that
would be--just listening to Denham talking? I suspect that that
idea may have been left over from an earlier version of the script
that would open with the Broadway scenes, Denham would show the
audience Kong and then the whole story of the capture would be done
as a flashback so that the film audience would be seeing the story
even if the Broadway audience was not. Interesting piece of
trivia: when you see the exteriors of the Broadway theater with
stock footage of crowds outside waiting to get in, that stock
footage was actually taken at the premier of Charlie Chaplin's 1931
film CITY LIGHTS.
There are other problems with the script. Denham complains that
the critics say, "This film would gross twice as much if it had
love interest." That is the whole reason that Ann is taken along.
Do you know what Denham forgot? That it takes two people to have a
love interest. There is nobody who is supposed to be Ann's love
interest in Denham's film. The plan is not to have her love the
as-yet unknown Kong. Ann asks how the island will be recognized.
She is reminded that it has a mountain that looks like a skull.
She says she forgot. How likely is it she would forget that
detail? Also I am curious what Ann is doing while Kong is using
two hands and two feet to climb the Empire State Building. I
assume for most she is holding on to King for dear life. Though
they forget to show you in the film, the wind that high up on the
building averages twenty miles per hour.
The film KING KONG has become an iconic myth of American cinema and
even with all the faults I find with it, it well deserves all the
admiration it gets.
Hey, in the film Carl Denham asks for some huskies to carry his
stuff.
Question: How can you tell they are Denham's huskies?
Answer: they have a Norwegian bark.
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (film review by Mark
R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY is the first film of
Peter Jackson's follow-up trilogy to THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The
result is good, where great was expected. It has a lot of the
virtues of the previous films, but does not offer a lot that the
previous trilogy did not, and where it does try to be different it
goes off in the wrong direction. Falling well short of being
compelling, at times it really drags. Jackson makes the serious
error of expecting that Tolkien's short novel provides enough
material to make into its own trilogy nearly as long as LORD OF THE
RINGS. Visually it is sometimes amazing, but it is a large troll
step down from the last trilogy. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
Back in the 1960s I knew that there were two books about Middle
Earth by J. R. R. Tolkien. There was the little one which was
basically a children's story called THE HOBBIT. The big one was
THE LORD OF THE RINGS. It was so big that the publisher trisected
it into three volumes. Peter Jackson eventually filmed THE LORD OF
THE RINGS in a trilogy of three long movies. He did a good job.
Now he is adapting the little book and with about the same degree
of compression it should make one short movie. But THE LORD OF THE
RINGS was so profitable as three big films Jackson is doing THE
HOBBIT in the same way. It strikes me as overkill. I can say that
I am not yet seeing the public enthusiasm for Jackson's "Hobbit"
trilogy that I saw for his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. With KING
KONG he showed an unfortunate propensity to go overboard damaging
what I still think was a good effort.
The "Lord of the Rings" trilogy was a triumph, with Jackson giving
the film a beautiful look worthy of some of the best fantasy
illustrators' visualizations of Middle Earth. The writing was
imperfect, but the viewer was awed by the images put on the screen.
That was certainly an accomplishment and it was accomplished. But
it cannot be accomplished again but can only be repeated. A
repetition is very much what THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY is.
It is a look at Middle Earth using the same tools that Jackson used
to do the first trilogy. The problems with the film in large part
come from the need to stretch the short novel over three films and
the resulting story suffers from the stretch marks.
The plot of THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY is, of course, in
large part taken from the book by Tolkien. Bilbo (played by Martin
Freeman, Watson in the popular series "Sherlock") wants nothing
more than to sit home in comfort. But Galdalf (Sir Ian McKellen)
inveigles him in a plan to travel east with thirteen dwarves on a
mission to retrieve a great gold treasure that has been stolen by
the formidable dragon Smaug. What follows is a series of
adventures and battles with fearsome wolves, trolls, and orcs as
the band travel to Rivendell and the mountains beyond.
