Found via Futurismic, here's a post about the potential use of solid state lasers for space propulsion. (It contains a link to this series of slides about a proposed modular laser launch system.)
All this talk is inspired by recent success in powering up solid state lasers.
What with heat beam weapons, laser battle guns, and a return to the Moon, the 21st century is starting to look as if it might live up to a futuristic image after all. Just waiting for those flying cars and personal rocket belts, though.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Inherently safer nuclear (and free advice to the the Howard government)
Technology Review has an interesting article on "gen III & IV" reactors, which are basically designed to be simpler and inherently safer than current reactor designs.
As you may expect, pebble bed reactors get a mention, but so does another reactor (the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor) which would, like Pebble Beds, could automatically shut down without any outside intervention:
The ESBWR replaces previous reactors' complex systems for residual heat removal with a design that uses no pumps or emergency generators--in fact, it possesses no moving parts at all, except for the neutron-absorbing control rods that are pulled partway out from its core so that nuclear fission can proceed. That fission reaction boils the water in the ESBWR's core, which becomes steam that gets carried away to large tubes in which it rises, releases its energy to turbines, and then condenses so that gravity causes it to flow back down to the core as water again. In short, the ESBWR runs wholly on natural circulatory forces. Rao says, "It could not be simpler. The control rods get pulled out, water comes in, and steam goes out, carrying heat that gets turned into electricity."
But even other, more complicated designs, are still much better than older plants:
This simplicity of design also features in other gen-III reactor designs like the Westinghouse AP1000, which has 60 percent fewer valves, 75 percent less piping, 80 percent less control cabling, 35 percent fewer pumps, and 50 percent less seismic building volume than currently operational reactors. This trend becomes more pronounced in gen-IV designs like the pebble bed reactor. In conjunction with "the modern computer-aided manufacturing technologies currently used most extensively in the ship-building industry," Peterson says, what's now possible is a modular approach to nuclear-plant construction, whereby large segments of the plants will be prefabricated in factories.
It seems to me that if the Howard government wants to defuse some of the Labor Party's "tell us where in Australia would you locate a reactor" scare campaign, it should be talking loudly about these new reactor designs which are safer, cheaper, and probably just becoming available when we would want our first reactor anyway.
It may be premature to do so, but it could be even better to commit to only allowing reactors with strong passive safety, such as a pebble bed or that ESBRW described above. I mean, if the thing can't melt down, even if something goes wrong while everyone is at the Christmas picnic, that has to be a strong selling point in the public's mind.
This aspect of the future of nuclear power generation is not getting the publicity it deserves.
My other advice to John Howard: it's not too late to get rid of that goose of a Defence Minister Brendan Nelson.
As you may expect, pebble bed reactors get a mention, but so does another reactor (the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor) which would, like Pebble Beds, could automatically shut down without any outside intervention:
The ESBWR replaces previous reactors' complex systems for residual heat removal with a design that uses no pumps or emergency generators--in fact, it possesses no moving parts at all, except for the neutron-absorbing control rods that are pulled partway out from its core so that nuclear fission can proceed. That fission reaction boils the water in the ESBWR's core, which becomes steam that gets carried away to large tubes in which it rises, releases its energy to turbines, and then condenses so that gravity causes it to flow back down to the core as water again. In short, the ESBWR runs wholly on natural circulatory forces. Rao says, "It could not be simpler. The control rods get pulled out, water comes in, and steam goes out, carrying heat that gets turned into electricity."
But even other, more complicated designs, are still much better than older plants:
This simplicity of design also features in other gen-III reactor designs like the Westinghouse AP1000, which has 60 percent fewer valves, 75 percent less piping, 80 percent less control cabling, 35 percent fewer pumps, and 50 percent less seismic building volume than currently operational reactors. This trend becomes more pronounced in gen-IV designs like the pebble bed reactor. In conjunction with "the modern computer-aided manufacturing technologies currently used most extensively in the ship-building industry," Peterson says, what's now possible is a modular approach to nuclear-plant construction, whereby large segments of the plants will be prefabricated in factories.
It seems to me that if the Howard government wants to defuse some of the Labor Party's "tell us where in Australia would you locate a reactor" scare campaign, it should be talking loudly about these new reactor designs which are safer, cheaper, and probably just becoming available when we would want our first reactor anyway.
