McKee reviewed

Jason Zinoman on Robert Mckee | vanityfair.com

Jason Zinoman, who has a particular interest in horror films, reports on his attendance at a screenwriters seminar held by the famous screenwriting teacher Robert McKee.

McKee comes across as a bit of a jerk who wings it on browbeating self-confidence. Here's Jason's summary of how to replicate McKee's technique:

Rule One: Drop names shamelessly. McKee tells us that he once received a doctor recommendation from his friend John Cleese, bummed a cigarette from Toni Morrison, and corrected his pal Paul Haggis when he confused two genres over lunch. But my favorite is his anecdote about telling Stephen Hawking (whom he calls “Hawkings”) that he has never read a book by the scientist but is fascinated by the Big Bang. I imagine Hawking rolling quickly away.

Rule Two: Never express a scintilla of doubt. McKee is insightful about some things, especially with regard to structure, but his relative knowledge or ignorance of a subject in no way affects the manner in which he discusses it. He holds forth on politics (“Terrorism is a police problem and that’s all it is”) and the theater (“there is very little crime drama onstage”) as confidently as he does on the Incitement Incident.

Rule Three: Start in a rage and end with poetry. In Adaptation, a wildly imaginative movie that first sends up, then celebrates, and ultimately condescends to McKee, the teacher advises the screenwriter that any flawed movie can be saved with a “big finish.”

I wonder if McKee can explain the relative dearth of good movie ideas coming out of Hollywood for the last 5 to 10 years.

The calming light

More Tokyo train stations start using lights to stem suicides

This sounds very improbable:

Alarmed by a rise in people jumping to their deaths in front of trains, some Japanese railway operators are installing special blue lights above station platforms they hope will have a soothing effect and reduce suicides.

As of November, East Japan Railway Co has put blue light-emitting diode, or LED, lights in all 29 stations on Tokyo’s central train loop, the Yamanote Line, used by 8 million passengers each day.

There’s no scientific proof that the lights actually reduce suicides, and some experts are skeptical it will have any effect. But others say blue does have a calming effect on people.

Sadly, suicide is still a popular response to difficult times in Japan, although I bet everyone wishes people would choose a less public method:

Suicide rates in Japan have risen this year amid economic woes, and could surpass the record 34,427 deaths in 2003.

Last year, nearly 2,000 people committed suicide in Japan by jumping in front of a train, about 6 percent of such deaths nationwide.

Watching the sun

It was the Sun wot done it. Or was it? | Stuart Clark - Times Online

This reads as a reasonable summary on the controversy over the possible role of the sun on earth's temperature (via cosmic rays and the sun's magnetic cycle.)

The last paragraphs are important:

The smart money is on the level of solar contribution being somewhere between the two extremes. In other words, both solar activity and industrial gases play a role. There is credible scientific work that ascribes up to a third of current warming to solar influence. Studies show that the Earth’s temperature mirrored solar activity until the 1980s. Then the number of sunspots stabilised but the temperature continued to rise. In other words, something overtook the Sun as the primary driver of the Earth’s temperature. That is generally thought to be industrial gases.

Now the test can be made. It is time for all sides to put away the rivalry and begin to work together. Observations must be made, experiments performed and all data must be published, not cherry-picked. This golden opportunity to reach consensus must not be squandered.

Above all, we must not let any downturn in temperatures be used as an excuse by reluctant nations to wriggle out of pollution controls. Just as certainly as the solar activity has gone away, so it will return. If we have done nothing in the interim to curb man-made global warming, we will be in worse trouble than ever.

Conan's vampire

Conan O'Brien's emo teenage vampire segments are pretty funny:

Having already read all my usual sources of news and science, I hereby declare myself Officially Uninspired to post today.

Plastics and masculinity

Pilot study relates phthalate exposure to less-masculine play by boys | Eureka! Science News

Junk movie science

Observations: In 2012 , neutrinos melt the earth's core, and other disasters

Scientific American looks at the "science" of 2012.

As I don't like Roland Emmerich movies, I am not inclined to see it. On the upside, now that he has done the "ultimate" in end of the world destruction flicks, maybe he can't think of anything else to film?

Might still be a desert

Lcross Mission Finds Water on Moon, NASA Scientists Say - NYTimes.com

Of course I am pleased that the Lcross mission found some water, but it is still quite uncertain as to what it means in terms of readily use-able quantities:

Even though the signs of water were clear and definitive, the Moon is far from wet. The Cabeus soil could still turn out to be drier than that in deserts on Earth. But Dr. Colaprete also said that he expected that the 26 gallons were a lower limit and that it was too early to estimate the concentration of water in the soil.

Well, they'll just have to send some astronauts there to check it out.

Astro Boy - go see

I dawdled about getting the kids to agree to take me to see Astro Boy, but I shouldn't have. I really enjoyed it, as did they, and it's a pity the movie has been pretty much a box office failure. (Releasing it outside of school holidays might just have something to do with that, though.)

