What a week! When Chang'e took off with samples from Luna's far side (congratulations!)...
... and Boeing's Starliner capsule finally made a crew delivery to the space station (with subsequent Helium leaks, alas)...
... and with epic success of the SpaceX Big Rocket system achieving soft (wet) landing... and its orbital stage surviving re-entry to do the same... which means the system WILL work, even if there are more bugs. Which means the cost of doing most things out there is about to plummet! (Oh, and I suppose we'll also get silly "Artemis" footprint stunts. Whatever. Zzzz...)
Meanwhile, let's get on with some news from 'out there' that you may not have noticed.
NASA is seeking public input on how to prioritize nearly 200 topics in space technology to improve how it invests limited funding on them. This is part of an effort by the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) to provide a more rigorous approach to how it supports technology development. (I served STMD for 12 years as part-time advisor to NASA’s Innovative & Advanced Concepts program – (NIAC).
Hey, just because I am (very!) skeptical of the snake oil that’s touted out there about (mostly-nonexistent) ‘lunar resources,’ that doesn’t mean there aren’t great riches , just a little farther out!
One company that got several highly touted projects from us at NIAC – TransAstra – is reviving interest in asteroid mining. (There had been a fad of early investors a decade ago - a bit premature, as I said at the time.) Now TransAstra is selling a telescope and software designed to detect objects like asteroids moving through the sky. And others are interested in the space rock ore-loads, like a Chinese corporation Origin Space that has an asteroid-observing satellite in orbit and is testing its mining-relevant technology there. Meanwhile, Colorado company Karman+ plans to go straight to an asteroid in 2026 and test excavation equipment.
Bouncing around out there... The brightest object in the universe? A Quasar – a galactic center black hole tucking in so much matter that it outshines whole galaxies is a monster visible in light from the earliest days… in this case 12 billion years ago, blaring 500 Trillion times as bright as our poor sun. Woof.
The Space Show is a mostly audio podcast run by David Livingston.* I especially recommend the episodes featuring my friend Joe Carroll, the most innovative and agile independent space engineer I know, who pioneered the use of tethers and long cables in orbit and has wise insights into problems like space debris, space power and how to create artificial gravity in the near term, out there.
*(I named a space station after Joe … but did I name the main character of Existence after this “Livingston”?)
== And yet MORE from out there! ==
Even more organic molecules than we previously realized are spewing from water volcano-jets out of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
Uranus spins around its own axis at a highly unusual 98-degree tilt, giving it the "most extreme seasons in the solar system," per NASA. That means one pole spends 21 Earth years completely plunged in darkness as the Sun shines upon the other pole. This makes it a fascinating test of ideas bout tidal locked worlds, long a staple of SF. These images from the James Webb are truly amazing. Looking past the tiresomely tedious double entendres.
Researchers have found that key molecules needed for life (nucleic acid bases) are stable in concentrated sulfuric acid, advancing the notion that the Venus atmosphere environment may be able to support complex chemicals needed for life. (Thanks James Norris.) Note that Prof. Doug Van Belle’s fine novel “A World Adrift” is set amid human-built cloud cities floating amid and harvesting Venusian stratospheric life in a steam punk delight.
(And I have both a novella and a cool screenplay set under the oceans of Venus! Shall we say after some serious terraforming. ;-)
Wow. The recently-returned samples of asteroid Bennu appear to contain unexpected minerals that seem likely to have come from contact with liquid water! It suggests the parent-body - a planetoid that was shattered to form much of the asteroid belt long ago - might have been like Enceladus, Saturn’s moon that spumes water jets from a liquid ocean through volcanoes in an icy ‘roof’.
Side note: Our ability to peer back through time is amazing, like the Y-Chromosome ‘bottleneck’ telling of a brutal era for male-humans 8000 years ago…. Or new methods letting us read the charred scrolls recovered from Vesuvius-buried Herculaneum. Or your own 23&Me ancestry results.
And more to come… if the War on Science can be soundly defeated, that is. There are forces who especially don’t want us peering the other way, into the future. My specialty.
75 comments:
Our ability to peer back through time is amazing
Geology, archaeology, and anthropology are some of the most underrated branches of science. So many answers are possible. Of course that's really what big telescopes like Webb are all about too. Even outrageous ideas like ancient acoustic patterns being stored as molecular displacements in solid rock or even reconstruction of 'lost' civilizations such as Linear A era Crete (possibly using computational psychohistory).
And SF such Star Trek TOS's "City of the Edge of Forever", Jurassic Park, and Piers Anthony's "Macroscope". Even the "Foundation" timeline occasionally looks to the past.
" ancient acoustic patterns being stored as molecular displacements in solid rock..."