It may be premature to do so, but it could be even better to commit to only allowing reactors with strong passive safety, such as a pebble bed or that ESBRW described above. I mean, if the thing can't melt down, even if something goes wrong while everyone is at the Christmas picnic, that has to be a strong selling point in the public's mind.
This aspect of the future of nuclear power generation is not getting the publicity it deserves.
My other advice to John Howard: it's not too late to get rid of that goose of a Defence Minister Brendan Nelson.
The Economist on reasons to be skeptical about carbon offsets
This Economist blog entry seems to be a good and simple explanation of why any carbon offset scheme is a very dubious exercise. The crucial paragraph:
When you donate money to build a new windfarm, you don't take any of the old, polluting power offline; you increase the supply of power, reducing the price until others are encouraged to buy more carbon-emitting power. On the margin, it may make some difference, since demand for electricity is not perfectly elastic, but nowhere near the one-for-one equivalence that carbon offsets would seem to suggest. Especially since the worst offenders, big coal-fired plants, are not the ones that renewables will substitute for; solar and wind power are not good replacements for baseload power. Instead, renewables are likely to take relatively clean (and expensive) natural gas plants offline, since those are the ones that provide "extra" power to the system. Similarly, by giving villagers in Goa energy-saving CFL bulbs, you do not lessen the amount of electricity consumed; rather, you make it possible for other people to purchase the extra energy freed up by more efficient lightbulbs. This may be excellent poverty policy, but it does not lessen the carbon footprint of your international flight.
The post is inspired by Al Gore's defence of his very energy hungry house by his use of carbon offsets.
No one has commented on the post at The Economist yet. I have no doubt there will be carbon offset defenders coming out in Al's defence, but it will interesting to see if they can counter the basic argument.
When you donate money to build a new windfarm, you don't take any of the old, polluting power offline; you increase the supply of power, reducing the price until others are encouraged to buy more carbon-emitting power. On the margin, it may make some difference, since demand for electricity is not perfectly elastic, but nowhere near the one-for-one equivalence that carbon offsets would seem to suggest. Especially since the worst offenders, big coal-fired plants, are not the ones that renewables will substitute for; solar and wind power are not good replacements for baseload power. Instead, renewables are likely to take relatively clean (and expensive) natural gas plants offline, since those are the ones that provide "extra" power to the system. Similarly, by giving villagers in Goa energy-saving CFL bulbs, you do not lessen the amount of electricity consumed; rather, you make it possible for other people to purchase the extra energy freed up by more efficient lightbulbs. This may be excellent poverty policy, but it does not lessen the carbon footprint of your international flight.
The post is inspired by Al Gore's defence of his very energy hungry house by his use of carbon offsets.
No one has commented on the post at The Economist yet. I have no doubt there will be carbon offset defenders coming out in Al's defence, but it will interesting to see if they can counter the basic argument.
By coincidence...
It must be dissection day here. I just stumbled across a review of a biography of an important figure in the history of surgery and dissection (not that I have heard of him before.) His name: Astley Cooper. From the New Statesman review:
In 1792, with a revolutionary glint in his eye, he made a pilgrimage to Paris, and was an appalled witness to the violence of the mob as they processed through the streets with bits of the bodies they had torn apart, like a grotesque parody of the enlightened surgical techniques he had gone there to learn....
Burch doesn't gloss over the unpleasant aspects of Cooper's personality: the vanity that sometimes confused the "theatre" of surgery with a love of self-display; the clumsy sense of humour that led him once to ask his hairdresser to reach into a tub of hair powder which he had replaced with monkey entrails; the willingness to use body-snatchers in his quest for new anatomical specimens; and especially the obsession with dissection that seemed to go well beyond the needs of medical science. If some of Cooper's experiments are hard to stomach, such as his decision to close the urethra of a rabbit merely to see what would happen (the rabbit died a slow and painful death), others are merely hard to fathom. One wonders what contribution to the knowledge of human anatomy was made by his public dissection of, among others, "elephants, cuttlefish, baboons, polar bears, walruses, lemurs, leopards, the lymphatics of a porpoise, kangeroos, tortoises, porcupines, panthers and seals and the stomach of a cormorant".
Quite the dissecting showman, wasn't he.
In 1792, with a revolutionary glint in his eye, he made a pilgrimage to Paris, and was an appalled witness to the violence of the mob as they processed through the streets with bits of the bodies they had torn apart, like a grotesque parody of the enlightened surgical techniques he had gone there to learn....
