Broken Symmetry

Movies That Didn't Need to Be Remade

2011-08-28T23:42:00.001-05:00

Well, Aphrodite wanted to see the remake of Conan the Barbarian. She's seen the first one more times than I can count (having caught it every day for a couple of weeks at a dollar theater back in Austin when it first came out) and the leading man appeared to be sufficiently hunky to make it worthwhile. The Bug was in agreement on this latter component, so we decided to allow her to see her first 'R-Rated' movie.

Since a quick look at the box office returns made it clear that this would be the last weekend that we'd be able to catch it, we saw it at the over-priced theater in the mall. It was the only place that was showing the movie in 2D and none of us have any interest in wearing silly glasses. The one good thing about the mall 26-plex was that it was also showing Spy Kids 4, in 2D, at the same time, which allowed Little Buddy to catch a movie, too. Tragically, he got the better end of the deal.

To say that it was dreadful is unfair. It was worse than that. Not only was the original far better, but even Conan the Destroyer, which was a wretched piece of crap, was better. You've seen the plot before. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was pretty much the same plot, done better. The dialogue was written by someone with a tin ear. The heavies had bombastic lines, the good guys popped out with strangely disconnected bits, and the leads seem to have picked up scripts for different movies.

Most of the acting was genuinely dreadful. Stephen Lang did a nice job as the villain, at least until the very end, when the plot completely came apart, and the actor who played Conan as a child was a much better actor than the adult version, which may explain why he had so few lines. It certainly wouldn't have looked good if Conan had been articulate and charismatic as a boy, only to lapse into grunting sullenness as a man.

None of the characters were more than a cardboard cutout and the movie completely lacked the humor and joie de vivre that made the first movie worth watching. I managed to hold it together through the movie, but burst out into loud laughter during the credits, simply because of the pompousness of it all.

One bright point was that Rachel Nichols was definitely prettier than Sandahl Bergman and a better actress. The downside was that, as Aphrodite pointed out, she went from being a monk of a peaceful order to a killing machine with very few qualms and with remarkable efficiency.

Standing in the lobby before the movie, I noticed the posters for several additional movies that didn't need to be remade:

The Three Musketeers — IMDB lists twenty-four live-action movie versions, dating back as far as 1903 and coming from countries as diverse as Argentina and Iran. For anyone born in the latter half of the last century, the definitive version was done in 1973. The cast included Oliver Reed, Faye Dunaway, Richard Chamberlain, Raquel Welch, Michael York, Geraldine Chaplin, Christopher Lee, Sybil Danning, Spike Milligan, and (in the only role that I've ever liked him in) Charlton Heston. What does the new version have to offer? M'lady is Milla Jovovich, which is an inspired choice, although I don't see her as deliciously evil as Faye Dunaway. Buckingham, who is definitely not a lead, is played by Orlando Bloom, which should attract the sighing female audience. D'Artagan is the kid who played Percy Jackson, and is no Michael York, in any way. You've never heard of any of the actors playing Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. The one casting that seems truly promising is Christoph Waltz as Cardinal Richelieu.

Fright Night — I never saw the original, but really, is there that much of a need to revisit yet another low-budget horror movie?

Footloose — The world survived for 3.87 billion years before the arrival of the first version of Footloose. Couldn't we have waited as long for the remake?

The Thing — There was a trailer for The Thing. This movie holds a special spot in my heart, as the John Carpenter/Kurt Russell version came out in 1982, which was the year that I spent in Antarctica. We had a copy of the movie down there and watched it repeatedly. It gets the feel of one of the small bases pretty well. Frankly, it's a decent flick and I don't see why it needs to be remade. Without putting too fine of a point on things, I would definitely have preferred to have spent the year with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, rather than with Kurt Russell, but that's just me.

A couple that we didn't see this time, but I've seen trailers or teasers for:

The Mechanic — The original movie was fine. Not art, but fine. The pacing was good, the plot was decent. Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent both did a nice job, and it featured a Questar telescope. What could be better?

Red Dawn — For those of you who might have been busy in 1984 (or not around for some reason), the original Red Dawn had a group of teenagers fighting a Soviet invasion of the United States. This invasion took place across Canada and into the Dakotas, because an invasion across thousands of miles of endless, empty steppes worked so well for Napoleon and Hitler. Uhhhh. When we saw it, back then, two rows in front of us were a cluster of idiots in camo gear. Someone must have seen them come in, because during the trailers, the lights came on and the manager demanded to see whether they were carrying guns. Which they were. Toy guns. The manager collected the hardware anyway and told them they could collect it after the movie. Needless to say, these guys got seriously into the movie, with one excitedly shouting, "This could really happen!" as the adults were rounded up. The new version has North Koreans invading. A million starving North Korean soldiers coming ashore in shipping containers would make for an interesting opening scene, but my suspicion is that they wouldn't last an hour in the Long Beach dock area before someone had mugged them and stolen all of their weapons.

I'll run through some of the past remakes in a later posting.