I've heard of trying to decode pottery as an inadvertent record of sounds that occurred during the shaping process of wet clay, but not sure what this refers to.
I do know that it should be possible to find the prevailing wind speed and direction prevalent during the formation of a pu'u using the placement and size of ejecta in the formation, but have never found any papers on the subject.
Pappenheimer
With regards to "computational psychohistory", which of course reminds me of Hari Seldon, pretty sure we've a ways to go on that front. I presume that you still have to have a database to build on, and the conclusions will be weaker the less evidence there is - in pre-literate civilizations like Mohenjo-Daro, we don't even have the name they called themselves; it's only in a few places like Troy where a name or two happens to pop up in legend and the records of local literate states (like the Hittite records suggesting a place named Wilusa/Taroisa (Ilium/Troy) actually had a king named Alexandrus). The Middle East in particular is positively littered with ghost cities - there's even a name for them: a 'tell' is the distinctive low-lying plateau caused by the garbage and dissolved mud brick/other building material a city without a sanitation department leaves behind.
DeCamp wrote some fun (dated) nonfiction on this
Pappenheimer
Adding to the collection:
The effort to clean up space proceeds, with Japan's ADRAS managing to hold station 50m from a 3 tonne piece of junk. Bonus: Hadfield's gentle put-down to Musk's 'hungry hippo' gatecrash.
I earlier mentioned the astonishing visions of Io provided by SHARK-VIS. Earth based observations comparable to those of Juno or Galileo (when not in encounter mode).
Two words to keep in mind when assessing the feasibility of extremely improbable measurements: gravitational waves.
John Viril,
I figured you had a real-life story behind JaRon. Sadly, I'm not shocked... but it still doesn't help with your theory. We SHOULD try to right sound laws, but that won't help if too many of us don't give a f@$k about what we do to the lives of defendants in court.
Two Scoops has access to competent counsel.
-----
Regarding the topic of this post, I've known David Livingstone for years. We overlapped at the Space Frontier Foundation. Very dedicated fellow. Bit of a cynic, but in a community of starry-eyed space advocates we needed him to throw ice water on us occasionally... which he did. On me too. 8)
He's known his purpose in life for a long time... and done exactly that. I encourage folks to give him a listen.
Dr Brin in the main post:
but did I name the main character of Existence after this “Livingston”?)
And yet, the name "Living Stone" was synchronistically a too cute for words name to give the character, considering the object he found in the story.
"How much longer can I go on being an atheist?"
A trivia question for OGH, decades ago Niven & Pournelle wrote Lucifedr's Hammer, did your thesis inform their comet description "Hot fudge sundae, that falls on Tuesdsae"?
LH, your JD Vance comment in the previous thread, I've long thought the right wing was driven by resentment. While I'm not personally on his list of people he's tired of being decent to, I know if those folks get any sort of fairness, I have little to worry about, anyway, NAZIs & NAZI-adjacent types get bored of tormenting the same people and their predecessors showed form for just that, which does not do anything positive for my peace of mind. And if they're so certain those they despise are going to Hell, why bother tormenting them in this life?
Tim H:
I've long thought the right wing was driven by resentment.
I've used the term "grievance", but yes, it's all the same thing. In their minds, the country used to rightfully belong to them and still should. And now that other people are having more of a say in democracy, that means democracy isn't functioning correctly, and any means necessary to correct that are justified.
Vance taps into the sense among Trump voters that they're upset and angry about things not going their way, and that they feel righteously justified to rebel against that. What they completely ignore is how much of a similar sentiment exists on our side of the aisle. As I mentioned last time, they have a "What else do you expect me to do?" attitude when they feel they're being censored in expressing their views about gays or contraception, but they don't grant similar legitimacy to those of us aggrieved at being dictated to by Christian nationalists or gerrymandered Republican legislatures.
Tim H:
And if they're so certain those they despise are going to Hell, why bother tormenting them in this life?
The excuse is that they're attempting to save us from Hell. The reality is that they're sadists who love having an excuse for treating powerless people harshly without consequence to themselves.
Dad joke from The Planetary Society
NASA is launching a mission to say sorry to all the aliens.
They call it Apollo G.
I've long said that the deep trauma underlying MAGA grievance is not loss of power... most MAGAs never had any to lose.
Yes, Mark Twain said if you gave a poor white southerner someone to kick below them, they'd crawl on their knees and die for their plantation lords (later 'class oppressors.') But even that isn't it.
The high school is the center of all life in every small town and the senior class sports and prom and other stars are each year's heroes. And each year they kick off the dust and 2/3 of them head off to universities and cities and IF they come back at all, they come back changed. That's been happening yearly for more than a century. And I won't apologize for a good thing!