Burch doesn't gloss over the unpleasant aspects of Cooper's personality: the vanity that sometimes confused the "theatre" of surgery with a love of self-display; the clumsy sense of humour that led him once to ask his hairdresser to reach into a tub of hair powder which he had replaced with monkey entrails; the willingness to use body-snatchers in his quest for new anatomical specimens; and especially the obsession with dissection that seemed to go well beyond the needs of medical science. If some of Cooper's experiments are hard to stomach, such as his decision to close the urethra of a rabbit merely to see what would happen (the rabbit died a slow and painful death), others are merely hard to fathom. One wonders what contribution to the knowledge of human anatomy was made by his public dissection of, among others, "elephants, cuttlefish, baboons, polar bears, walruses, lemurs, leopards, the lymphatics of a porpoise, kangeroos, tortoises, porcupines, panthers and seals and the stomach of a cormorant".
Quite the dissecting showman, wasn't he.
Gruesome WWII story
The Times has an article about an old Japanese guy who talks about his gruesome war time activities:
Over the course of four months before the defeat of the Japanese forces in March 1945, Mr Makino cut open the bodies of ten Filipino prisoners, including two teenage girls. He amputated their limbs, and cut up and removed their healthy livers, kidneys, wombs and still beating hearts for no better reason than to improve his knowledge of anatomy.
“It was educational,” he said. “Even today when I go to see doctors, they are impressed by my knowledge of the human body. But if I’m really honest, the reason we did it was to take revenge on these people who were spying for the Americans. Now, of course I feel terrible about the cruel thing that I did, and I think of it so often. But at the time what I felt for these people was closer to hatred than to pity.”...
The “operation” took about an hour; when it was over the body was sewn up and thrown into a hole in the earth. Eight more vivisections followed, Mr Makino said, up to three hours long. “Over the course of time, I got used to it,” he said. “We removed some of the organs, and amputated legs and arms. Two of the victims were women, young women, 18 or 19 years old. I hesitate to say it, but we opened up their wombs to show the younger soldiers. They knew very little about women - it was sex education.
Rather like young boys who play cruelly with insects, isn't it?
And some Japanese wonder why people get upset over visits to Yasukuni Shrine.
Over the course of four months before the defeat of the Japanese forces in March 1945, Mr Makino cut open the bodies of ten Filipino prisoners, including two teenage girls. He amputated their limbs, and cut up and removed their healthy livers, kidneys, wombs and still beating hearts for no better reason than to improve his knowledge of anatomy.
“It was educational,” he said. “Even today when I go to see doctors, they are impressed by my knowledge of the human body. But if I’m really honest, the reason we did it was to take revenge on these people who were spying for the Americans. Now, of course I feel terrible about the cruel thing that I did, and I think of it so often. But at the time what I felt for these people was closer to hatred than to pity.”...
The “operation” took about an hour; when it was over the body was sewn up and thrown into a hole in the earth. Eight more vivisections followed, Mr Makino said, up to three hours long. “Over the course of time, I got used to it,” he said. “We removed some of the organs, and amputated legs and arms. Two of the victims were women, young women, 18 or 19 years old. I hesitate to say it, but we opened up their wombs to show the younger soldiers. They knew very little about women - it was sex education.
Rather like young boys who play cruelly with insects, isn't it?
And some Japanese wonder why people get upset over visits to Yasukuni Shrine.
A fundamental problem for Hawking Radiation?
PhysOrg brings to attention a paper on the black hole information paradox that seems to be important to the issue of whether Hawking Radiation really exists. (Well, I think that is one possible implication of the article, even though that is not stated in explicit plain English.)
The actual paper is here. (Actually, it seems to be a year old, so why is PhysOrg running it now?)
Its conclusion:
A robust statement of this result leads to a severe formulation of the black-hole information paradox: Either unitarity fails or Hawking’s semi-classical predictions must break down. The
no-hiding theorem rigorously rules out any “third possibility” that the information escapes from the black hole but is nevertheless inaccessible as it is hidden in correlations between semi-classical Hawking radiation and the black hole’s internal state. This provides a criterion to test any proposed resolution of the paradox: Any resolution that preserves unitarity must predict a breakdown in Hawking’s analysis [2] even for cosmologically-sized black holes.