Stranded in Iowa

2011-08-15T10:41:00.000-05:00

Stranded in Iowa
Stranded in Iowa
Better get the Breakdown squad out
Get me rolling on
'Cause I can't keep my thoughts out of sight
Better get the Breakdown squad out
Get me rolling on
'Cause I need to feel the stars slip by at night
I'm stranded all night, stranded all right
— Manfred Mann

Nate Silver has a great posting on why the Ames Straw Poll and the Iowa caucuses matter. What's interesting is not that neither is a particularly good predictor of who will be the Republican nominee (nice double negative there), but exactly what purpose they really serve for the Republicans. While Iowa itself is a remarkably moderate state, being about as purple as they get, the Republican caucus attendees are amongst the most conservative voters in the country. As a result, the Iowa caucus tends to identify which candidate(s) have the blessing of the psychotic right. Depending upon the year, this may or may not be a good indicator of who will be selected as the nominee.

The weekend's poll landed in favor of Michelle Bachmann, with Ron Paul following closely behind. This makes a lot of sense, given Silver's hypothesis. On the other hand, Pawlenty had no traction whatsoever, which also indicates that there are few moderates who attend these things. I'm pleased to see that Gingrich and Santorum both polled badly. Santorum's campaign headquarters in Iowa is located two blocks from my office and I'm afraid that it will take years to for the stench to fade.

On the Democratic side, the Iowa caucus does a much better job at predicting the nominee. Last time around, I registered as a Democrat for the first time ever, just so that I could attend a caucus (after almost fifteen years in Iowa, I figured that it was time to see what all the fuss was about). Having watched and taken part in the process, I can say that the Democrats seem to have a much more pragmatic approach to the whole affair. While each candidate's representative got to make a brief appeal to the caucus, most of the discussion focused upon who was most likely to win in November. Beating out the differences between Edwards and Richardson was much less important than identifying who could win.

It's just about time to stop listening to the news again. The year before a presidential election is remarkably crazy in Iowa. You can't throw a brick without hitting a potential president. Our suburb of Des Moines had Rick Santorum marching in the Fourth of July parade, glad-handing everyone he could. I was about to shout that he had been a loser in Pennsylvania too, when The Boss fired her elbow into my side and diverted my attention to trying to remember how to breathe. The state fair has more candidates than cattle and the cattle at least display some signs of civility.

White Fang and the Hunter (1975)

2011-08-12T23:23:00.000-05:00

Robert Wood
Pedro Sanchez
Malisa Longo
Massimo De Cecco
Robert Hundar

Inventory

Three dog teams
An Indian woman
A branding iron
An HO-gauge railroad
Incriminating papers
A bucking broncho
A suitcase full of neckties
One wedding brawl

Summary
A grizzled backwoods coot takes a shot at a rabbit with a Henry rifle and causes an avalanche which buries a less grizzled, but even more mangy trapper. Fortunately, the trapper has a wolf (german shepard) that is clearly the brains of this outfit. The wolf makes like Lassie and brings the shooter back, where they dig out the trapper. The trio heads to town, only to find it a corrupt dump where everything is owned by someone named Ferguson.

When we meet Ferguson, he's doing a Snidely Whiplash act, pressuring a widow to sell her farm to him. When she objects, he points out that he's always been fond of her. For example, he had offered to marry her the day after her husband died. For some reason, she remains unmoved by the offer and even suggests that it might have been Ferguson would sped her ex-husband to his heavenly rewards.

After leaving town, our trio is set upon by a pack of wolves who leave the coot and the wolf, who we learn is named White Fang, wounded. Fortunately, they find their way to the aforementioned farm.

As expected, the trapper, who we learn is named Daniel, proves to be an expert shot, brawler, and horseman. The coot also turns out to be a horseman as well, for he is able to ride out on a tan horse and ride in on a white one. When Daniel pursues the coot, he learns from Ferguson that the farm's importance is that it's blocking the path of the railroad.

An eyeblink later, both Daniel and the coot are back at the farm, just in time for an army of Ferguson's men to assault. Fortunately, the hoodlums have the standard level of incompetence and are only able to shoot a puppy, while being all but massacred themselves.

This entire attack is conducted in a static-fiiled grey fog. I don't think it was actually filmed that way, but all of the contrast was bleached out of whatever was used to master the DVD. The daylight scenes, which take place in a winter wonderland, are almost the exact opposite, with nothing but contrast. In fact, virtually all of the movie's action takes place in murky gloom.

In the end, Ferguson is shot (indirectly) by White Fang. I know that this is a spoiler, but I don't think that I can truly capture the spirit of the movie without mentioning this little detail.

The closing credits do include the following, in English:

The producers thank for its collaboration

"THE CASA PRESENZANO"

Breeders of the Samoiedo Belonging to Isabella del Balzo

author of the book "The Samoiedo and other Nordic Races"

published by Ed. Olimpia

The General Command of the Guardia di Finanza of Rome

The Legion Command of the Guardia di Finanza of Como

and The Members of their Dog Training Units

All capitalization and punctuation is as found in the original.