But it's gotta hurt.
Happy Father's Day to all for whom the greeting is appropriate.
Dr Brin:
But it's gotta hurt.
No point quibbling over just what the MAGA crowd is aggrieved over. "Now, we're just haggling over the price." My point is that they only recognize their own grievance as legitimate and their own pushback as justified. They refuse to recognize that others have the same sentiment toward their affronts to our sensibilities as they have to their complaints. We're supposed to man up and just take it, but the cry like snowflakes* over the least discomfort.
Limbaugh railed against drug abusers and then it turned out he was one. But that didn't make him sympathetic to the others. His was considered a special case, by his followers and by himself. Current events are littered with examples of that type.
* Cold, white, and enough of them together will shut down public schools.
* * *
Ok, now off with the family. Happy Father's Day again.
"Limbaugh railed against drug abusers and then it turned out he was one. But that didn't make him sympathetic to the others."
Roy Cohn and many other man-f'ers poured persecution on gays.
Dr Brin:
Roy Cohn and many other man-f'ers poured persecution on gays
Well, for one thing, I've heard that men who like to...shall we say penetrate...other men don't consider themselves to be "gay". That's reserved for those on the receiving end.
But in any case, I once saw printed dialogue for some off-Broadway play that had Roy Cohn as a character. It's a fictionalized portrayal, of course, but in the play, when Cohn was said to have contracted AIDs, he responded something like this (from memory):
"I don't have AIDs. AIDs is a homosexual disease, and homosexuals are powerless. I can call up the president and have him take my call. I'm not powerless, therefore I'm not a homosexual. Ipso facto, I don't have AIDs--I have liver disease."
Larry,
"I'm so manly I only sleep with men" was and is a thing. The Roman Emperor Heliogabalus was criticized not because he had male consorts*, but because he was rumored to prefer to...I guess I can use the word 'sub'.
Pappenheimer
*Roman society would have had more trouble with this, if he hadn't been, you know, Emperor. I guess after Tiberius, people had to reset their imperial morality standards.
It took me a few days to get all the way through the J.D. Vance interview I posted about last comments. Here's another bit of Vance's own words. Again, I get that the people he's aligning with are angry that they don't feel heard. But he doesn't get that they're not the only ones. And his side is the one proposing to use the US military to suppress any such "palpable and actionable frustration" from our side.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/opinion/jd-vance-interview.html
I think people really, really underrate the sense to which there is palpable and actionable frustration, and I’m always surprised that their assumption appears to be that Trump is the worst, rather than the best, expression of that frustration. Or at least, one of the better in the whole host of possibilities. We’re in this moment where people are really pissed off, and I think for legitimate reasons. And I don’t understand, looking at the country that we have right now, and saying, “The riot on January the 6th was the worst expression of this.”
The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. And yes, a quintessence of dust.
I think the key is individualism. Mobs and fashion disguise and corrupt everything. Sycophancy is a powerful, contagious, scary affliction. We need to spend some time in isolation, like Asimov said in his 1959 essay. Otherwise we lose our humanity.
That isolation is one of the marvels of space. My favourite parts of FOUNDATION books were the long, lonely journeys across the galaxy.
The high school is the center of all life in every small town and the senior class sports and prom and other stars are each year's heroes. And each year they kick off the dust and 2/3 of them head off to universities and cities and IF they come back at all, they come back changed.
Basically patriarchs whining over loss of their chattels.
I believe there is experimental evidence to suggest that many homophobes 'doth protest too much' to ensure that fingers don't start pointing their way.
scidata:
We need to spend some time in isolation,
COVID helped with that for awhile.
I'm always amazed at the GOP-types that say, "We've got all the guns, let's use them." in response to liberals and progressives.
I've spend my career making weapons of war. My master's thesis was written about creating better materials for nuclear bomb safeties. I've built jet engines and howitzer barrels.
Idiots want to brag about how many pop-guns they have?
I'll see your pop-gun and raise with a titanium mobile howitzer.
(oh, and I have pop-guns, too)
Minorities & liberals have been quietly arming themselves for years, without the arrogant bluster. Far FEWER actual guns than the masturbation-fetishists. But all you got is one trigger finger at a time... except John Wayne.
What we do have is loyalty from the officer corps. But I worry about the noncoms.
Dr. Brin,
"...loyalty from the officer corps. But I worry about the noncoms."
Speaking as a socialist former noncom who has served with some Christofascist officers, that's a pretty broad statement. One Gen. Flynn is more worrisome than several dozen NCOs.
Pappenheimer
I guess in Europe I'd be 'social democratic', but viewed from the far end of the wingosphere, I probably sound Marxist. Socialized medicine! Guaranteed paid leave! The world will collapse!
