Thursday, September 07, 2017
Postal probably gone?
My feeling is that the High Court should find that the government can't spend the money on the same sex marriage postal survey/plebiscite/Turnbull escape strategy. George Williams thinks so, and that's good enough for me.
Which would lead me to go back to my previous suggestion: let the government get a quote from Newspoll for doing a really large sample poll on the matter, and say that if there is a clear majority far enough outside of the margin of error, the Government will let it go to a vote in Parliament.
Update: Well, HC goes its own way, again. They're getting hard to pick...
Which would lead me to go back to my previous suggestion: let the government get a quote from Newspoll for doing a really large sample poll on the matter, and say that if there is a clear majority far enough outside of the margin of error, the Government will let it go to a vote in Parliament.
Update: Well, HC goes its own way, again. They're getting hard to pick...
Chaos in government
The Washington Post's Dana Milbank notes how government "works" under Trump:
On Tuesday, even as the administration announced that it was ending protection from deportation for the 800,000 “dreamers” — mostly young people who know no country but America — there were signs that Trump had no idea what he was doing. “As late as one hour before the decision was to be announced, administration officials privately expressed concern that Mr. Trump might not fully grasp the details of the steps he was about to take, and when he discovered their full impact, would change his mind,” Michael Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis of the New York Times reported, citing an anonymous source.
Sure enough, Trump fired off a tweet Tuesday night that revised his position. He called on Congress to “legalize” the dreamers program and vowed to “revisit the issue” if Congress can’t.
Even Trump’s close advisers seem to have little knowledge of, much less control over, what he says and does.The biggest boost to the economy of a Trump presidency is probably going to be to the publishing industry, as there is going to be a never ending supply of "My first hand experience of chaos in the White House" memoirs.
Trump has signaled that he wants to end a free-trade deal with South Korea, even though his national security adviser, his defense secretary and the director of the National Economic Council all object. He and Defense Secretary James Mattis have contradicted each other about whether to talk with North Korea. Chief of Staff John Kelly’s attempts to tone down Trump’s antics have reportedly led Trump to escalate his attacks — on Kelly. Trump has publicly criticized Attorney General Jeff Sessions and repeatedly contradicted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner have let it leak that Trump ignored their advice on Charlottesville and other matters.
Wednesday, September 06, 2017
Lucifer as the misunderstood naughty boy with Daddy issues
Jason suggested I watch the first episode of Lucifer, a combined supernatural/police procedural show with a humorous touch that is on Netflix now.
I did last night, and my thoughts are as follows:
It was enjoyable enough for me to watch again, but I have some reservations.
The actor playing Lucifer does it with a tad too much of what might be called "straight camp" if you ask me, but perhaps that's bit unavoidable given the lines he is given. The emphasis on his enjoyment of sex I found a little bit off putting. It reminded me of the movie Michael, in which John Travolta played the Archangel Michael as a supernatural character who enjoyed pleasuring women sexually. I remember reading at the time that the writer defended this as being closer to the Old Testament version of angels, who walked and interacted with humans and weren't the ghost-like pure spirit creatures as Christianity came to think of them. That may be right, but I think that supernatural beings enjoying sex with humans is still a very odd concept to the modern mind, where ever it appears: I think its a large part of what makes Greek mythology strange to us now.
As for the bigger picture, of Lucifer's depiction as more or less "just doing a job" when he was Lord of Hell: yes, it is sort of interesting. I found a detailed version of this explained in an article from 2006 at Phys.org, of all places - reviewing a book "Satan: A Biography".
I did last night, and my thoughts are as follows:
It was enjoyable enough for me to watch again, but I have some reservations.
The actor playing Lucifer does it with a tad too much of what might be called "straight camp" if you ask me, but perhaps that's bit unavoidable given the lines he is given. The emphasis on his enjoyment of sex I found a little bit off putting. It reminded me of the movie Michael, in which John Travolta played the Archangel Michael as a supernatural character who enjoyed pleasuring women sexually. I remember reading at the time that the writer defended this as being closer to the Old Testament version of angels, who walked and interacted with humans and weren't the ghost-like pure spirit creatures as Christianity came to think of them. That may be right, but I think that supernatural beings enjoying sex with humans is still a very odd concept to the modern mind, where ever it appears: I think its a large part of what makes Greek mythology strange to us now.
As for the bigger picture, of Lucifer's depiction as more or less "just doing a job" when he was Lord of Hell: yes, it is sort of interesting. I found a detailed version of this explained in an article from 2006 at Phys.org, of all places - reviewing a book "Satan: A Biography".