Ignazio Spalla, who played the old coot, Dollar, spent most of his career acting under the name Pedro Sanchez, including this movie. Somehow, this doesn't sound like much of an improvement.

Dialogue
"Leave us alone. You too, although you are his mother. Johnny and I must talk. Talk as men do talk."

Story

It's almost impossible to tell how much of this was intended to be slapstick and how much was supposed to be a serious movie. The Jack London estate has a good case for a defamation suit.

Music

The main theme has a seventies feel about it. I can't decide whether it belongs to a cop drama or to a porn movie.

Acting

Malisa Longo is incredibly beautiful. She might even be able to act, although this movie doesn't give her much room to show it. Massimo De Cecco, who played Johnny, was not much of a child actor. Whoever dubbed his lines was even worse. Actually, all of the dubbing is really, really bad. As in, you could get a bunch of friends together and do a better job, even after having spent the evening getting drunk.

For what it's worth, the "wolf-dog", White Fang, was played by Habbash. He clearly was the best actor in the movie. The credits also note the "participation of Robert Hundar", who played Ferguson. Apparently, he did it just to be cooperative.

Spam

2011-08-07T15:14:00.001-05:00

I, like most people these days, have multiple e-mail addresses. There is my work address, my public address, my private address, and a couple of odd accounts that I use for specific purposes (like my gmail account, which pretty much exists to make my Android equipment easier to use). There's a reason for this, of course. Mail to my private address tends to be from family and friends, while my public account is filled with receipts, ads, job offers, and the occasional Nigerian 411 scam.

The quality of spam filtering varies on these accounts. My work e-mail is protected by a psychotic series of filters that includes the best heuristics and black-listing that money can buy. My Yahoo account has Yahoo working to filter it and my private e-mail has something like SpamAssassin installed at my service provider. What makes this interesting are the occasional inappropriate messages that make it through.

At work, the few that make it through have two general characteristics: they are addressed to one of the large mailing lists and they are genuine, first-class spam. The content is either highly inappropriate or accompanied by an attachment that absolutely screams "I'm a virus!" The stuff that leaks through Yahoo is generally pretty boring. For the most part, they're someone who has figured out a way to camouflage Viagra and Cialis well enough to sneak past the Bayesean filters, or ads for financial companies.

My private e-mail's spam falls into a few key categories that are worth mentioning (in increasing order of offensiveness):

1) Offers for business seminars and management training. These make me think that one of my friends or family has been hacked at some point and his or her contact list has been sold.

2) Gonzo messages. These are the ones with random words or the occasional line from a book or movie. I've dissected these forensically and there is nothing contained within them that would make sending or receiving them useful to anyone.

3) Knock-off/Replica goods. These are offers to sell me knock-offs or replicas of Rolex, Louis Vuitton, and other brand names. They make no effort to pretend to sell the real stuff.

4) Romantic offers. These are the offers to hook me up with the girl or guy of my dreams. The ones that pretend to be from old flames are more offensive, primarily since the implication is that I have somehow forgotten a past dalliance that should now be renewed. Trust me, any romantic adventures that I've forgotten are best left that way.

5) Pharmaceutical offers. These come in spurts. (Boy, that line sounds a lot worse in retrospect.) For some reason, I'll receive a batch of offers for some or all of the drugs that are commonly offered this way, then months will go by before the next batch gets through.

6) Educational offers. The amount of spam dedicated to telling me that a college degree could improve my career opportunities is amazing. I wish that I had known how easy it is to get a degree before I spent all those years in classrooms.

7) And, without a doubt, the least effective spam in the world (drum roll, please): The bottomless barrage of broadsides bemoaning my basic behavior in bed. The propaganda poking put-downs at the performance of my personal package. Yes, I'm referring to the "Male Enhancement" ads. Why and how these pour through the spam filter is a mystery to me, but boy howdy, do I get them. Herbal supplements that guarantee results that would make a stallion blush, sure-fire techniques for satisfying my mate (the gender non-specificity is a nice touch), and those promising to make me perform like a teenager (which I presume means stammering in front of women and having an acne breakout before each date).

What inspired this posting was an e-mail that slipped through the Yahoo filters this morning from the sender "Sacred Hair Growth". I had to open it to see what it could possibly be. The answer were the two words "Canadian pornstars". This is so transcendently gonzo that it's almost zen-like. It certainly inspired me to wonder if there were scenes of lumberjacks showing up to discover slumber parties going on.

This line of thinking caused me to remember back a few years to 2005. I had the same e-mail address for twelve years. Not only that, but it had been published in several computer books that I had co-authored and had certainly been scattered to the four winds on several newgroups and forums. As a result, I got spam like you wouldn't believe. Since my ISP made no effort to block it, I was getting 150-200 unwanted messages a day. This led me to set up my own filtering system, using SpamAssassin and a few other tools. The thing about rolling your own is that it requires constant maintenance to keep black- and white-lists updated, as well as the tuning of the Bayesean filters.