Pappenheimer
Pappenheimer,
I'll see your Flynn and raise you two Vindman brothers.
Alfred,
Not the issue. There are open-minded, educated, officers; I've met some of them. There are also enough Flynn types ensconced in mid to high level command and staff positions to worry me; they promote and recommend their own, and proselytize wherever they can. Fox News used to be the default channel on military bases; I got tired of that at the gym, because I wanted to keep my heart rate low. I also got tired of not bowing my head at opening prayers.
Pappenheimer
P.S. I recently uncovered an old dog tag of mine. It has my name, my blood type, and that I'm agnostic. Jedi wasn't an option back then
Pappenheimer,
I know. I've seen the propaganda too.
Thing is... the military is divided. USAF less so. USN less so in the other direction. That's why it matters who actually commits the first act of insurrection.
I've been wearing my sweatshirt with the Union Army pattern on it... to work. I get a few looks and not just because I support the USN. They are obviously working out the symbolism... and one civilian actually asked me to explain. Which I did.
We live in interesting times, no?
Yep,
Bin Ladin's master plan is working perfectly, at least on the 'divide and weaken the enemies of Islam' part. The 'recreate the Caliphate' part is having trouble.
(Mostly tongue in cheek, but not all the way.)
Pappenheimer
P.S. firing the first shot - the first shot can be faked very well these days. There were still Germans in the 1960's, at least, who believed Poland had attacked Germany in 1939, and those were clumsier times.
You guys make it sound as if the US armed forces are a powder keg.
Pappenheimer:
Mostly tongue in cheek, but not all the way.
Al Franken called that "kidding on the square." I've run with it ever since.
Tony Fisk,
Sorta yes and no. Many active shooter events occur on military bases. You hear more about the ones at elementary schools, but the bigger risk is for those of us working near the bases.
It's not a huge risk and I don't feel personally endangered, but I take their training class yearly to avoiding tuning out to the risk.
Pappenheimer,
Bin Laden's master plan is working perfectly...
I think we give him WAY too much credit for foresight. We did much the same with the Soviets during the Cold War. I think it rather a shame we didn't keep him alive to prove how human he was.
Yes... we overreacted. We did that with the Japanese too. Anyone who shocks us out of our tuned-out state to make us confront the crude reality that there is a wider world that matters gets this response.
What's happening here nowadays is actually part of a worldwide event. Two Scoops is leveraging it here, but others are leveraging it elsewhere. None of that should be credited to UBL.
I wouldn't credit Putin either because from where I sit this just looks like a consequence of future shock. We are squarely into the 21st century. The future has arrived.
'Master plans', 'arrogant bluster', and cursory dismissal of adversaries' abilities are the usual markers one finds on the scrap heap of history. A modest, patient, and introspective enemy is the only one worth worrying about. Like the Trisolarans perhaps.
We SHOULD try to right sound laws, but that won't help if too many of us don't give a f@$k about what we do to the lives of defendants in court.
Two Scoops has access to competent counsel.
This is true. I have become more left-wing on this issue as I've gotten older and seen the abuse "the system" can impose on disfavored groups.
Our system was created by rebels who were trying to correct the abuses of an authoritative government. However, over time, as the mainstream gets farther and farther from those lessons, and they believe in the fundamental legitimacy of their social authorities, they forget and can develop a blind eye to the flaws in their social order and culture.
However, the problem is that what we do to combat elites with very active defense, can create legal precedents that turn abusive when used against disfavored defendants.
In some ways, the needs of the poor and unpopular limit our ability to restrain the privileged. The biggest tragedy here would be to not do enough to stop an abuser, but to use a half-measure that ends up increasing the harm to the disenfranchised. That way, we get the worst of both worlds.
OTOH, probably the best outcome to which we can aspire, is enough punishment to deter the wealthy, while preventing the worst outcomes for the poor.
John Viril,
I have no issues with your general concern. I'm just doubting it is useful in this case.
I sincerely doubt the folks who wrote the words that allowed for elevation of the misdemeanor regarding false business records imagined it would be used against a former President. THAT fits with your concerns. In this case, though, I think it is EXACTLY what they intended since it is generally the elite who are rich enough to hide difficult to prove felonies behind misdemeanor falsifications of business records.
What you are seeing here isn't abuse of the poor, but the application of a law to a member of the elite. If we want Justice to be blind to social status (I love how we blindfold Justice and others in The West do not), this is a textbook example underway. In fact, it is a better example of that than the federal document handling and Georgia election interference charges.
"Limbaugh railed against drug abusers and then it turned out he was one. But that didn't make him sympathetic to the others."
Roy Cohn and many other man-f'ers poured persecution on gays.