There are times the plot stands still for comedy or when the
dwarves all join together in a song that really does not further
the story. And too much of the film is taken up with CGI fights.
But the trilogy will probably cover more than eight hours--longer
than it takes to read the book--and that time has to be filled
somehow. Much of the problem is that the script does not give us
any compelling reason to care for the main characters. The mission
is to retrieve gold, a much more mercenary purpose than destroying
a ring that gives dangerously too much power. Also, the characters
are not greatly likeable--in fact, we do not know them at all well.
Even Bilbo is only superficially drawn with a few humorous quirks
but no real personality. So battles with armies of thousands
fighting each other have less emotional impact than a dinner table
argument between two people in THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL.
Even great computer graphics effects cannot for long substitute for
under-written characters. All the action and violence does not
matter if the viewer does not care about who has a dog on the
fight.
This is not to say that there is not a great deal impressive in the
visual imagery. First you have stunning settings mostly provided
by New Zealand. And you have a lot of fairly creative visual
effects. In some cases the images presented are just too much and
too complex to be taken in on one viewing. With action all over
the screen, it cannot all be seen without some study. This film
offers more visual effects, but not a lot that is creatively new.
Some images, like the stone giants, are particularly effective.
But this film needed to offer the viewer more than just more
effects.
As with the pod race of STAR WARS I, sequences intended to be
amusing can destroy much of the feel of the film. At one point we
see our heroes using a cable slide. That allows the film to have a
great swooping shot. The only problem is that we have never been
given any clue that Middle Earth is at a technology level where
cable production is possible. If they have the knowledge to
produce cable it would have a big impact on the rest of their
technology. If they can produce cables they almost certainly can
produce more effective weapons. At some point someone mentions
"chips" as food. In the first trilogy the hobbits smoked "pipe
weed" because Tolkien did not want to use the overly familiar word
"tobacco." Various places in the story people fall hundreds of
feet to rocks below them and seem to survive. The original trilogy
was much more careful about such things and here they ruin the
credibility of the story.
This film is a very mixed bag of good touches and bad ones. I am
mostly trying to cover what others are not saying about the film.
Those are mostly faults. This film does not have the writing that
THE LORD OF THE RINGS had. THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY is an
unexpected step down from LORD OF THE RINGS. I rate it a high +1
on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903624/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_hobbit_an_unexpected_journey/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE IMPOSSIBLE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: THE IMPOSSIBLE is a true account of a family celebrating
the holiday in coastal Thailand that is literally torn apart by the
2004 Christmas tsunami. It is a realistic, on-the-ground look at
the experience of being caught in a Tsunami and the effort
afterward of just finding loved ones. As the wave crashes the film
has a guaranteed six minutes of white-knuckle fear. Juan Antonio
Bayona who directed THE ORPHANAGE an exploration of supernatural
horror now gives us a horror that is only too natural. Rating:
+3 (-4 to +4) or 9/10
In the last decade we have seen some terrible real-world
destruction due to tsunamis--what we used to call "tidal waves."
Particularly destructive were the ones that hit Southeast Asia
centering on Indonesia the day after Christmas 2004 and the one
that hit Japan, centering on Honshu, March 11, 2011. With
improving and more widespread video technology the public has seen
on the news dramatic images of real tsunami waves breaking on
beaches and coastal areas in literal waves of destruction miles
wide. This may have only whetted our curiosity of what sort of
nightmare it must be like to be down in the path of such a wave.
THE IMPOSSIBLE shows the experience in harrowing detail. It has
really frightening visions of being on the ground with the huge
wave breaking all around and over. Even Clint Eastwood's
HEREAFTER, in which the real set piece was a somewhat gratuitous
tsunami toward the beginning. It would be hard to say which film
THE IMPOSSIBLE or HEREAFTER better portrays the horrifying effects
of a tsunami, but after the tsunami in THE IMPOSSIBLE one still has
an effective and affecting drama. After the tsunami in Eastwood's
HEREAFTER one has only the disappointing film that was HEREAFTER.