Hey, I didn't say it was easy! But I am assuming that a "breakdown in Hawking's analysis" means that possibly Hawking Radiation doesn't exist. (Which, for any new readers of this blog, is relevant to the issue of whether micro black holes that may be created at CERN soon will evaporate and be no danger to the Earth.)
The actual paper is here. (Actually, it seems to be a year old, so why is PhysOrg running it now?)
Its conclusion:
A robust statement of this result leads to a severe formulation of the black-hole information paradox: Either unitarity fails or Hawking’s semi-classical predictions must break down. The
no-hiding theorem rigorously rules out any “third possibility” that the information escapes from the black hole but is nevertheless inaccessible as it is hidden in correlations between semi-classical Hawking radiation and the black hole’s internal state. This provides a criterion to test any proposed resolution of the paradox: Any resolution that preserves unitarity must predict a breakdown in Hawking’s analysis [2] even for cosmologically-sized black holes.
Hey, I didn't say it was easy! But I am assuming that a "breakdown in Hawking's analysis" means that possibly Hawking Radiation doesn't exist. (Which, for any new readers of this blog, is relevant to the issue of whether micro black holes that may be created at CERN soon will evaporate and be no danger to the Earth.)
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Gender and India
For a detailed report on the terrible problem of gender imbalance in India (caused primarily by gender selecting abortion), this Washington Times report is worth reading. Some extracts:
Many families therefore elect to not have a girl at all. Medical clinics -- which Sister Mary calls "womb raiders" -- have advertised "better 500 rupees now [for an abortion] rather than 50,000 rupees later" [for a dowry]. The first amount is about $11; the second is $1,100.
Dowries are theoretically banned under the 1961 Dowry Prohibition Act, but enforcement is poor and other religious groups such as Muslims and Christians have been caught up in the custom...
Surprisingly, it seems it is the richer areas that have the biggest problem:
She cites the Indian state of Haryana, just north of New Delhi, which has the country's second highest per capita income. It also has India's second worst sex ratio, after Punjab state to the west. For every 1,000 boys born in Haryana, just 820 girls were born, according to the 2001 census. In 1991, it was 879 girls.
Punjab is similarly wealthy; thus, instead of the poor killing their children, it's the rich, says Ms. Chowdhry, a former senior fellow at the Nehru Memorial Institute and Library.
"Punjab and Haryana are the two highest per capita income states, but they have such regressive trends," she says. "How can they call themselves modern?"
As for the extent of the problem worldwide:
Early this year, the British medical journal Lancet estimated the male-female gap at 43 million. Worldwide, Lancet said, there are 100 million "missing girls" who should have been born but were not. Fifty million of them would have been Chinese and 43 million would have been Indian. The rest would have been born in Afghanistan, South Korea, Pakistan and Nepal.
China gave an even bleaker assessment last month, with the government saying that its men will outnumber women in the year 2020 by 300 million.
There's a serious need for cultural re-education here.
UPDATE: if you don't trust the Washington Times on anything because of its right wing politics, you can read pretty much the same story (better written too) at The Guardian. The article confirms that richer areas in fact have the bigger problem:
India's paradox is that prosperity has not meant progress. Development has not erased traditional values: in fact, selective abortion has been accelerated in a globalising India. On the one hand there has been new money and an awareness of family planning - so family sizes get smaller. But wealthier - and better- educated - Indians still want sons. A recent survey revealed that female foeticide was highest among women with university degrees.
Wow. How is this going to be dealt with when even better education of the women is not helping?
Many families therefore elect to not have a girl at all. Medical clinics -- which Sister Mary calls "womb raiders" -- have advertised "better 500 rupees now [for an abortion] rather than 50,000 rupees later" [for a dowry]. The first amount is about $11; the second is $1,100.
Dowries are theoretically banned under the 1961 Dowry Prohibition Act, but enforcement is poor and other religious groups such as Muslims and Christians have been caught up in the custom...
Surprisingly, it seems it is the richer areas that have the biggest problem:
She cites the Indian state of Haryana, just north of New Delhi, which has the country's second highest per capita income. It also has India's second worst sex ratio, after Punjab state to the west. For every 1,000 boys born in Haryana, just 820 girls were born, according to the 2001 census. In 1991, it was 879 girls.
Punjab is similarly wealthy; thus, instead of the poor killing their children, it's the rich, says Ms. Chowdhry, a former senior fellow at the Nehru Memorial Institute and Library.
"Punjab and Haryana are the two highest per capita income states, but they have such regressive trends," she says. "How can they call themselves modern?"