I think it's because people like them don't come across as someone embittered by past injustice such that the end up damaging others due to their emotional scars. instead, they come across as selfish people who will abuse anyone as long as it serves their self-interest, even if the target is like them and could be a victim of social abuse.
I've been kicking around ideas that seem somewhat related in, perhaps, a tangential way that isn't obviously connected.
I recently starting binge re-watching Battlestar Galactica (the early 2000's reboot). It really holds up rather well, because Ronald D. Moore's storytelling is strong. He was inspired by a lot of post 9/11 issues. But, instead of coming across as dated, it actually reminds you of why those thing were an issue.
In short, good fiction makes the past come alive instead of seeming dated.
So, the question is how does it do that? Seems to me, the answer is lies in its ability to "give the devil his due" and at least help you understand why the villains do what they do. Thus, they don't come across as purely situational bullies, but as people that can, at some level, be understood.
Hence we get fiction like "The Acolyte" and other Disney properties that are running some seriously-expensive IPs into the ground.
While BSG and Star Wars are both space opera instead of hard sci-fi, BSG is higher-grade fiction in that it makes you think about the recent past more than the "cheerleader effect" for the "good guys" that made Star Wars so popular back in the day.
For example, I'm watching an episode where the Colonials catch a Cylon sleeper agent who teases that there's a nuke somewhere in the fleet. Hence, the colonials resort to torture in the interrogation.
We can recognize the quality storytelling of Ronald D. Moore in that it doesn't feel dated. Instead, it makes that recent past come alive as something debatable, even though the early returns suggests history will judge Bush's policy very harshly. Part of how Moore pulls it off is by mixing up the traits of the parties so it's not a perfect allegory.
To wit, the "evil Cylons" are monotheists, while the Colonials we're supposed to identify with believe in a pagan-like pantheon. This twist separates us from the perfect allegory, which then requires a bit of thought to deal with the contradictory strands.
Notice that, despite the progressive bent of the themes, Moore's BSG didn't create the kind of right-wing hate that Disney Star Wars does. Moore's use of sci-fi scenery abstracts us from known answers to make us look at questions that still seem applicable years later.
OTOH, uses a lot of "representation" and "social justice" themes in place of actual good storytelling. And, when fans don't fall overthemselves with praise of the "social message," they then attack the audience as bigots.
For one thing, that's bloody stupid marketing. Second, it seems like Disney is going out of its way to kick the OG fans of their hugely-expensive IPs and then excusing bad storytelling by vilifying their critics.
Well, notice how a lot of the same fans crowded theaters to watch movies with "woke" themes such as "Black Panther" and "Barbie." If those films could pack in an audience, why are these properties continually failing? Yes, bigots exist. But notice how they can't derail good stories.
Disney is blaming their audience when they should be looking at the poorly-crafted stories that they're trying to sell.
P.S.
The kind of hard sci-fi most of us here admire (and the kind our host has produced) is extrapolating current science to ask questions we might face in the future.
That kind of hard-to-create fiction can see quickly dated as knowledge advances, but if it's well-done can still ask interesting questions (and thus be entertaining well into the future).
Apparently Voyager 1 is fully functional again (all four instruments). Google "nasa voyager 1 back" for stories. Relocating code and bypassing a bad chip at almost 1 light day distance would be a marvel of space indeed.
Alfred Differ:
What you are seeing here isn't abuse of the poor, but the application of a law to a member of the elite
It seems to be a variation on the people who say they don't like either party increasing deficits, but only complain about it during Democratic administrations. Those who complain about laws which unfairly convict poor defendants, but only mention it when the law is actually applied for a change to a powerful white defendant.
JV re “So, the question is how does it do that? Seems to me, the answer is lies in its ability to "give the devil his due" and at least help you understand why the villains do what they do. Thus, they don't come across as purely situational bullies, but as people that can, at some level, be understood.”
I think you have it! A good story comes from the character. If the structure of the movie comes from the character it will be authentic to itself and resonate with the audience.
Stories fail when objects predicate the subject and the story is about things happening to the character.
Bad story telling reminds me of my sister’s pet hamsters in the late 70s The Hamster is the star. You bring in the star. Habitrail company sells the habitats with all these cool, adventurous attachments. The more attachments you buy, the more fun the hamster has. Wrong! The hamster makes a nest, gets depressed sleeps and shits. No matter how many attachments you add to it, the hamster is still boring and your sister keeps buying more plastic shit to surround it with until it dies.
The entertaining hamster story is about the adventures of the hamster who wants to escape and keeps trying to chew its way out of the Habitrail prison until finally it gets eaten by the cat.