There is not much to say about the plot of the film. The Bennett
family--Maria (Naomi Watts), Henry (Ewan MacGregor), and their
three sons (Tom Holland, Oaklee Pendergast, and Samuel Joslin)--are
at a Thai resort celebrating Christmas when they are ripped apart
and mauled by the 2004 tsunami. The scenes of just surviving such
a wave are visceral enough. Eventually the film focuses on the
family, some badly injured, facing the logistical problem of
finding each other and reuniting in the midst of tens of thousands
of people displaced, scattered, and lost. THE IMPOSSIBLE makes an
interesting pairing with last year's CONTAGION, both films are
about the destruction and pain that nature can still unleash on
people. That film had Gwyneth Paltrow go from looking glamorous to
looking ravaged. This film does much the same with Naomi Watts.
Besides Watts and MacGregor the only familiar face is a tiny role
for Geraldine Chaplin, but most of the cast will be unfamiliar.
Disaster films of this sort were popular in the 1970s even without
technical ability to show on film what this film has. And they
were almost all fictional stories with varying degrees of accuracy.
This film has much more of a feel of authenticity and that alone
makes it more effective. The photographic effects have evolved in
the intervening four decades and the result is hellish enough and
at the same time more believable. However, THE IMPOSSIBLE has the
same dramatic problem that many of the old disaster films had. The
primary event, the hitting of the wave, has to be early--about
thirteen minutes into the film, since all of the rest of the action
depends on it. In most films, you want the real set piece to be
near the end. The narrative is mostly about the aftermath of the
wave. This is not to say that the backend of the film is
lackluster by any means. It is a compelling adventure story and
even affecting. This is really a disaster film done as well as one
can be done. It has very accomplished photography and good acting.
One complaint with THE IMPOSSIBLE is that it really tells the
(albeit true) story of one family caught up in the catastrophe.
But they are the luckiest 1% of the people hit by the disaster. As
bad as things are for the Bennetts, there are all around people who
are not nearly so lucky. The ground is littered with the bodies of
people who a lot less fortunate. I rate this film a +3 on the -4
to +4 scale or 9/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1649419/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_impossible_2012/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: KING KONG (1933) (film comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
A couple of weeks ago one of the mailing lists I'm on had an on-
line film discussion about KING KONG (1933). Here are a few of the
comments I had.
The image for the overture seems to be the Third Avenue El.
The Morse beeping is "VVV An RKO Radio Picture VVV".
Why use a Germanic blackletter font for an Arabian proverb?
KING KONG was one of the first American films to have a full score.
The score was re-used extensively in BACK TO BATAAN.
Everything looks very authentic--but then you remember that it was
all contemporary with the filmmakers. (Jackson works at
authenticity, but the very quality of the picture image works
against him.)
They sail for six weeks before the screen test. At the typical
tramp steamer speed of 10 knots, that would be about 10,000 miles,
which would take them around the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian
Ocean and into the East Indies "way west of Sumatra". They then
head southwest, but since they have come from the west, this means
they are doubling back. It seems unlikely they would use the
Panama Canal, which would increase their costs and means crossing
the Pacific with no convenient stops to replenish food or water.
Ann's dress for the screen test seems very racy for the time, with
the decoration on the lower half pointing between her legs both
from above and below.
Ann's reaction during the screen test "jumps the gun" in that she
reacts as she would to Kong but not as Denham's direction
indicates. He tells her she "can't believe it" and is "amazed",
and she looks terrified--*before* he tells her "it's horrible".
Also, he suggests she should scream, but she doesn't, as if she
knows she is supposed to be too terrified.
The natives look far more African than southeast or southern Asian,
and in particular more west African. This is undoubtedly because
the extras were Americans of primary west African descent.