Henry Ansgar Kelly puts forth the most comprehensive case ever made for sympathy for the devil, arguing that the Bible actually provides a kinder, gentler version of the infamous antagonist than typically thought.That fits in extremely well with his depiction in the show, don't you think?
"A strict reading of the Bible shows Satan to be less like Darth Vader and more and more like an overzealous prosecutor," said Kelly, a UCLA professor emeritus of English and the former director of the university's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. "He's not so much the proud and angry figure who turns away from God as [he is] a Joseph McCarthy or J. Edgar Hoover. Satan's basic intention is to uncover wrongdoing and treachery, however overzealous and unscrupulous the means. But he's still part of God's administration."
Frum on DACA - and Trump and the evangelicals
David Frum talking about immigration and the Trump move to pass the buck is, I think, a very good (and pretty balanced) explanation of what's going on.
In other Trump readings, I thought this article in the Guardian by a former evangelical explaining why he thinks they love Trump despite him being an obvious sinner was pretty good too. He reckons it's because they recognize a similar aggressive outsider psychology. Here's part of it:
In other Trump readings, I thought this article in the Guardian by a former evangelical explaining why he thinks they love Trump despite him being an obvious sinner was pretty good too. He reckons it's because they recognize a similar aggressive outsider psychology. Here's part of it:
When I was a young evangelical Christian, I was eager to be oppressed for my faith. The Bible and my pastors had warned me to avoid “worldly” people – celebrities, intellectuals, scientists, the media and liberals. Those were the ones who forbid us from praying in school while indoctrinating us with communism and evolution.
Jesus once said: “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven.” So I went out of my way to piss people off – telling the goth kids they were prisoners of Satan’s lies, handing anti-abortion literature to the “loose” girls, and forcing science class to run late while I debated evolution with the teacher.
My entire identity became wrapped up in being disliked by a specific group of people, and they were happy to accommodate me. Trump has had no problem arousing hatred from those same “worldly people”, creating what appears to some like an imploding presidency, while others see a heroic martyr against liberalism.
After nearly eight months in office, it’s becoming clear that many of Trump’s actions are not ideologically based, but designed to inspire maximum outrage from climate-scientists, academics, feminists, LGBTQ rights activists – pretty much every demographic that evangelicals hate. Whether he’s banning transgender soldiers from serving in the military, pardoning a vigilante sheriff, or refusing to properly distance himself from white supremacists, it’s not about the act itself, it’s about the negative reaction he gets from liberals.
You’ll never get anything done in government with this approach, but that’s not the point. Just as the point of my witnessing to the lost souls of my public high school wasn’t to convert them to Christianity, it was to see how persecuted I could be.
Sounds reasonably plausible to me, and not really an explanation I have heard before.
Which is a remarkably addictive sensation, one that became a competitive game for me and my fellow young believers. My youth-group friends and I would share stories of being punched, spit on, or called “the biggest loser in school” the way other kids would brag about sports or sexual conquests. Just as Morrissey fans discovered loneliness to be a fashionable accessory, we wanted to emulate the sociopathy of our messiah, who said in the book of John: “If the world hates you, know that it hated Me before it hated you.”
Tuesday, September 05, 2017
Wild man sightings
Nothing here that's as mysterious as bigfoot/yowie glimpses, but this post about unexpected sightings of what appear to be "wild" men living nude and dirty (or greasy - the story from New Jersey in 1935 is especially odd) is interesting nonetheless:
The group watched this naked individual for several minutes before he reportedly dropped down on all fours and fled, in a way resembling that of an animal. The group watched, stunned, as this wild-looking man “galloped off through the high grass along the edge of the road, along the tracks,” leaving nothing behind but bare footprints that marked his path.The writer notes, however, that this story is reminiscent of folk myth from the other side of the world:
Heading in the same direction the strange phantom fled on their way home, they once again encountered this individual, who was purportedly in a sunken barrel of oil by the railroad tracks, “up to his neck, his hands grasping the outer edge, and moving around in the oil.”
The unsettling incident was perhaps the first of what became known as encounters with “Oily Oliver,” as the degenerate had been so-named by the conductor and motorman on the trolley, who seemed well aware of the fiend when Quackenbush* and his company reported it to them. Similar stories would persist on up into the 1960s, including one encounter two women had while visiting a cemetery, during which they observed a naked, oily man creeping through the weeds toward them.