In practice, scanning through the logs let me discover the concept of the fetish of the month. For whatever reason, pornographic spam has a tendency to focus on different subjects, rotating on a fairly regular basis. I wondered, but never enough to try to find out, whether this was based upon looking for the most common key words in Google searches, or if it was more or less random. Nevertheless, I discovered a great deal about the rather interesting interests of my fellow netizens.

I watched as various ethnic groups and nationalities had their moment in the sun, only to fade when the next group came along. I saw ads aimed at those with an interest in latex, vinyl, leather, and rubber. There were an amazing number of ads for amateur wives, where amateur was misspelled in more ways than you would imagine possible. These inspired the question, "Are there professional wives?", but I digress. Various age groups were promoted, usually falling into the categories of teens, young, older, and mature. This naturally inspired subjects like "Mature Russian Amateur Teen Wives", which topped off the great Russian explosion of 2003.

Throughout all of this, I remained uncurious enough not to pursue any of the topics offered. At least until the great balloon fetish burst into my inbox. One week, almost like magic, much of the spam suddenly focused upon balloons. Not one or two e-mails, but literally hundreds of messages, all purporting to deliver the finest in balloon erotica.

Now, I have never lived what I would call a sheltered life, but this was new to me. It boggled the mind to imagine what could possibly be a turn-on about balloons. As more and more of these messages poured in, the inevitable happened and I cracked. I Googled "balloon fetish" and opened a few of the sites.

So what is a balloon fetish, you might ask? I'll tell you. These sites consisted of pictures of women and balloons. The women tended to be young, late teens or early twenties. For the most part they were dressed, albeit sometimes in bikinis or nightwear. The balloons were the kind of party balloons that you've blown up before. And the women were playing with the balloons.

No, really. They were throwing the balloons into the air, or holding them in front of themselves. At times, the women would be popping the balloons, usually by sitting or stepping on them. That's it. Almost without exception, these sites wouldn't have warranted a PG-13 rating, let alone an adult-only.

In a strange way, I found this gratifying. Not the balloons, mind you; a typical shampoo commercial is more pornographic. No, the satisfying part was discovering that there are people out there (I presume mostly men) whose idea of a good time is watching someone pop balloons.

Come on, admit it. Doesn't knowing that make you feel a little bit more normal, too?

The Price of Power (1969)

2011-08-05T23:33:00.002-05:00

Giuliano Gemma
Warren Vanders
Maria Cuadra
Rai Saunders
Fernando Rey
Antonio Casas
Benito Stefanelli
Van Johnson

Inventory

A suicidal hanging
Four beers
A philosophical doctor
The worst beard in the history of movies
A press conference
A flashback
A head butt
Two gunfights in the dark
Russian Roulette
An IED

Summary
Our story begins in Dallas, Texas. Judging from the portrait of Lincoln and the American flag being thrown on a bonfire, it's after the Civil War and not everyone is happy. Within the first five minutes, we learn that the President is on his way to visit Dallas and there is a plot to kill him, led by the sheriff. When the plot is told to a local rancher, it becomes necessary for him to meet his end at a poker party. Apparently having a poker shoved through your torso causes you to fold.

We soon meet the President, who looks and sounds like Hedy Lamarr in Blazing Saddles. ~~This movie doesn't seem to be particularly concerned with history, as the President is clearly neither Andrew Johnson or U.S. Grant.~~ ~~Also, to the best of my recollection, there was never a first lady named Lucretia.~~ Update: I stand corrected. James Garfield's wife was named Lucretia. Garfield was also a great proponent of African-American rights and education, as depicted in the movie. Since Garfield was also assassinated, although in nothing resembling the manner depicted in the film, I feel obliged to retract my comment about the filmmakers' concerns with history. I will point out that they could have saved me the embarrassment of writing this update had they simply pasted a beard on Van Johnson's face. Without it, he looks much more like Chester Arthur, minus the mustache. As an aside, not that it would have made any difference to my guessing who the president was supposed to be, Maria Caudra is much prettier than Lucretia Garfield.

Fortunately for the republic, the rancher's son, who fought for the Union, and a black man are on the case. After surviving an ambush, the son disrupts the unrepentant renegades' attempt to blow up what has to be the most magnificent railroad bridge in the country, a soaring steel masterpiece.

It turns out that the plotters are racist tea baggers who've bought and paid for the Vice President. Soon there are snipers in the book depository (sorry, on the overpass — no, really, that's what they call it) and the President is shot in the neck. He falls into the arms of the first lady, who cries, "Help me! Won't someone help me?"

Later, a newspaperman says that no one person could have fired twice in less than ten seconds. and there is even a Warren Commission-like medical report that confirms the lone gunman theory, including the angle of the shot. Naturally, a single doctor who refudiates it.

The allegory is laid on thick and fast. The only thing that I have to say in favor of the bad guys is that they have a seemingly inexhaustable supply of incompetents that can be thrown into any gunfight

Dialogue
"Some people dream of things and ask 'why?' I dream of things and ask 'why not?'"