Similarly their shields are more African than Asian. I suppose one
could argue that the island is close to Africa, but if the language
is similar to that of the Nias Islands, that implies a much closer
ethnographic connection to Sumatra than to Africa. (Harryhausen
reported on the commentary track that when he went to the Nias
Islands, they people there were definitely Asian rather than
African.)
Engelhorn's and Jack's caps have some sort of nautical symbol on
the front, but how likely is it on a tramp steamer that they would
have something like that rather than an ordinary undecorated cap?
Ann just happens to be standing next to where the ladder is
attached on the exterior of the ship, which is very convenient for
the natives who want to kidnap her.
When Driscoll announces as they're shoving the lifeboat over the
edge, "They've taken Ann!" who is he telling this to? Everyone on
the ship already knows this.
The wall is supposedly kept in repair, but Kong can break through
when he wants to.
The bolt on the gate being put in place is much less phallic than
the almost identical scene in the 1976 version. This may be
because it is square in cross-section rather than round, and also
that the wood grain is clearer.
Contrary to all rules of rank, Driscoll takes charge of the rescue
party, giving orders even to the captain.
The brontosaurus drags its tail. Also, the neck is probably a bit
more flexible and agile than a real dinosaur's would be.
The removal of the arsinothere makes inexplicable the fact that the
men don't retreat off the near end of the log.
The Tyrannosaur rex has allosaur hands, and its arms are too long
(or incorrectly placed), since it should not be able to reach its
own mouth.
Not only does Kong's face change between the stop motion and the
giant model head, but the dentition varies on the model head
between scenes, indicating there may have been more than one model
head. For example, when Kong first appears and takes Ann, his
teeth seem to have vertical brown stripes. When he picks her up
after the fight with the Tyrannosaurus rex, his teeth are
completely white.
And the stop motion head is different in the log and Tyrannosaurus
rex scenes than other times, because those were shot first as test
sequences. Cooper did not like that shape head, and had a
different shape made, but could not re-shoot those sequences. For
that matter, Kong himself looks more gray and less black in that
scene.
When they first arrive at the island, Skull Mountain seems to be
very close to the wall. Yet it takes Kong and the men following
him almost a full day to arrive at his lair in one of the eye
sockets, going through forests, across a large swamp, and over a
chasm. And when Jack and Ann return, they also apparently come a
long distance.
The hotel room has two small lamps that are lit, but clearly it is
getting 95% of its light from a much larger overhead source.
The number on the subway car, 4779, has peculiar-looking 7's. They
are actually upside-down 2's (and vice versa), which probably made
it cheaper to order numbers for the cars--they would need only 8
templates (with 2/7 and 6/9 identical).
The top of the Empire State Building is different in this film from
that in Jackson's film.
Fay Wray always claims when Cooper told her that she would be
starring opposite the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood,
she thought he meant Cary Grant. But when they were casting KING
KONG, Grant had not yet achieved any real fame in Hollywood. (On
the other hand, she seems to have had some sort of relationship
with Grant, so maybe she knew of him even then.) [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE LIGHTS IN THE TUNNEL by Martin Ford (book review by
Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
THE LIGHTS IN THE TUNNEL by Martin Ford, subtitled "Automation,
Accelerating Technology, and the Economy of the Future", is
probably the first book I've read that deals realistically with our
most probable economic future. Written by a Silicon Valley
entrepreneur trained in computer engineering at Michigan and with
an MBA from University of California, he has a unique set of
insights into our current situation. If he is correct, the current
"jobless recovery" is a harbinger of things to come--a "jobless
economy."
Ford's fundamental point is that well before we get to anything
like the Singularity, the technology to eliminate most of today's
current jobs will exist and be implemented, resulting in, say,
perhaps 75% unemployment. To allow this situation to come into
being without addressing it is akin to national suicide. In Ford's
view, this probable future threatens modern capitalism itself,
which depends on a mass consumer market. Take away the consumers
with money in their pockets, and the whole economy collapses.