“Oily Oliver” bears some similarity to peculiar folk beliefs in Malay cultures that involve “grease devils,” phantom attackers that cover themselves in grease which makes them slippery, and thus able to evade capture more easily.* Seriously, the number of American surnames which sound funny to the rest of us is pretty remarkable.
Meerkat life
The organisation of meerkat life is pretty complicated and tough:
Meerkats (Suricata suricatta) live in complex, hierarchical social groups or "mobs" consisting of two to 50 individuals. These groups are ruled by a dominant male and female, called the alpha pair, that have exclusive breeding rights. The group also contains subordinate females who are typically closely related to the dominant female; subordinate males who are usually the offspring of the alpha pair; and one or more unrelated immigrant males.
Meerkats reach sexual maturity at 1 year old, and males willingly leave their group permanently at around 2 years old to attempt to join or take over another group. Adult subordinate females, on the other hand, are often forcefully (and sometimes violently) evicted by the dominant female — they'll sometimes remain on the group's territory, sleeping and foraging alone or with other evicted females until the dominant female's aggression towards them subsides...
Subordinate females may occasionally mate with the immigrant males from within the group or outside of the group. But this sneaky behavior comes at a price — dominant females routinely kill subordinate females' pups and evict the wrongdoers (sometimes while the subordinate female is pregnant, forcing her to abort).
As payment for their misdeeds, subordinate females that lose their litters or return to the group after being evicted act as wet nurses for the dominant female's pups.
Salt revisionism
Not a bad discussion here of the "how much dietary salt is too much" debate that seems to have been revived recently.
The problem with geo-intervention
Victor Venema, who does work on climate change, has a post up in which he explains that he thinks taking climate geo-intervention seriously is probably unavoidable, and we may as well start investigating it now.
But he does explain a key practical problem with the concept, as follows:
I would much prefer to not have the dangerously high temperatures a possibility.
And besides, at an ecological level, no one knows how ocean acidification is going to pan out. Lots more algae, sometimes of the poisonous variety; key crustaceans in the ocean food chain (pteropods) dying out; oxygen low areas of the ocean that can support little sea life of any variety - these are all realistic predictions of increased CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans, and keeping the temperature down alone won't solve them.
So, I will remain a skeptic of this band-aid approach to dealing with climate change and CO2 emissions.
But he does explain a key practical problem with the concept, as follows:
We would have to keep on managing the insolation for millennia or until someone finds a cheap way to remove carbon dioxide from the air. The largest danger is thus that humanity gets into trouble over these millennia and would no longer be able to keep the program up, the temperature would jump up quickly and make the trouble even worse. Looking back at our history since Christ was born and especially the last century, it seems likely that we will be in trouble once in a while over such a long period.I am surprised that he does not also consider that natural disasters effectively beyond human control might put a serious hole in maintaining the necessary work - a seriously large asteroid strike, for example, would have economic and society disrupting consequences that I doubt anyone can forecast. While it won't likely be the end of humanity (it's a big planet), and the dust it throws up would initially cool the place, perhaps to crop destroying and famine inducing levels, when the sky clears enough again the world economy may take a long time to recover before large scale geo-intervention can resume. This scenario would involve initial disaster from sudden darkness and lingering cold weather, to a reversal where the temperature climbs rapidly to dangerously high levels.
This danger could also be an advantage, just as the mutual assured destruction (MAD) with nuclear arms brought us a period of relative peace, the automatic triggering of Mad Max would force humanity to behave somewhat sensibly and make people who love war less influential.
My impression is that the main objection from scientists against geo-interventions is their worry about creating such an automatically triggered doomsday machine. Those people seem to think of a scenario without mitigation, where we would have to do more and more Solar Radiation Management. While carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere over millennia, the stratospheric particles (after a volcanoes) are removed after a few years. So we would need to keep adding them to the stratosphere and if we do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions increasingly many particles.
I would much prefer to not have the dangerously high temperatures a possibility.
And besides, at an ecological level, no one knows how ocean acidification is going to pan out. Lots more algae, sometimes of the poisonous variety; key crustaceans in the ocean food chain (pteropods) dying out; oxygen low areas of the ocean that can support little sea life of any variety - these are all realistic predictions of increased CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans, and keeping the temperature down alone won't solve them.
So, I will remain a skeptic of this band-aid approach to dealing with climate change and CO2 emissions.
Trickle down revisited
John Quiggin has a nice post re-stating, in economist terms, the problem with trickle down economics.