Story

I really wanted to hate this movie after the first half-hour, but I have to admit that it grew on me as it went on. There were enough threads and twists to keep things moving. I certainly wouldn't claim that the characters were well developed, but at least there was a healthy variety of stock roles.

It's actually a fairly imaginative spin on the Kennedy assassination in an entirely different drama. I'd complain about the dialogue, but it's no worse that Oliver Stone's version in that regard.

Music

A decent original soundtrack, with significant incidental music. There is a song and dance number in the middle which is out of place, but not awful.

Acting

All of the voices are overdubbed. Everyone who did the dubbing appears to have been well sedated. With a few exceptions, most of the actors do a reasonably good job of acting. It's a shame that the voice work is so flat.

Three Bullets for Ringo (1966)

2011-07-29T23:22:00.001-05:00

Gordon Mitchell
Mickey Hargitay

Inventory

Behind the back shot
Two chinese bodyguards
A saloon gunfight
A street fight
A dying mother
Three deeds in a box
A funky afro-gypsy indian ritual
A six-barreled cannon

Summary
The movie begins in good style, with guitar music and men's choir doing the "Ahhhh, ahhhh" thing, stock photos of pistols (all cocked), and the worst sound effects ever of a Winchester being cocked and fired. Gordon Mitchell's and Mickey Hargitay's names both show up before the title, which means that they either had the greatest agents ever, or the standard for being a box office draw was once much, much lower. The title in the title sequence is 3 Colpi di Winchester per Ringo, which seems to be rather specific. Cutting back on the product placement probably helped to fit it onto American marquees.

Without too much ado, a pair of gunfighters are hired to recover a woman from a gang of Mexican bandits who have kidnapped her. This is accomplished with considerable more ease than you might expect, especially considering the price that they charge.

When Daddy tries to welch on paying the gunfighters, they proceed to have the most stunningly apathetic gunfight in the saloon, at least until the banker shows up and everyone stops shooting and walks away peacefully.

As an aside, no one seems to have any idea of what two hundred ounces of gold weighs, as they pour out a dozen coins onto the counter and call it good.

Once things settle down, it turns out that one of the gunfighters, Ringo Carson, has a long standing relationship with the daughter. Or, to be more accurate, a long laying relationship. The other, Frank Sanders, is rather jealous of this relationship, which puts a strain upon the partnership. The two demonstrate that they are equally bad at pretending to brawl as they are at pretending to shoot. I don't normally like to complain about the continuity in these movies, but if you're going to have one guy knock another to the ground, when he hops up swinging, it should be the same one who fell. Finally, Frank has had enough, proclaims the woman to be not worth the fight, and rides out of town.

In a matter of the next couple of minutes, Ringo is reconciled with his estranged mother, marries Jane, becomes a father, the Civil War ends, and he is appointed sheriff. We know the war ends because of a caption, in Italian, which says so while someone in a nineteenth century Spanish uniform dies on the screen.

A few seconds after this sequence, the stage brings in a dying man who says that renegade Southerners are shooting up the place. Ringo says goodbye to his son, who appears to be about nine years old, and heads out to fight the rebels, who are wearing brand new Confederate (Spanish) uniforms. He rescues a little boy from a burning building, but is blinded when a beam from the roof falls onto his head. Fortunately for him, the leader of the rebels is his former partner, Frank, who brings him back to his home.

Within minutes, Jane's father, who's a gun runner, and Daniels, the Banker, offer Frank the sheriff's job. Fortunately for everyone, the Doctor does mention that in some cases a second blow to the head will cause the eyesight to return.

Now, at this point, the story gets a little unbelievable. No, really. It gets worse. Much worse. The conclusion is genuine batshit crazy.

As I said earlier, I don't like to complain about continuity, but people walk into a building in the dark and out a few minutes later in full daylight. At one point you can see daylight out a window, while the doorway next to it is open to the night.

By the way, IMDB calls it Three Graves for a Winchester, which makes no sense whatsoever.

In the obscure connections line, Mickey Hargitay was the husband of Jayne Mansfield for six years and three children.

Dialogue
"Jane, I'm sorry about this little mix-up, honey. They didn't harm you, did they?"
"No, but it wasn't a picnic, Pa. The whole thing was revolting, as usual, and I won't do it again."
"A bit of whisky, missy?"
She takes a slug and continues, "The first time I was taken by cattle rustlers, the second time by indians, just to get you to pay ransom. I'm getting tired of being your daughter."

Story

This movie is 1:27 including the credits. Beyond a doubt, that is at least 1:25 too long. The dialogue is ridiculous and the plot defies description. This is as close as I've come to just turning one of these movies off.

Music

Once again, passable music.

Acting

Whoever dubbed the leads seems to have believed that a cowboy drawl sounds like a mentally handicapped person with a speech impediment. They speak the words at a normal pace, but with a painful pause between each word and a flat inflection.