As for the extent of the problem worldwide:
Early this year, the British medical journal Lancet estimated the male-female gap at 43 million. Worldwide, Lancet said, there are 100 million "missing girls" who should have been born but were not. Fifty million of them would have been Chinese and 43 million would have been Indian. The rest would have been born in Afghanistan, South Korea, Pakistan and Nepal.
China gave an even bleaker assessment last month, with the government saying that its men will outnumber women in the year 2020 by 300 million.
There's a serious need for cultural re-education here.
UPDATE: if you don't trust the Washington Times on anything because of its right wing politics, you can read pretty much the same story (better written too) at The Guardian. The article confirms that richer areas in fact have the bigger problem:
India's paradox is that prosperity has not meant progress. Development has not erased traditional values: in fact, selective abortion has been accelerated in a globalising India. On the one hand there has been new money and an awareness of family planning - so family sizes get smaller. But wealthier - and better- educated - Indians still want sons. A recent survey revealed that female foeticide was highest among women with university degrees.
Wow. How is this going to be dealt with when even better education of the women is not helping?
The upside of gloom
There's an interesting piece in the Guardian about the pessimism of the European liberal intelligentsia. I like the last two paragraphs:
...instead of optimism we have a kind of European baby-boomer guilt - the feeling that we are the last privileged generation. And it is definitely a European thing - you do not find the same gloom in rising parts of the world or in the US. And if Europeans in general tend towards pessimism as a reflection of their reduced weight in the world, perhaps European intellectuals are even more pessimistic as a reflection of their reduced weight in their own societies too.
...instead of optimism we have a kind of European baby-boomer guilt - the feeling that we are the last privileged generation. And it is definitely a European thing - you do not find the same gloom in rising parts of the world or in the US. And if Europeans in general tend towards pessimism as a reflection of their reduced weight in the world, perhaps European intellectuals are even more pessimistic as a reflection of their reduced weight in their own societies too.
But perhaps we should draw some optimism from the pessimism of the British and European thinking classes. After all, 100 years ago the main emotion in politics was hope - and then look what happened. The despairing tone of some of these responses may be a sign that we are on the threshold of a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity.
Reasons not to visit Saudi Arabia
From the IHT:
Three Frenchmen who lived Saudi Arabia were killed by gunmen Monday in the desert on the side of a road leading to the holy city of Medina in an area restricted to Muslims only....
Three Frenchmen who lived Saudi Arabia were killed by gunmen Monday in the desert on the side of a road leading to the holy city of Medina in an area restricted to Muslims only....
The men were resting on the side of a road about 17 kilometers (10.6 miles) north of Medina when gunmen fired at their car, instantly killing two of them, al-Turki said. The third man died later after he was taken to a hospital, and the fourth Frenchman was in serious condition at an area hospital, al-Turki said.
Women and children also were with the group but they were uninjured, the Interior Ministry spokesman said.
The area the group was traveling in is restricted for Muslims only. Non-Muslims are barred from the area around Medina and neighboring Mecca, the holiest cities in Islam. ...
Al-Turki said the group was probably making a Muslim pilgrimage. But it was possible they were traveling to another ancient site north of Medina where the Saudi government recently started allowing non-Muslims to visit.
Were they killed for not looking like Muslims? Nice country.Monday, February 26, 2007
Oh no, Maxine
I liked Maxine McKew as a journalist and had no objection to her working for Kevin Rudd. But she's straining the (entirely one way) friendship by deciding to run for Parliament, and choosing the PM's electorate in which to do it.
Even before it was known whether she really wanted to run for Parliament, it seemed to me that her background as the journalist with whom politicians of both sides could enjoy a friendly lunch/interview (even though it may have been "on the record") made it a little unfair of her to now want to actually be a political player. Isn't it likely that as a politician she is in a position to abuse information gleaned in her former occupation, which probably traded to some extent on a perceived trustworthiness to keep certain comments and asides confidential?
You could probably argue this for almost all political journalists, and say that you can't have a rule that they should not run for Parliament.
But still, with McKew, it seems to me a question of the style of some of her journalism which makes it questionable. Of course, all Liberals interviewed by her knew she was married to a key Labor identity, and that may have made them more cautious anyway, but I don't know. Maybe she was still able to charm comments out of them which they would now regret having made.