There is a certain similarity between Ford's thinking and that of
some Democrats and left-wing leaders, but he does not appear to
operate from an ideological motivation. Instead, his brief is that
in order to preserve capitalism, we must separate income from jobs,
and find a way to tax businesses with large profits but fewer and
fewer actual employees.
The need to develop reliable robots will restrain the replacement
of many blue-collar and pink-collar jobs for a while, but I fear
that the rapid advance of artificial neural nets, which are just
now reaching human equivalence for many important tasks, will lead
directly and rapidly to the replacement of many human "symbolic
analysts" such as radiologists and bond traders. The shrinkage of
manufacturing employment will continue even as actual production
rebounds. This leads directly to a hollowing out of the middle
class, leaving a tiny upper crust of high-level symbolic analysts,
popular artists and performers, and so on with a higher standard of
living than ever, a vast sea of low paid employees like physical
therapists and hairdressers, and an even vaster sea of the
unemployed. The sudden expansion of massive, low-cost on-line
courses suggests that the education sector will eventually be
subject to competitive pressures, and special-purpose robots for
cooking fast food are in development at start up companies as I
write this.
We can see our end coming rather clearly here, so what is to be
done? Ford suggests that we need to "recapture" via taxes the
income that would in the past have gone to employees, but now is
going either to the owners of the businesses, or to customers in
the form of lower prices. This suggests higher, more progressive
income taxes, high taxes on dividends and capital gains, and some
form of VAT or consumption tax to recapture the surplus distributed
as lower prices. Ford recognizes that part of the trick here is
that [a] the tax burden cannot be too high, or it will stall the
economy, and [b] you need to get the money in the hands of the
broad population, not special interest groups like public employee
unions or particular industries. To quote Ford "An absolute
firewall should be established between this special function of
government and the funds used for general government operation."
Ford wisely recognizes that simply collecting taxes and passing
them out in equal amounts to everyone as kind of "negative income
tax" would, eventually, be a disaster. All of the positive aspects
of jobs in building character would be lost, leading to a Morlocks
and the Eloi scenario. Ford suggests that the money be doled out,
not in equal amounts, but based on a system of incentives that will
have positive benefits to society. He considers payments for
continuing your education, for performing socially useful tasks,
such as assisting in a nursing home, for behaving in
environmentally sustainable ways, and for producing journalistic
content. I find Ford's ideas on how this might be managed to be
naive and unlikely to work, but the fundamental concept has merit.
Ford does not mention this, but any time a consumer writes a
detailed product review, they are aiding other consumers to make
wise choices, and this could be one of the activities rewarded. In
this future world, I would be paid something for producing this
review, Mark Leeper would be paid for each movie review he writes,
we would all be paid for the amount we recycle, and we would get a
stipend while attending school full time. Ford's idea of a
government committee managing the distribution of funds to these
tasks strikes me as being wholly unworkable, however.
Some of these payments are easier to make work than others. For
example, a fund could be established from which businesses could
withdraw money for the sole purpose of paying those who review
their products. Some businesses might only pay for positive
review, but Consumer Reports magazine would pay for all reviews.
This avoids the need for a government committee deciding how much
the awards are and who to give them to. Presumably the players
involved would pay a nominal amount for a review like "product is
great" and quite a bit for a full-length, professional review. A
really smart company would offer a very large bonus for any
suggestion they actually adopted that proved popular. Thus, an
incentive would still exist for reviewers to exert themselves.
The education payment idea is also relatively easy to manage,
although it would work best with a two-tier approach. Half the
money might be allocated to everyone taking classes based on the
number of credits they are taking, with full time students getting
substantially more than part time students. The other half would
be available to businesses that could apply it to scholarships for
non-employees to take up courses of study that the business that
might be useful. The businesses would be responsible for selecting
the students and approving the scholarships.