Of sociological interest
It's worth clearing your history so you can read the lengthy Washington Post feature on the annual "gathering" of Insane Clown Posse fans.
I really knew very little of the band, apart from seeing the odd photo of their ridiculous act, but limited knowledge is aided by the fact that they are, apparently, genuinely talentless as well as banned by nearly all TV and radio in the USA.
Being a commercial outcast who likes to act insane attracts other outcasts who like to act insane, and they apparently all come together in that fairly saccharine "we are family" way that Americans seem to like to embrace.
As people in comments say, it's like Burning Man for white trash, although I don't know that at Burning Man they really throw trash around for fun.
It all sounds very ridiculously immature to me; and somewhat dangerous for the borderline mentally ill who cannot always tell when an act should stop being an act. The article talks at length about the controversy when the FBI deemed the fans to be gang members.
But if you want a grotesque example of how they entertain themselves, have a read of this:
I really knew very little of the band, apart from seeing the odd photo of their ridiculous act, but limited knowledge is aided by the fact that they are, apparently, genuinely talentless as well as banned by nearly all TV and radio in the USA.
Being a commercial outcast who likes to act insane attracts other outcasts who like to act insane, and they apparently all come together in that fairly saccharine "we are family" way that Americans seem to like to embrace.
As people in comments say, it's like Burning Man for white trash, although I don't know that at Burning Man they really throw trash around for fun.
It all sounds very ridiculously immature to me; and somewhat dangerous for the borderline mentally ill who cannot always tell when an act should stop being an act. The article talks at length about the controversy when the FBI deemed the fans to be gang members.
But if you want a grotesque example of how they entertain themselves, have a read of this:
They said the gathering was a place of radical acceptance, welcoming all comers. “If you can’t find any other place to fit in because society tells you you can’t fit in with this or that group, you’ve got to find your own group,” Creel said. “I kind of think that’s where Juggalos came from. We are outside of the outsiders.”
That point was driven home when I met Adam Roberts. Roberts became a Juggalo legend in 2013 for doing something so out-there even the gathering was shocked. He auctioned off his right nipple at the festival for $100 and then removed it with a scalpel. (He had previously sliced off his other nipple.) “I was going to do it anyway,” Roberts told me while sitting in a golf cart. “A lot of the Juggalos seemed to get a kick out of it. I figured if they liked it I would do it. … I was going to have dermal implants done with diamond tips, so I could have nipples of steel that could cut glass.”Roberts, who has a ghoulish tattoo that covers his entire face, has yet to follow through on the plan, so he has the featureless chest of a doll. He said this year he ate a live scorpion. Some campers had trapped it and were offering $100 to anyone who could choke it down, but no one came forward. Roberts did it for $70 after chopping off the stinger. What did it taste like? “Seventy-dollar dirt,” Roberts said.
Monday, September 04, 2017
Must be the making of a conspiracy theory of some kind in this
Pope Francis went to a female Jewish psychotherapist for 6 months when he was 42. A tad unusual, but apparently Argentinians really like their psychotherapy (why?):
Among the other women he confided in was his psychoanalyst whom he consulted between 1978 and 1979. These were trying years for Pope Francis as he was transitioning from the difficult task of provincial superior of the Society of Jesus in Argentina to rector of the Philosophical and Theological Faculty of San Miguel.
The pope’s visit with a psychoanalyst is not surprising, considering that Argentina has the highest number of therapists per capita in the world, according to the World Health Organization.
“I consulted with a Jewish psychoanalyst. For months I went to her house once a week to clear up some things. She was a doctor and psychoanalyst, and she always stayed put. Then one day, when she was about to die, she called me. Not to receive the sacraments, since she was Jewish, but for a spiritual dialogue. She was a very good person. For six months she helped me a lot, when I was 42 years old.”
Well, that makes sense...[no, it doesn't]
With the expectation that Trump is about to announce a big change to that DACA system, an article in The Atlantic talks about the odd politics around it:
What a mess the Republicans are. When will it end?
Five years ago, President Obama ordered that young illegal immigrants be protected from deportation, a program known as DACA. As a candidate, Donald Trump promised to rescind that protection. He could have done it on his first day in office—but he didn’t, and still hasn’t, for reasons no one quite understands.
Now, President Trump appears poised to revoke DACA. The action has not been officially announced, and administration sources believe that the impulsive president’s mind is not totally made up, but he is reportedly planning to do so as soon as Friday.