Now. Thinking of theme, contrast the pre-911, Starship Troopers movie (1997) with the the 2002 Jeep Liberty Commercial featuring Enrique Iglesias singing "Hero" as the car drives up lady liberty. Look it up on YouTube if you have the stomach.
As soon as Hamilton became THE thing, you could watch all the cars in the industry hitching up to the train. I’m aware but unbothered that All Creatures Great and Small re-cultures their Yorkshire setting as it doesn’t affect the story. I totally dig “The Great.” But I wonder how something as not safe for 2024 as Mel Brooks “History or the World, part II” can feel closer in humanist spirit and integrity to Hamilton, than Bridgerton or Foundation which feel like the Jeep Liberty commercial. Just cars hitched up to the gravy rain.
And my walkout list is pretty short: Battle Field Earth. The Cell with Jennifer Lopez. John Carter. Villeneuve’s Dune, Foundation Season 2. Hobbit 2012.
"my walkout list is pretty short:..."
Clearly you have never seen Smokey and the Bandit Part 2. Or taken a five-year old to Saving Private Ryan. (please note that I approve vehemently of not erasing the horror of the battlefield, but the first scenes of the latter movie were nightmare-inducing for me, let alone a kid - I wonder if they triggered actual combat vets.)
Pappenheimer
P.S. - wiki says enough vets were affected to cause a spike in PTSD hotline calls
Worth aspiring to:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/06/rethinking-democracy-for-the-age-of-ai.html
In short, how we might use some of the tools "The usual suspects" use against Democracy to reinforce it. Tip of the hat to "whitroth" for the link.
Pappenheimer: taken a five-year old to Saving Private Ryan
I took my five-year old to seen Mulan (1998). He was so scared that we spent most of the movie in the lobby. The sound system overwhelmed him, the Mongolians didn't help.
Pappenheimer:
Or taken a five-year old to Saving Private Ryan.
When my brother had a 2 year old daughter, I sent them a video of the 1960s "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" claymation show from our youth. See, I was nine years old when I first saw that one. It never occurred to me how actually terrifying the Abominable Snow Monster would be to a two year old.
John Viril:
Second, it seems like Disney is going out of its way to kick the OG fans of their hugely-expensive IPs
I'm not aware of all of the series you are talking about here, but one of them must be Star Wars. In that case, I'd say that most of the pre-Disney prequels/sequels already did that job. After Empire Strikes Back, all they offered were repeat storylines, bad acting, and clumsy set-ups that never satisfy (What was "There's something familiar about this place." or "I have the feeling I'll never see her again" all about?)
I maintain it was an impossible task for anyone to continue the series and make it satisfying to fans of the original. What Disney did at least was to climb from the dark and depressing mood of the prequels and make them fun in the way that the Marvel movies were.
Well, notice how a lot of the same fans crowded theaters to watch movies with "woke" themes such as "Black Panther" and "Barbie."
Black Panther was a Disney one.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Pres/Maps/Jun19.html
Today is Juneteenth. In honor of the occasion, we share this quote from an 1857 speech by Frederick Douglass: "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning."
And this from an 1859 letter written by Abraham Lincoln: "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it."
And finally, this from an 1866 address by abolitionist and proto-feminist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: "We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving a curse in its own soul."
Perhaps readers will find one or more of these observations relevant to the year 2024.
...I wonder if they triggered actual combat vets.
Tom Hanks said the experience of the first day of filming was horrifying.
What Disney did at least was to climb from the dark and depressing mood of the prequels ...
I did try tweaking 'Revenge', but Abrams salted the earth with the latter trilogy.
I dubbed the second 'The Last Straw' and didn't bother with the final one.
Tony Fisk:
I did try tweaking 'Revenge', but Abrams salted the earth with the latter trilogy.
I dubbed the second 'The Last Straw' and didn't bother with the final one.
The recent film I actually enjoyed was the one-off called Rogue One. The casting of dead actors was a bit unnerving, but that aside, it covered the time period (immediately prior to the original film) that I once thought the prequels would end with.
Y'all enjoy yourselves. I'm taking the week off and heading for San Diego. My son wants to see some place named after legos. 8)
"Apparently Voyager 1 is fully functional again (all four instruments). Google "nasa voyager 1 back" for stories. Relocating code and bypassing a bad chip at almost 1 light day distance would be a marvel of space indeed."
The fact that thery set up those options, in 70 with 70 tech, is beyond ... well it's all beyond!
Alfred you know how to email me your San Diego plans?
The transistor, the computer, and artificial intelligence sprang out of early quantum and nuclear research (largely in New Jersey and New Mexico). More importantly, computational psychology was hatched there too.