The other argument may be that she could cause just as much harm by being a Rudd staffer anyway. That would be true, but all politicians need media advisors and they are often former journalists. I just feel that is part of the political territory, but I still don't like journalists running for Parliament, or at least ones that you can imagine politicians finding charming. (By this criteria, I would have no objection to Margo Kingston or Alan Ramsay running for Parliament!)
Even before it was known whether she really wanted to run for Parliament, it seemed to me that her background as the journalist with whom politicians of both sides could enjoy a friendly lunch/interview (even though it may have been "on the record") made it a little unfair of her to now want to actually be a political player. Isn't it likely that as a politician she is in a position to abuse information gleaned in her former occupation, which probably traded to some extent on a perceived trustworthiness to keep certain comments and asides confidential?
You could probably argue this for almost all political journalists, and say that you can't have a rule that they should not run for Parliament.
But still, with McKew, it seems to me a question of the style of some of her journalism which makes it questionable. Of course, all Liberals interviewed by her knew she was married to a key Labor identity, and that may have made them more cautious anyway, but I don't know. Maybe she was still able to charm comments out of them which they would now regret having made.
The other argument may be that she could cause just as much harm by being a Rudd staffer anyway. That would be true, but all politicians need media advisors and they are often former journalists. I just feel that is part of the political territory, but I still don't like journalists running for Parliament, or at least ones that you can imagine politicians finding charming. (By this criteria, I would have no objection to Margo Kingston or Alan Ramsay running for Parliament!)
Speaking of mice...
The Times provides a link to a Memri video in which an Iranian lecturer explains the secret meaning behind Tom & Jerry cartoons. It's all to do with the Jews, of course!
Bryan Appleyard's blog brought this to my attention. (Has it been on LGF before? If not, I guess it will be soon.)
Bryan Appleyard's blog brought this to my attention. (Has it been on LGF before? If not, I guess it will be soon.)
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Rat excitement in New York
Have a look at this story and video from the LA Times. It seems someone passing by a closed KFC in New York noticed a bunch of rats having the run the place. The news crews came and filmed it from outside. The audio is perhaps the best part, as you listen to a bunch of people getting grossed out by seeing this.
I find rats sort of cute, but there are limits as to where I would prefer to meet them.
I find rats sort of cute, but there are limits as to where I would prefer to meet them.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Rocket explosion over Australia
The ABC seems to be the only news outlet in Australia reporting this at the moment. Maybe other media will pick it up over the weekend, because the photos are very cool.
Pebble bed in China
The science show Catalyst on ABC last night had a story about a Chinese prototype pebble bed reactor. A transcript is available here, but unfortunately no video. (Maybe later?)
It gives the impression that it is working fine already, but the detail was slim. It was good to see what the "pebbles" actually look like.
It gives the impression that it is working fine already, but the detail was slim. It was good to see what the "pebbles" actually look like.
Profitable things to do on the Moon
There's a short article here about ideas for early profit from going to the Moon. Nothing too exciting yet.
I seem to recall that some years ago there was a proposal for privately funding a lunar rover to be operated remoting by paying customers on earth. Sounded cool to me.
Whoever does it, they really need to get some robotic exploration of interesting areas on the moon going. The lunar poles, and areas with possible lava tubes, are where I would be headed first.
I seem to recall that some years ago there was a proposal for privately funding a lunar rover to be operated remoting by paying customers on earth. Sounded cool to me.
Whoever does it, they really need to get some robotic exploration of interesting areas on the moon going. The lunar poles, and areas with possible lava tubes, are where I would be headed first.
Losing interest in cinema
Each year, my interest in the movies nominated for an Oscar seems to be reaching new lows never before seen. I mean, until perhaps 7 years ago, even if I haven't seen the films, it has been a matter of some regret that I have missed at least some of them. But in the last few years, my interest in nominated films has been virtually in free fall.
It is almost certainly something to do with my stage in life, and if I was younger I would take risks again in seeing movies which may or may not turn out to be better than expected. But at the moment, I am lucky to be seeing one adult movie a year at the cinema, plus maybe another 2 child-friendly ones. The one adult movie, chosen because by all accounts I should like it, has been a disappointment in the last few years.