The best actor in the movie is a horse who gets shot and lays down, pretending to be dead. Unfortunately for the director, the horse proceeds to get up and fall down dead twice more in the background of the scene. At the end, he's walking around waiting for his next cue.

Skeptically Speaking

2011-07-23T22:10:00.000-05:00

Okay, sorry about taking a week off, but I was at TAM 9 last weekend and it took a week to recover from the loss of sleep and get my head back into the game.

What's TAM? TAM is the The Amazing Meeting, which is the premier skeptics' convention. What's a skeptics' convention? That's a harder question.

The definition of a skeptic is a subject that inspires a lot of discussion, both on-line and in person. As a practical working definition, I would say that a skeptic is a person who uses evidence-based reasoning as his or her standard for creating a world view. In practice, this means that skeptics are atheists or deists, as the evidence for a god who takes an active role in the universe is slim to non-existent. It also means that skeptics do not believe in the supernatural. Either something exists, in which case it can be explained by the laws of nature, in which case it is obviously natural, or it does not.

This was my first TAM, so I wasn't certain as to whether it would be depressing, as it became obvious that the vast majority of people are not willing to use reason, or uplifting, as I got to see how many people actually cared about this. As it happens, it was neither of those. TAM was a terrific four-day party.

I heard talks on the psychology and neurology of perception. Would you believe that research has actually demonstrated how sleight of hand is able to fool you? It all has to do with how the neurons in your brain process your visual field. There were talks on placebo-based medicine and on mental illness denialism.

There were panels and speakers on topics from how climate change deniers are using the same tactics as creationists, on the future of the space program (and whether aliens exist), and how skepticism is presented on television.

Finally, there was evening entertainment, culminating in Penn Jillette's private doughnut and bacon party. To quote Louis Armstrong, "If you have to ask, you ain't never going to know."

So what was the point? Or alternately, what is the point?

There is a hell of a cool universe out there. It's filled with exploding stars and subatomic particles that zip right through you as you sit and read this. There are neurons in your body that stretch all the way from your brain to your toes (and in the case of the dinosaurs, all the way from their little brains back to the tips of their tails). There are fossils of whales with feet and dinosaurs with feathers. We can see planets around other stars and we've found a worm that lives a mile under the ground in near solid rock.

With all of these wonders and so many more, why would you waste your own grey cells watching some crackpot television show where idiots wander around in a dark house jumping at every creaking floorboard?

I'm not going to be one of the great science bloggers out there. If you're looking for great writing, try the Discover or Scientific Americans blog sites. I will, however, do my part by looking for the odds and ends of weirdness that I can debunk.

In highly unlikely event that you were at TAM 9, I hope that you had as much fun as I did. Live long and prosper.

Kid Vengeance (1977)

2011-07-12T00:23:00.000-05:00

Lee Van Cleef
Jim Brown
John Marley
Glynnis O'Connor

Inventory

A snake
A scorpion
Two toes
Four utterly inept brothers
Two hundred pounds of gold
A lot of dynamite

Summary
Okay, almost before the credits even begin, we know that this will be a winner. It's a Golan-Globus production, and for those of us of a certain age, the words Golan-Globus at the start of a movie let us know that 1) the script was unlikely to have cost more than $10,000 to buy off of whatever desperate screenwriter happened to walk into the office that day, and 2) for the most part, there was no reason to worry about excessive production values getting in the way of a trashy action flick. Now, admittedly the cousins would, in their later years, get into arty films that had cinematic merit, but this movie holds a special pride of place, as it is the FIRST Golan-Globus movie, which makes it the sui generis of an entire art form.

If that were not enough, this is a matzah western, having been filmed in Israel, of all places. The concept of a mid-eastern western is rather metaphysical, in a number of ways.

We're not disappointed, because after a bucolic family scene, we move to town, where we meet Lee Van Cleef as an aging hippy. Jim Brown soon shows up as a prospector who struck it rich in the hills. Needless to say, this attracts the attention of the wrong kind of folk.

Van Cleef and his band soon shows up at the camp site of the bucolic family, where they engage in some old fashioned rape, pillage, and murder. This is all witnessed by the young son. When one of the bandits stays behind to loot the dead, the boy beats him to death with a shovel.

As the boy's sister is accidently taken by the bandits while she hides in the wagon, the boy begins to wreak his revenge in a creative, if unlikely, commando operation. His actions are significantly aided by the general incompetence of the bandits, who seem destined for duty as the bad guys in a future Delta Force or Death Wish movie.

If nothing else, this movie does examine the idea that even bandits return home after a hard day of work to a quiet little bedroom community.

The title on the film is Vendetta. Kid Vengeance does have that grindhouse tone to it, though.

Apropos of nothing, it's amazing how little two hundred pounds of gold weighs.

Dialogue
"Don't step on the duck!"

Story

With a name like Kid Vengeance what do you expect? It's a revenge movie. There are a few twists thrown in, as well as some genuinely funny lines, but it is not the kind of movie where you're going to sit around with your friends and and debate what the filmmaker really meant.