We came within a hair's breadth of achieving Asimov's positronic future, but were scuppered by corporate and entrepreneurial fixation on the entertainment potential of computers. AMC's "Halt and Catch Fire" was a great review of this catastrophe.
Voyager era tech makes me proud yet sad.
The recent film I actually enjoyed was the one-off called Rogue One. The casting of dead actors was a bit unnerving, but that aside, it covered the time period (immediately prior to the original film) that I once thought the prequels would end with.
Well, Rogue One isn't exactly a one-off. Yes, it's a one-off movie but the Disney Star War series Andor tells the backstory of the male lead from Rogue One.
Andor is terrific. High-quality story-telling and diverges from "heroic" Star Wars stories in that it focuses on the sort of "shades of gray" things the rebellion had to do so that Luke Skywalker got to sit in an X-wing with the shot at taking out the Death Star.
Other than Andor and Rogue One, most of Disney Star Wars has ranged from disappointing to outright garbage.
And, yes, I was well aware Disney made "Black Panther." But the irony is them conintuing to blame audiences as racists and sexist when they themselves have made a woke title like Black Panther, enjoyed success, and still seem to think a lot of the same people are such raving racists/sexists they cause their Star Wars movies to bomb.
Uhh....it's a pathetic excuse from a bad storyteller. Sure there are racist/sexists and an ENTIRE right-wing Youtube subculture that makes bank off of decrying anything "woke." But, a good story will draw an audience despite such attacks, as Black Panther demonstrates.
But, hey, if you can get one more gig with a $15 million or so paycheck as a showrunner or movie producer who made a dog, those excuses make a lot of sense. Maybe a studio head or network will buy it and hire you again.
I'll note that both Barbie and Black Panther were *huge* hits, both commercially and critically.
It's not surprising to see studios try to replicate them. Studios do not want surprise hits, they want reliable returns.
I'll not be surprised if some studio tries to sell Oppenheimer Pt.2- The Return of Ross Lomanitz.
(Dr. Lomanitz was my freshman physics prof, so I am anxiously awaiting the call from the studios looking for help with the script.)
Or maybe a bio-pic of Richard Feynman? (Did everyone notice him in Oppenheimer, during the first nuclear bomb test? :) )
Those who complain about laws which unfairly convict poor defendants, but only mention it when the law is actually applied for a change to a powerful white defendant.
Well, I will point out that often cases involving powerful defendants (not just white) will draw far more media attention than some poor, disadvantaged nobody.
Thus, those cases will have more cultural currency and draw more public analysis.
For one thing, those powerful defendants can force more frequent appeals, which then give rise to more reported decisions, which become binding precedents within their jurisdiction (appellate cases).
So if people are talking about a case, you can persuade a lot of people to pay attention to legal problems---and perhaps solve them.
Who is going to draw more public sympathy? A black fringe gang member accused of murder, or a white Marine recruit who gets pressured by police to confess to a crime because the cop assures him he will get a better outcome?
Yet, if you win an entrapment verdict in case 2, you set a precedent and gain public awareness that can help case 1 (which occurs largely outside public view).
John Oliver has a bit up on Project 2025. I did not know that it advocates dismantling NOAA because of it is 'one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.'
Yeah. "We don't like what's ahead of us, so let's just paint the cockpit windows black and turn off the weather radar."
Pappenheimer
Well...
I came across an old Salon article written by our gracious host in 1999 critiquing the underlying themes from Star Wars.
Dr. Brin had a great reply to George Lucas saying that "benevolent despots" get things done. Basically, doesn't happen. Despots create stagnation.
Totally correct. Western Culture were backwater barbarians compared to highly civilized China until the enlightenment happened and educational institutions developed the technique of accumulating knowlege through published papers and research combined with commercial patent law.
Only then did the west create such a knowledge advantage that they could dominate far older civilizations under the weight of accumulated knowledge.
Compare the theory behind Western medicine and the Empirical Traditional Chinese medicine and one can see why. Traditional Chinese medicine has shown to be surprisingly effective in many circumstances, but the underlying theory behind it simply doesn't work to build out future solutions to medical problems. Traditional Chinese medicine provides Empirical solutions to set piece problems, but doesn't build upon itself to solve even more difficult problems.
Western medicine, with its constantly updated scientific theories, achieves this feat.
Consider that the venerated Chinese culture didn't have educational institutions that could compete with the western university system. One fun fact that brought this home is the oldest university in Asia is Santa Tomas University in Manila (which, btw, happens to be where my Dad went to Medical School) founded in 1611 by colonial spanish missionaries.
BTW, another fun fact is Santa Tomas University in the Philippines is actually older than Harvard University. Betcha you could win some bar bets with that one!