I only saw the last Star Wars on DVD about 6 months ago. Disappointing. (I reckon Orson Scott Card did a good job criticising the vacuousness of its moral philosophy here.) It's gorgeous to look at, but even that is just a cover for inadequate emotional logic in the story telling. I liked Village Voice's take on the visual style:
In debt to lurid sci-fi-novel cover art, Revenge of the Sith achieves the ultimate in what could be called Baroque Nerdism, a frame-filling aesthetic of graphic overdesign that began with The Phantom Menace and has now been jacked up to an absurd degree. Half the film takes place at dawn or dusk, so that the Marin County team can geek out on artificial roseate glow—a sugary luminence used so frequently one wonders if they developed a Maxfield Parrish plug-in to get the job done. On metropolitan Coruscant, background windows buzz with distant air-cars of various models; on DVD zoom mode, they will likely reveal individual license plate numbers.
What about Babel, this year's serious movie Oscar contender? I am not encouraged by the David Denby review in the New Yorker:
My friend Herbert was rude to his mother last spring, and, some time later, Mt. St. Helens erupted. And three girls I met on the Central Park carrousel were kicked out of school for smoking, and the price of silver dropped by forty thousand rupiah in Indonesia. With these seemingly trivial events from my own life, I illustrate the dramatic principle by which the Mexican-born director Alejandro González Iñárritu makes his movies. Iñárritu, who made “Amores Perros” (2000), is one of the world’s most gifted filmmakers. But I had the same reaction to “Babel” that I had to his most recent movie, “21 Grams” (2003): he creates savagely beautiful and heartbreaking images; he gets fearless performances out of his actors; he edits with the sharpest razor in any computer in Hollywood; and he abuses his audience with a humorless fatalism and a piling up of calamities that borders on the ludicrous.
As I have commented before, I think cinema goes through joyless phases from time to time, but this current one is lasting an inordinately long time. It's like waiting for a drought to break.
UPDATE: good to see it's not just me. I wrote this post before I read this Slate story, claiming that some Oscar voters are deliberately leaving the "Best Movie" ballot blank!
Also, it's probably an appropriate time to note again that some of the loss of interest in cinema is partly to do with the lack of charm or reliable likeability in the current raft of mainstream Hollywood actors. Can't any studio sign up a bunch of new, young-ish stars and promote it a new start in something resembling the old studio talent system? (Sign them up to an updated morals clause too, so they can be dumped as soon as they start turning up at parties without underwear.)
UPDATE 2:
I just read Danny Katz talking about Babel:
There was a huge selection of teary, jerky movies this year: there was the chirpy-weepy Little Miss Sunshine, and the baklava-syrupy The Pursuit Of Happyness - but the award goes to Babel, which was so magnificently miserable, for two and a half hours, all I could hear was the cast crying, the audience crying, and even the projectionist crying, from inside his sound-proofed, triple-glazed glass booth. I saw this film with my friend, Roger, and afterwards we were so shattered by the powerful themes of human fear and cultural isolation, we sat down in a cafe and discussed the movie's most profound question: how do you pronounce "Babel"? - I thought it was pronounced "Babble" but Roger said it was pronounced "Bay-bel" and I said "No, I'm pretty sure it's Babble" and he said "NO, IT'S DEFINITELY BAY-BEL" and this went on for about an hour and a half, yeah I really love those intense kind of post-cinema intellectual discussions.
Made me laugh.
It is almost certainly something to do with my stage in life, and if I was younger I would take risks again in seeing movies which may or may not turn out to be better than expected. But at the moment, I am lucky to be seeing one adult movie a year at the cinema, plus maybe another 2 child-friendly ones. The one adult movie, chosen because by all accounts I should like it, has been a disappointment in the last few years.
I only saw the last Star Wars on DVD about 6 months ago. Disappointing. (I reckon Orson Scott Card did a good job criticising the vacuousness of its moral philosophy here.) It's gorgeous to look at, but even that is just a cover for inadequate emotional logic in the story telling. I liked Village Voice's take on the visual style:
In debt to lurid sci-fi-novel cover art, Revenge of the Sith achieves the ultimate in what could be called Baroque Nerdism, a frame-filling aesthetic of graphic overdesign that began with The Phantom Menace and has now been jacked up to an absurd degree. Half the film takes place at dawn or dusk, so that the Marin County team can geek out on artificial roseate glow—a sugary luminence used so frequently one wonders if they developed a Maxfield Parrish plug-in to get the job done. On metropolitan Coruscant, background windows buzz with distant air-cars of various models; on DVD zoom mode, they will likely reveal individual license plate numbers.