How could I not like a cartoon which makes jokes about Descartes and other philosophers (when did you last see an animated film which shows us a copy of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason"?); features a comedy trio of robot liberationists who have posters featuring Trotsky and Lenin in their hideout; and deals with the deep issue that was really the major theme of 1980's TV Astro boy - whether robots which act, think and feel like humans should actually be deemed to be human.

Some American reviewers thought it too politicised, but I am sensitive to such things and really did not find it objectionable.*

The arc of the story was, I thought, very satisfying, providing even an explanation as to why Astroboy, built as a replacement for a real boy, should have been provided with weaponry. It is a fine screenplay for such an entertainment, I reckon.

There really wasn't anything I disliked about it. Yes, it reminds you of some other animated and science fiction films, but in some cases, I would say that TV Astro boy dealt with those issues before the movies which then are reflected in this one. (Particularly when you think of the fighting robots of Spielberg's AI, and a similar scenario in Astro boy.)

It has nearly finished its cinema run here; and Tim Train, the only reader of this blog who might possibly be persuaded by this post, you should go see it.

* Update: If you thought the evil President wanting re-election by waging war was inspired by Bush, even though he doesn't look or sound like him, you at least have it balanced by the communist inspired robots who are ideologically sound but very inept. In fact, it is slightly curious that the film is doing well in China, which I thought might be a bit sensitive about that subplot.

Pig smarts

In Pig Cognition Studies, Reflections on Parallels With Humans

Pigs can understand mirrors. Pity (for them) they taste so good.

Strange science for the weekend

An experimentally testable proof of the discreteness of time

Doesn't sound completely loopy to me.

The gathering of the anti-Devenys

Yay, what a good way to start a Saturday. There's an anti-Deveny column by Tom Hyland in The Age, taking apart one of her recent columns which I missed. This is followed by a couple of hundred comments, nearly all of which agree with Tom. Some of the comments I like:

About the only thing you forgot to mention about Deveny is how she manages to combine screeching obnoxiousness with hair tossing smugness, to the detriment of all our digestion...

Catherine Deveny is the Pauline Hanson of the intelligent left. A complete embarrassment of flippant stereotypical arrogance based on pseudo analysis...

I have no problem with undergraduate humour, and when I first read her comments I thought she was a junior writer, but at her age it's just embarrassing.

Hmm. I can't find the comment now that said reading her provoked as many laughs as Schindler's List.

That's apt, because it's related to the reason I actually find her disturbing: she doesn't recognise that she's increasingly portraying people who aren't like her as not fully human.

I just tried to post a comment to that effect, but The Age's computer seems to be overloaded at the moment (I trust it's with people venting about Deveny.)

Nothing that a bulldozer couldn't fix

Fed Square, if you dare

Just because people don't mind using the inner city open space it provides as a venue says nothing at all about the architectural merits of the exterior of the buildings around the open space, if you ask me.

Solution modified

Well, some British doctors are getting more openly critical about the rise and rise of unnecessary cosmetic surgery around women's genital area.

I mentioned cosmetic surgery and vaginas only back in July, although I see it first made a brief appearance here in 2006.

In a spirit of generosity, I propose modifying my Gulag solution. Cosmetic surgeons can continue their (mostly) socially useless, but no doubt highly profitable, function for 9 months of every year, provided they serve 2 months annually with someone like Médecins Sans Frontières. (And not by working on genitalia while in Somalia, either.) That leaves a month to get over the malaria, and everyone is better off.

Seals falling like leaves

Elephant Seals Take Naps During Slow Dives Through the Sea

An oddly charming image of how elephant seals may sleep:

The monitors revealed that the seals periodically flip onto their backs and slip into slow, spiraling dives. The seals wobble as they drift down, and most of the time their bodies follow circular paths toward the bottom of the sea, said study co-author Russel Andrews…. “[They] resemble a leaf that has dropped from a tree branch and is falling toward the ground, fluttering from side to side,” he said [National Geographic]. It seems likely, the scientists say, that the seals catch a quick nap during these long drifts; in fact, once in a while they strike bottom without even noticing.

I wonder if submarines feel an occasional thud from a falling seal.

One other thing I didn't know about them:

These marine mammals undertake epics migrations of thousands of miles, in which they might not return to land for as long at eight months.

Oysters and risk

Is protecting consumers from uncooked oysters a rotten plan? - Slate Magazine

There's a discussion here of the reasons the FDA in America is banning the sale of raw Gulf oysters in summer: there is a nasty disease that can be caught from them, but nearly always only by people with underlying ill health. The disease does sound unpleasant:

On the unpleasant-experience scale, going septic from Vibrio vulnificus has got to rank right up there with acute radiation poisoning. Fever burns you up; big, ugly blisters bust out on your skin; and you wander into the hospital forgetting your name. These bloodstream infections, though rare, are so fast and furious that only 50 percent survive them. Others lose their limbs.