Music

Decent music, by an Italian, of course. They saved money by using as little as possible of it.

Acting

What's remarkable is how much Lee Van Cleef looks like a balding, bearded Dennis Hopper. James Brown was one of the greatest football players of all time. He ran like the wind. From what I've read, he's intelligent and a gentleman, but in the name of all that is sacred, he couldn't act to save his life. Something clearly went wrong with Glynnis O'Connor's lines, because she's very badly dubbed.

Fundamental Constants

2011-07-11T22:16:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, when I was but a humble undergraduate, I had a professor who interrupted his lecture to point out one of the fundamental constants of the universe:

"Unlike such things as the fine structure constant, which is occasionally up for discussion (and why 1/137?), there is one number that remains fixed and unchanging throughout time. When I was an undergraduate, commercial fusion energy was twenty years in the future. When I was a graduate student, commercial fusion energy was twenty years in the future. And now, as I look upon your bright and eager faces, I tell you that commercial fusion energy is twenty years in the future."*

* I may be gifting my old instructor with more eloquence than he actually possessed, but we'll give the old boy the benefit of the doubt.

I sat in my chair as he said this and harbored a secret chuckle, for I knew what he did not. I had spent several years as a technician working for the Fusion Research Center at the University of Texas on the Texas EXperimental Tokamak (TEXT), and I knew that with the remarkable breakthroughs that we were making daily, that it would only be a decade or so before someone, somewhere, had a working fusion reactor. After all, at that time there were hints from Princeton and other places of near-break-even operation, if only for a fraction of a second.

Well, today (and I am sorry to say that it has been much more than twenty years since I had sat in that classroom) there was an Op-Ed in the New York Times on the topic of fusion energy. Stewart Prager who is identified as the director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory has a wonderful piece that talks of all the benefits of fusion energy: it's not a greenhouse gas producer, it doesn't pollute, there is no chance for a catastrophic meltdown, it's available to every country on Earth, and the fuel is damn near free.

And then, in the last paragraph, just when he's closing the deal, he mentions the fundamental constant:

Fusion used to be an energy source for my generation’s grandchildren; now, plans across the world call for a demonstration power plant in about 20 years.

Hmmm, I wonder how the gravitational constant is holding up these days?

The Unholy Four (1970)

2011-07-10T23:40:00.000-05:00

Leonard Mann
Woody Strode
Peter Martell
Luca Montefiori

Inventory

One saloon brawl
$100,000 in gold
A traveling sideshow
A church organ
One graveyard gunfight

Summary
A band of bank robbers create a distraction by setting fire to an asylum for the criminally insane. In the resulting confusion, four inmates escape. Strangely, the townspeople seem much more concerned with recapturing the inmates than the are in catching the bank robbers.

It's easy to see why, when, within a day, the bank robbers are dead, ambushed by their erstwhile allies, while the inmates have eliminated the bounty hunters who had set out after them. Regardless of how crazy they are, it certainly appears that they're competently criminal.

One of the inmates has amnesia, but in the escape, he learns that his name is Chuck Moll. As the four of them drift into a town, they learn that he's the eldest son of one of the two families that run the town. The only question is which family. This would be easily cleared up if at least one of the families had the surname "Moll".

Dialogue
"Five dollars."
"I'll see your five and raise you twenty."
"You raise twenty, I raise a hundred."
(Lays cards down.) "Flush"
"You been cheatin'."
"What was that?"
"You been cheatin'."
"So have you."

Story

The story is good, with a nice collection of twists and turns. The four main characters have the usual one quirk each, with one strong, one good with a knife, one good with a rifle, and one good with a pistol. The dialogue is pretty wooden, but Woody Strode is the only American in the cast, so it's not as though any of the actors were likely to be complaining about it.

Music

The theme for this movie sounds as though it should be playing in a late-sixties comedy involving a young woman finding her way after moving to New York City. It reappears throughout the movie at odd intervals, giving a strangely upbeat lilt to a gunfight.

Acting

Woody Strode is a fine actor who never seemed to get the kind of leading roles that he deserved. In this movie he has about three lines, probably because he didn't speak enough Italian to recognize his cues. Luca Montefiori and Peter Martell are actually pretty good, but Leonard Mann seems to have been given the direction to look confused and took it to heart. There is one brief scene where he doesn't have a puzzled look on his face and he flashes a bit of real charisma that immediately disappears again. I'm afraid that I have to rate the acting as slightly below average.

End of an Era

2011-07-10T19:15:00.001-05:00

Those who know me, know that I have been a space junkie since before space was cool. Which, to be fair, could mean last week. In truth, my earliest memory of the space program is Apollo 8. I was five years old and one of my classmates looked at a piece of paper sitting on the table and asked the teacher what it said. I looked down and read, "Blast off at noon." Since this was at a time when five year olds did not read, I was hauled off to the principal's office, where I was carefully examined for other obvious abnormalities. The next summer, I sat with my family to watch Neil and Buzz take their steps on the moon and before the next year was out, I can remember explaining to adults why rockets were multi-staged.