What about Babel, this year's serious movie Oscar contender? I am not encouraged by the David Denby review in the New Yorker:
My friend Herbert was rude to his mother last spring, and, some time later, Mt. St. Helens erupted. And three girls I met on the Central Park carrousel were kicked out of school for smoking, and the price of silver dropped by forty thousand rupiah in Indonesia. With these seemingly trivial events from my own life, I illustrate the dramatic principle by which the Mexican-born director Alejandro González Iñárritu makes his movies. Iñárritu, who made “Amores Perros” (2000), is one of the world’s most gifted filmmakers. But I had the same reaction to “Babel” that I had to his most recent movie, “21 Grams” (2003): he creates savagely beautiful and heartbreaking images; he gets fearless performances out of his actors; he edits with the sharpest razor in any computer in Hollywood; and he abuses his audience with a humorless fatalism and a piling up of calamities that borders on the ludicrous.
As I have commented before, I think cinema goes through joyless phases from time to time, but this current one is lasting an inordinately long time. It's like waiting for a drought to break.
UPDATE: good to see it's not just me. I wrote this post before I read this Slate story, claiming that some Oscar voters are deliberately leaving the "Best Movie" ballot blank!
Also, it's probably an appropriate time to note again that some of the loss of interest in cinema is partly to do with the lack of charm or reliable likeability in the current raft of mainstream Hollywood actors. Can't any studio sign up a bunch of new, young-ish stars and promote it a new start in something resembling the old studio talent system? (Sign them up to an updated morals clause too, so they can be dumped as soon as they start turning up at parties without underwear.)
UPDATE 2:
I just read Danny Katz talking about Babel:
There was a huge selection of teary, jerky movies this year: there was the chirpy-weepy Little Miss Sunshine, and the baklava-syrupy The Pursuit Of Happyness - but the award goes to Babel, which was so magnificently miserable, for two and a half hours, all I could hear was the cast crying, the audience crying, and even the projectionist crying, from inside his sound-proofed, triple-glazed glass booth. I saw this film with my friend, Roger, and afterwards we were so shattered by the powerful themes of human fear and cultural isolation, we sat down in a cafe and discussed the movie's most profound question: how do you pronounce "Babel"? - I thought it was pronounced "Babble" but Roger said it was pronounced "Bay-bel" and I said "No, I'm pretty sure it's Babble" and he said "NO, IT'S DEFINITELY BAY-BEL" and this went on for about an hour and a half, yeah I really love those intense kind of post-cinema intellectual discussions.
Made me laugh.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Careers to avoid: clowning in Cucuta
The BBC reports:
Two circus clowns have been shot dead during a performance in the eastern Colombian city of Cucuta, police say....
Local reports say the audience of about 20 people, mostly children, thought the shooting was part of the show before realising both men had been killed.
Two circus clowns have been shot dead during a performance in the eastern Colombian city of Cucuta, police say....
Local reports say the audience of about 20 people, mostly children, thought the shooting was part of the show before realising both men had been killed.
Last year, a prominent circus clown, known as Pepe, was also shot dead by a unknown assailant in Cucuta.
This is story crying out for further explanation.A new concept for the day
You know something is complicated and "out there" when someone who posts at Cosmic Variance finds it new and hard to fathom. Have a look at this post about "Boltzmann brains" and the decay of the universe. More detail about Boltzmann and entropy is at an earlier CV post here. It is not easy going.
I will soon be doing a post about cosmologist Frank Tipler too, and his upcoming book claiming to show the physics behind various miracles in the Bible (or the New Testament, at least.) His previous book "The Physics of Immortality" got rubbished by most of his scientist colleagues, but I expect that will be nothing compared to the shellacking the new book is likely to take.
I will soon be doing a post about cosmologist Frank Tipler too, and his upcoming book claiming to show the physics behind various miracles in the Bible (or the New Testament, at least.) His previous book "The Physics of Immortality" got rubbished by most of his scientist colleagues, but I expect that will be nothing compared to the shellacking the new book is likely to take.
Targetting for beginners
Former Spook, who has some experience in these matters, has a good post explaining why people should not think there is anything unusual going on when the media runs a "targets have been selected already" story.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Debating the multiverse
Here's an interesting account of the recent debate at a conference between top cosmologists who take opposing sides on the issue of the anthropic principle and whether a "multiverse" exists. (String theory gets a mention too.) It explains the issues in pretty straightforward fashion, and is well worth a read.
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