The FDA's answer is something I've never heard of before:
pasteurised oysters!:

A lot of oyster aficionados say the processed oysters lack the flavor of the fresh raw product. Too rubbery, too cooked-tasting, they say. The FDA says the processes "retain the sensory qualities of raw product," and double-blind consumer surveys don't show much of a difference in perception.

And then, there is the question of priorities here:

...coming down on the oyster is kind of an odd move for FDA to be making in the context of much larger food-safety issues that haven't been addressed. Nasty as Vibrio vulnificus is, it's a perfectly natural bacterium that's always been present in oysters. In the meantime, other bacteria have evolved in our factory-farming system to new levels of virulence and spread with little FDA control. (Legislation is pending in Congress.) Strains of salmonella, E. coli, listeria, campylobacter, and other microbes together kill an estimated 5,700 people a year in the United States. Yet few are calling for all chicken to be irradiated or all eggs to be pasteurized.

I guess you would have to compare rates of infection per quantity consumed, but it does sound like an over-reaction.

I don't eat a huge amount of oysters (my annual consumption of mussels would be much higher.) But neither has struck me down yet.

The Garfield technique

It seems that this was only recently posted to Youtube. It will only take up 12 seconds of your life, so what's the risk?

Trouble ahoy

Little Cargo, Loads of Debt - NYTimes.com

It turns out that many European banks are facing write downs due to bad loans to the shipping industry:

Banks with large shipping industry portfolios — among them Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds, and HSH Nordbank and Commerzbank in Germany — could face meaningful write-downs as ship owners confront plummeting charter rates from a 25 percent drop in global trade.

One analyst says:

“We estimate that there will be a 50 percent oversupply in container ships,” Mr. Brahde said. “And in the next five or six months you will see more banks repossessing ships. It is not life or death, but for those with real exposure there will be problems.”

I'm not exactly sure of the point of repossessing a container ship if, as the article suggests, a large oversupply will mean there is not much of a market in used vessels. But what do I know.

Apparitions, UFO's, belief, etc.

Significant numbers of Irish Catholics are getting excited by an alleged visionary's promises of apparitions of Mary at Knock. Curiously, the nature of the original Knock incident back in 1879 (stationary images appearing in the evening on a flat wall) means that it was one "miracle" that was quite readily explicable as a hoax (the use of a "magic lantern" to project the images.)

Meanwhile, I see that (if this source can be trusted) some Portuguese history professor has been looking again at the evidence for the Fatima apparition, and has noted the similarity of the reports of the dancing sun to UFO reports later in the century. (The sun was supposed to take on a metal sheen, with lights around the rim, and looked as if it was getting closer to the crowd.) The Wikipedia "miracle of the sun" entry is a pretty good place to get a description of what happened, and the various other explanations that have been suggested.

As it happens, when I was in high school, I read an entire book that set out the UFO at Fatima theory. I think it was actually in the high school library, but I could be mistaken. The idea struck me as pretty fascinating, and rather disturbing (why would mischievous aliens play that type of game with humans, and just how much religion may be based on a misinterpretation of what was going on in the universe?) Yet suggestibility to such radical ideas when you are a teenager is something you (should) outgrow.

I remember, for example, being strongly impressed by Huxley's "The Doors of Perception", again from my school library. (It seems, in retrospect, that my school library had a lot of pretty trippy titles. But hey, it was the '70's.) Now, I don't quite understand why that book impressed me so much. I certainly had not personally toyed with drugs of any variety, not even nutmeg tea,* so why a book about the consciousness expanding nature of one particular drug should have excited me seems rather odd.

As an adult, the suggestibility of a crowd which wants to see a miracle seems much more plausible that it used to. And, in the case of that Huxley book, skepticism that any drug can help you see reality more clearly seems much more compellingly.

Yet, I would still warn people against throwing babies out with the bathwater.** I am inclined to believe some accounts of paranormal events, and consider that they are potentially very important as evidence contradicting the purely materialist view of the universe that is so aggressively advocated by (seemingly) 90% of scientists now, the New Atheists, and the "non-realist" school of liberal Christianity.

It's where to draw the line between what is credible and what isn't that's the trick.

* Uncle Scrooges favourite drink, which, as I learnt later, might be capable of sending you on a trip.

** (Which is, essentially, what most climate change skepticism is doing too, in my opinion.)

Depressing images

Observations: Intolerable beauty: Plastic garbage kills the albatross

This featured on Hungry Beast last night (which, incidentally, seems to me to be an expensive failure. Just how many people were recruited for that show?)

Anyhow, apparently large numbers of albatross chicks on Midway Atoll out in the Pacific die because their mothers mistakenly feed them plastic picked up from the ocean. The stomachs fill up, meaning they can't eat real food and die, leaving skeletons filled with coloured bits of plastic.

I wonder: if there is that much plastic floating around in the Pacific Gyre, will it be worthwhile converting some former oil tanker into a skimming garbage collector?