If he does, he will have effectively been boxed in by immigration restrictionists—potentially against his own better political judgment. “I do not think Trump wants to do this,” Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, told me. “But they’ve cornered him. This artificial deadline has created the moment the opposition needed to force a decision.”
The article explains how the Republican Party is split on this, with State attorneys taking action against Obama's scheme a big part of the problem, and that it would appear that Trump actually has his heart in the right place, for a change (in that he doesn't want to hurt the youth protected by it.) Yet he is not strong enough to overcome the "restrictionists". If he had any abilities to actually get political foes behind him, instead of just abusing everyone who disagrees with him, maybe he could have actually changed minds.
Immigration policy is the battleground for the White House’s warring factions, and DACA is ground zero. Around 750,000 undocumented youths now benefit from the program, which allows them to work and go to school without fear of deportation. Allowing the so-called “Dreamers” to stay is broadly popular even with Trump’s base: Nearly 80 percent of Republicans, and three-quarters of Trump voters, support it. But immigration hardliners like the pundit Ann Coulter, Breitbart, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have been vocal proponents of ending the policy.
What a mess the Republicans are. When will it end?
People can do amazing things
I forget where, but I think I saw someone doing this on TV, and it's really surprising how well it can work:
Like some bats and marine mammals, people can develop expert echolocation skills, in which they produce a clicking sound with their mouths and listen to the reflected sound waves to "see" their surroundings. A new study published in PLOS Computational Biology provides the first in-depth analysis of the mouth clicks used in human echolocation.The research, performed by Lore Thaler of Durham University, U.K., Galen Reich and Michael Antoniou of Birmingham University, U.K., and colleagues, focuses on three blind adults who have been expertly trained in echolocation. Since the age of 15 or younger, all three have used echolocation in their daily lives. They use the technique for such activities as hiking, visiting unfamiliar cities, and riding bicycles.
Something I don't understand...
Having nuclear weapons always goes hand in hand with having the missiles to deliver them, and there was talk in the media a few weeks ago about North Korea having received theirs from a Ukrainian factory:
So - why is it so hard to stop the supply of missiles to North Korea? Did they receive a very large batch a few years ago that they are just working their way through now? Surely, you would think, the Ukraine and even Putin would think it a good idea to work hard on the matter of black market supply of missiles and missile components?
North Korea’s success in testing an intercontinental ballistic missile that appears able to reach the United States was made possible by black-market purchases of powerful rocket engines probably from a Ukrainian factory with historical ties to Russia’s missile program, according to an expert analysis being published Monday and classified assessments by American intelligence agencies.
You certainly don't get the impression that a country barely able to feed itself is capable of making anything but the most basic missile.The studies may solve the mystery of how North Korea began succeeding so suddenly after a string of fiery missile failures, some of which may have been caused by American sabotage of its supply chains and cyberattacks on its launches. After those failures, the North changed designs and suppliers in the past two years, according to a new study by Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
So - why is it so hard to stop the supply of missiles to North Korea? Did they receive a very large batch a few years ago that they are just working their way through now? Surely, you would think, the Ukraine and even Putin would think it a good idea to work hard on the matter of black market supply of missiles and missile components?
A Douthat attack
Ross Douthat really gets stuck into Dinesh D'Souza in his latest column, which is also interesting because it makes it feel like Ross, as a sophisticated conservative, is barely clinging on to anything the Republicans believe on economic policy these days.
It's true: D'Souza is like a walking Catallaxy thread - full of hyperbolic claims of evil in anything Democrat or even vaguely progressive. Any credibility he used to have has long gone, and he is a prime example of the poisonous, nutty element that dominates so much now in the American Right. (He is, of course, a climate change fake skeptic, as is compulsory for all Right wing culture warriors.)
Anyway, go read Ross.
It's true: D'Souza is like a walking Catallaxy thread - full of hyperbolic claims of evil in anything Democrat or even vaguely progressive. Any credibility he used to have has long gone, and he is a prime example of the poisonous, nutty element that dominates so much now in the American Right. (He is, of course, a climate change fake skeptic, as is compulsory for all Right wing culture warriors.)
Anyway, go read Ross.
Sunday, September 03, 2017
A Close Encounter Anniversary
Way to make me feel old - it's the 40th anniversary of the release of the Spielberg classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the New York Times has a good story looking back at its reception at the time. (The movie's also getting a short remastered re-release in the US, which I think I read on Reddit is actually back to the original version, dropping the later tagged on scenes within the spaceship, which I didn't really care for. Some things are best left unseen.)