Although Ford is not an economist, the book is well thought out and
full of new ideas. The "Lights" referred to in title are not the
headlights of an oncoming train, but part of a quite useful analogy
that describes how capitalism works. I leave this for you to
enjoy when you read the book. Ford also has a blog at
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/ which you might find interesting.
Ford seems to have overlooked the possibility that the evolution
from AI that can replace most symbolic workers to super-human AI
that brings on the Singularity may be very rapid. I suggest
reading SINGULARITY RISING by James D. Miller, who is an actual
economist, for a sense of what might follow. Ford deserves a lot
of credit for focusing on technology-based unemployment and trying
to find real solutions. The traditional Republican answer of "cut
taxes and regulations" will be worse than useless, and the
traditional Democratic answer of "more taxes, more education, more
infrastructure, and more regulation," although not completely
useless, is not a real solution either.
I highly recommend THE LIGHTS IN THE TUNNEL, and look forward to
reading more viewpoints on this topic as economists and other
commentators start to seriously engage with our real future.
[-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Fun with Storms (comments by Kip Williams)
In response to Mark's comments on Sandy in various recent issues of
the MT VOID, Kip Williams writes:
We went through Isabel in 2003, when Sarah was a year old. It was
an exciting night, with howling wind-driven rain bending trees this
way and that. Sarah wanted to go outside and look at it but had to
content herself standing by the glass doors in the den. After a
couple of hours, our power went off. A while later, we went to
bed.
In the morning, it was quiet, and the air had a scrubbed feeling.
Our yard was full of sticks and leaves. Trees fell everywhere, but
none on our property. We couldn't drive out of the neighborhood
until neighbors with chainsaws had gotten trees out of enough
streets to allow single-file car processions around things.
I went out the first morning after (it was in summer) on my bike,
and found the Harris Teeter grocery open. Inside was a hushed,
twilit scene powered by generators. We could only buy canned food,
and they gave away gallons of spring water and bags of ice. I
couldn't find any cell phone coverage.
Our next-door neighbors had a loud generator that turned itself on
and off through the night. Next morning, the apartment building
behind us got their power back. We didn't. People across the
street got their barbecue equipment out and had neighborhood meals
every day. A time or two, we visited friends to use their showers
and what-not.
At home, I set up our little propane stove in the garage with the
door open for ventilation. I made Spaghetti-os, and heated water
to wash dishes in once or twice. The freezer became a fridge, and
then a cupboard, and then all the perishables went into the
garbage.
On the eleventh day, I got word from a neighbor that Lowe's (or was
it Home Depot?) was selling generators, so I headed over there. By
this time, we could drive in and out at will, and the library Cathy
worked at had power, so we had gone there a time or two to gawk at
electric lights. Anyway, I looked at the little generators and got
a slightly bigger one. I brought it home and set it up just
outside the garage and ran extension cords into the house. We had
light! And a fan! (Sarah didn't quite grasp why it was so hot and
thirsty all the time, or why we didn't turn the computer or TV on.)
Electrical crews had been working on our street. Everybody in the
neighborhood cheered their arrival and cheered them again when they
drove away. An hour or two after getting the generator going, they
restored our power. A minute later, our friend Mike showed up. "I
bring you... Power!" he said, with a magical gesture. As he drove
up our street, he said, lights were coming on in houses, and he was
hoping to hit it just right, but he missed it by that much. The
crew that restored our juice was from Georgia. The house started a
low humming as the air conditioning came back on and the water
began to heat up again.
FEMA paid for our generator, which we still have. I fire it up
three times a year or so to make sure it's working, and rotate the
gas in the five-gallon jugs in the garage so it's usually less than
a year old. I told cashiers at Harris Teeter that they earned our
business for as long as we lived in Virginia. It was an easy
resolution to keep. They had good prices and nice sushi.
Our neighbors across the pond lost dozens of trees from their
place. They cut a pile of trunks the size of a large U-Haul, which
waited weeks for removal. When it was gone, they put another pile
the same size there. Some of the ducks were looking at it as a
nice permanent spot for a nest. "It's in a good school district,"
one duck said. "And so close to the shopping center." Stupid
ducks.