While I'm no expert on the history of Universities, I do recall that the earliest such institution was in Egypt. Possibly due to Grecian influence at the time, but not entirely 'Western'.
Whilst I'm on about influences, here's an interesting interview between retiring ABC radio host Phillip Adams and George Monbiot on the origins of Neo-Liberalism.
Neo-what? Yes, well... that's part of the story.
A.F. Rey:
Did everyone notice him [Feynman] in Oppenheimer, during the first nuclear bomb test? :)
Yes, if only because my daughter was a big fan of his books a while back.
Haven't seen Oppenheimer yet, but I do recall Feynman mentioned in the book "The Manhattan Project", described as a persistent gadfly to Bethe's(?) solid swatting (Feynman would have been fairly junior at the time, and I don't recall the reference as being unkind: more a description of style rather than ability.). Also (if memory serves) thought he wouldn't need glasses at Trinity because 'nothing could be *that* bright. He found out...
While I'm no expert on the history of Universities, I do recall that the earliest such institution was in Egypt. Possibly due to Grecian influence at the time, but not entirely 'Western'.
The school you're talking about is Al-Azhar University, that didn't call itself a university until 1961.
However, it was founded in 987 AD as a Madrasa school.
An even older learning institution is in Morocco...which dates back to 895 AD or CE if you prefer.
However, it was Western schools that developed the concept of scientific inquiry and accumulation of shared knowledge that builds upon itself.
Early Madrasa schools ONLY included instruction in religious study...but later came to involve secular subjects. I wouldn't consider a Madrasa that only teaches religion to be a university, no matter how early their founding.
Tony,
If this university was in Alexandria (would bet good money on that) it was established by a Greek-speaking Macedonian king in a city founded by a Greek-speaking Macedonian would-be Emperor of the World*, and Alexandria was considered the premier Greek city in its heyday. Local influences, sure, but solidly 'Western'.
*Though Al had barely enough time to scratch out the city plans on bare dirt before running off to conquer someone new. Man had the attention span of a six-year old; probably why he never planned for what would happen to his empire after his death.
Pappenheimer
Woops - Was thinking of the Temple of the Muses, aka the Library. reading J V, will do a bit of google...
Pappenheimer
Apparently not called a university, but definitely a research institute.
Pappenheimer
A prediction: climate will be a top issue in Nov. And scrapping NOAA will be a bigly loser.
We already cancelled our Caribbean cruise (non-weather related).
Climate chaos? While the rest of the country was sweltering, the Missoula airport yesterday was deicing planes and people were skiing a foot of new snow in the mountains.
Don Gisselbeck said...
Climate chaos?
Um you just described chaos.
Sigh. Biden is in trouble according to Nate Silver.
Yes. The plus side is the snow/ice patch on Siyeh Pass should still be skiable in August even with its new 50 meter ice caves.
Nate Silver ain't a god. Many mention one reason - that media companies want a tight race. But I hear no one mention the biggest reason I believe Biden is polling even with Tanning Bedminster. ALL of you know flakey lefties who deem it uncool to avow loyalty to an authority figure in an establishment.
The same flakes have driven hispanic males out of the coalition through linguistic bullying. No native Spanish speaker wants to be told he must go gender free. It is uitter Anglo-chauvinism as bad as anything done by conquering redcoats.
Nate Silver isn't a God, but he is good at what he does. For example, he did give Trump better winning odds than almost anyone else in 2016. His rationale made sense too.
Silver argued that Trump needed multiple states that were statistical coinflips to break for him, and gave him a 25% chance to win. That's a lot more than anyone else. I remember on the morning of election day, big outlets were giving Trump a one or two percent chance and were all but crowning Hillary.
Came out later that Trump's campaign did a better job targeting resources to places Hillary considered solid blue. Jared Kushner got credit for spearheading that modelling, but that just sounds rather convenient for the Trump family.
I've been familiar with Silver for years going back to when he wrote a lot about baseball analytics.
I wouldn't say a Biden loss is inevitable or anything like that. But I am curious about his modelling and what his analysis is telling him.
My uninspired POOMA forecast still has rumpt's chances at about 30-35%, but enough rodent seduction could pull him through. I do agree that his chances are way higher than they would be in a sane country.
Pappenheimer
P.S. At first thought this was an Onion article, but a Michigan GQP state representative has been arrested for allegedly firing a handgun "towards" a stripper, who called the cops and ran. This guy's father, a German immigrant, became a Bircher and a state senator in the 70's, touting his service in WWII but not disclosing it had been in the Luftwaffe.
Biden wins the coin toss and chooses position (same as in '20). That should make the it look like a continuation of the last debates, where Biden prevailed decisively. I'm sure DT will insist it was a rigged toss. Let's hope it was.
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