I really liked it from first viewing, which was with high school friends, and it was probably the first Spielberg movie that I saw at the cinema. (I didn't see Jaws for quite a long time later, and I still tend to think it is a relatively minor work in the Spielberg catalogue - it's more like a preamble showing what he would capable of later.)
But Close Encounters - it was quite a joy because I had read serious books about UFOs in my teenage years, including those by J Allen Hynek, the astronomer who was always the most credible writer on the topic and who appears briefly in the film. It was therefore clear to me that Spielberg was incorporating elements from some credible, still unsolved, sightings of the last 20 years from the US in particular. (He is credited with the screenplay.) I knew by this time that the Bermuda Triangle books were nonsense, so I wasn't as keen to see that element in the film, but hey, it made for some great images.
It was the film that showed me that Spielberg was a smart guy and natural wit too - as with Poltergeist*, one of the things I have loved about him is his ability to combine humour and shivers in the one shot or sequence. My favourite example from CE3K: our hero's first encounter with a UFO while stopped on the road in his van - shot face on through the windscreen so we can see another car come up from behind, stop, and then drive around him. Next set of lights (looking again like it could be a vehicle) approaches, stops, and then slowly rises in the air, unnoticed by Roy until he is blasted in bright light from above. Just a brilliant idea, so well executed. I don't really know of any other director who has done that type of nervous laugh scare so well.
Spielberg himself has claimed in much later interviews that, with his large extended family of many kids, he couldn't write a movie like that now, with a father effectively abandoning his children. But the fact it happens is key to the film having a semi-religious feel about it - suggesting as it does that there are matters of greater transcendent importance than family ties. And besides, we don't really know if he is going to be whisked away for 30 years, or just a week.
So, a great film that I would be happy to see again in its original format. Long live Spielberg.
*(OK, he is just the writer on that one, and the director Tobe Hooper died just last week, but Spielberg was definitely on the set a lot too)
Update: Homer mentions Duel in the comments, which I am pretty sure I saw on TV before I saw Close Encounters. I didn't see it on the cinema release it got overseas. I did enjoy it a lot, but for whatever reason, I don't think I have ever seen it a second time. So Close Encounters was the first Spielberg at the cinema.
I really liked it from first viewing, which was with high school friends, and it was probably the first Spielberg movie that I saw at the cinema. (I didn't see Jaws for quite a long time later, and I still tend to think it is a relatively minor work in the Spielberg catalogue - it's more like a preamble showing what he would capable of later.)
But Close Encounters - it was quite a joy because I had read serious books about UFOs in my teenage years, including those by J Allen Hynek, the astronomer who was always the most credible writer on the topic and who appears briefly in the film. It was therefore clear to me that Spielberg was incorporating elements from some credible, still unsolved, sightings of the last 20 years from the US in particular. (He is credited with the screenplay.) I knew by this time that the Bermuda Triangle books were nonsense, so I wasn't as keen to see that element in the film, but hey, it made for some great images.
It was the film that showed me that Spielberg was a smart guy and natural wit too - as with Poltergeist*, one of the things I have loved about him is his ability to combine humour and shivers in the one shot or sequence. My favourite example from CE3K: our hero's first encounter with a UFO while stopped on the road in his van - shot face on through the windscreen so we can see another car come up from behind, stop, and then drive around him. Next set of lights (looking again like it could be a vehicle) approaches, stops, and then slowly rises in the air, unnoticed by Roy until he is blasted in bright light from above. Just a brilliant idea, so well executed. I don't really know of any other director who has done that type of nervous laugh scare so well.
Spielberg himself has claimed in much later interviews that, with his large extended family of many kids, he couldn't write a movie like that now, with a father effectively abandoning his children. But the fact it happens is key to the film having a semi-religious feel about it - suggesting as it does that there are matters of greater transcendent importance than family ties. And besides, we don't really know if he is going to be whisked away for 30 years, or just a week.
So, a great film that I would be happy to see again in its original format. Long live Spielberg.
*(OK, he is just the writer on that one, and the director Tobe Hooper died just last week, but Spielberg was definitely on the set a lot too)
Update: Homer mentions Duel in the comments, which I am pretty sure I saw on TV before I saw Close Encounters. I didn't see it on the cinema release it got overseas. I did enjoy it a lot, but for whatever reason, I don't think I have ever seen it a second time. So Close Encounters was the first Spielberg at the cinema.
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