We moved away in 2005. By that time, all the houses were fixed up
again, and all the uprooted trees had been taken care of. [-kw]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I just read William E. Gladstone's HOMER (no ISBN). This is a
"digitally remastered" POD book printed by Forgotten Books, which
has reproduced the copy from the University of Toronto Library so
faithfully that they even photocopied the page with the Acme
Library Card Pocket on it. This could probably be considered the
introduction to Gladstone's many more specific books about Homer,
such as "Homeric Synchronism: An Enquiry into the Time and Place of
Homer" and "Studies On Homer And The Homeric Age V1: Prolegomena
Achaeis Or The Ethnology Of The Greek Races". It covers history,
cosmology, geography, mythology, ethnography, ethics, politics, and
the arts, entirely based on what one finds in Homer (with some
passing references to Egyptian mythology, Hebrew religion, and
later Greek developments). Reading it, I was reminded of all those
stories where the people of the future, or aliens from another
planet, attempt to reconstruct our society from a motel room, or a
single Disney cartoon, or a shopping list. The classic in this
area is probably THE WEANS by Robert Nathan, where the people of
the future call us the "We-ans" (apparently derived from the
neologism "US-ian" instead of "American"). (I cannot remember if
this is the book in which the people from the future think that the
names "Washington" and "Churchill" have all sorts of symbolic
meaning.) The best-known of these would be THE MOTEL OF THE
MYSTERIES by David Macaulay.
Of course, Gladstone did not think of what he was doing in this
context. No one had written this sort of thing as science fiction,
and there was a great tradition of attempting to reconstruct the
past from very little material. In fact, one still sees it today
in Biblical literalists.
As I was reading this, it occurred to me that among the many
differences between American Presidents and British Prime
Ministers, one is that there seem to be more "first-rank" authors
among the British Prime Ministers.
There are, of course, two basic ways to rate authors. One is by
the generally accepted critical view of their writing. The other
is by whether people still read them. (Of course, these days the
probability that any non-current author is read for pleasure is
very low.)
Of the Prime Ministers, the major authors would include Benjamin
Disraeli (novels), Winston Churchill (histories), and William
Gladstone (Homeric studies). Of the Presidents, the major authors
would be Ulysses S. Grant (memoirs) and Theodore Roosevelt
(histories and travel). However, while Roosevelt wrote many books,
Grant wrote only one, meaning that the difference between the
British and Americans is even more skewed.
I am not counting the obligatory books that every President seems
to write (or have ghost-written from his notes), one or two before
he is elected telling his life story, etc., and then another couple
after leaving office, talking about his time in office. They are
all over the place, and generally have little lasting literary
merit. I would be astonished if any of these were read in a
hundred and fifty years the way Grant's memoirs are now. Nor am I
counting the collected speeches of, or the wit and wisdom of, or
the any other ad hoc collections of Presidential verbiage.
As another opinion, last year Charli James compiled a list of the
"Top 10 Books Written By Our Presidents". And they were, in
chronological order:
- George Washington's "Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in
Company and Conversation"
- James Madison, contributions to The Federalist Papers.
- Abraham Lincoln's speeches and writings
- Ulysses Grant's "Personal Memoirs"
- Theodore Roosevelt's "The Rough Riders"
- Harry S Truman's "Memoirs: 1945 Year of Decisions"
- John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage"
- Jimmy Carter's "The Hornet's Nest: a Novel of the Revolutionary
War"
- Ronald Reagan's "The Reagan Diaries"
- Barack Obama's "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and
Inheritance"
Madison's and Lincoln's entries are collections of writings, not
"intentional" books. Kennedy's book is widely considered to have
been written mostly by his research assistants. Whether the others
have staying power is hard to say. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Some books make me want to go adventuring,
others feel that they have saved me the trouble.
--Ashleigh Brilliant