When Columbia made its first flight, I sat with a mass of other science geeks and we watched it together. Those of you who never saw a Saturn V launch can't imagine how terrifying that first shuttle flight was. Saturn rockets were an unstoppable force once the engines fired. They moved steadily and with profound dignity off the launch pad and into the sky. Shuttle launches are all together different. The shuttle's main engines fire and then take their time coming to full thrust. Then, once the main engines are at full throttle, the two solid rocket boosters are lit. Once they are at full thrust, explosive bolts fire and the whole combination of shuttle, external tank, and solid rocket boosters pops into the sky as if shot from a slingshot. The thing is, while the main engines are coming to full thrust, they're turning huge amounts of water to steam under the launch pad. The SRBs add to the steam when they fire, but the solid fuel also creates great quantities of smoke. That first launch, when the whole pad and rocket disappeared into a huge white cloud, it looked like a terrible explosion had taken place. As everyone in the room was holding their breath, out pops the shuttle, taking off toward the sky like a bat out of hell. After a moment, the entire room went completely crazy, as the whole crowd cheered and screamed and danced around like over-educated idiots.

When Columbia landed at White Sands, New Mexico in 1982, I traveled with three other technicians from the Fusion Research Center, driving overnight from Austin to catch the landing. Of course, it didn't land that day because of the worst sandstorm in the history of the region, and we had to return to Austin (or risk losing all of our jobs), so we missed the actual landing the next day.

When Challenger exploded, I was still at the University of Texas. I went home and watch replay after replay, with tears streaming down my cheeks. That day and 9/11 were probably the two most emotionally devastating in my life. I was a scientist, a physicist, and I had spent my life believing in technology. And there it was, scattered across the sky. I have read the accident review board's report and Feynmann's addendum many times since then and to this day I believe that PowerPoint killed seven people.

I've gotten up early and stayed up late and taken lunches at strange hours, all to watch the shuttle launch. I was even watching, by pure coincidence, the Challenger landing on NASA TV when it shattered into thousands of pieces across Texas. When Atlantis went up, I had the NASA feed running on my computer. Of course, my boss came in to talk just before launch and by the time I could shoo him out, I was I sure that I had missed the launch. Fortunately for me, there was a hold at T-31 seconds that lasted just long enough for me to catch the restart of the clock.

Here's the weird part: I've never liked the shuttle. It's the wrong spacecraft, built to go where no one needed to go, with capabilities that didn't contribute to science. It was built to satisfy the needs of the Air Force, who hardly used it before Columbia and never used it after. They built an entire billion-dollar launch facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base for the shuttle and it was never used. The wings that failed for Challenger were added for the Air Force, which had a need for what's called cross-range capability. Most things that fall from space, including spacecraft, fall in more or less a straight line. This means that you need to reenter the atmosphere at a time when you're lined up with where you want to land. The thing is, the Air Force wanted the ability to go up and either leave something up there or bring something down without anyone knowing about it. This pretty much means a once-around flight. The problem is that while you're making your orbit (in about ninety minutes), the Earth is busy spinning, so you're going to come down about fifteen hundred miles from where you took off.* Since this is rather inconvenient, the Air Force wanted the ability to "fly" the shuttle back to where it took off. In the end, the shuttle made very little use of this capability and the next result was large and fragile wings that cost huge amounts of energy to lift into orbit.

* The assumptions here are that you're launching into near-polar orbit, which is why they built the site at Vandenberg, and that your launch site is near the equator, which is not true for Vandenberg. At the latitude of Vandenberg, the cross-range need is only about 1200 statue miles, which is, remarkably enough, the exact cross-range capability of the space shuttle. In fact, one feature of every launch is the discussion of the AOA, or Abort-Once-Around. This is an option if there is a main engine failure on launch. Outside of the shuttle industry, it's not widely known that this capability is all but useless for a flight from the Kennedy Space Center. The window between a TAL (Trans-Atlantic-Abort) and an ATO (Abort-To-Orbit) is pretty much zero.

The part about being built to go where no one needs to go probably needs some explanation. After all, everyone has been talking about how we need to resupply the International Space Station now that the shuttle is no longer around to do the job. Once again, there is a story behind the story. The ISS was built to give the shuttle something to do. There is no real analogy to it except building a railroad into the middle of a desert and then deciding to build a city there, so that building the railroad seems like a good idea.

Here are the problems with a manned station in low orbit. The things that low Earth orbit (LEO) are good for tend to be things like Earth observation. Taking pictures of various types to observe clouds, oceans, and landforms or for map making. There are also some experiments like growing crystals of materials that can't mix in gravity. None of these require human intervention. In fact, having people around means that there is unexpected motion, as the people move around, as well as the need for air, heat, water, and food.

Where should people be in space? On the rocks and ice cubes all around the solar system. People are very good at pattern recognition and adaptability. While it's perfectly fine to have rovers wandering Mars (go Opportunity!), a person could cover more ground, faster. Also a trained person can spot things that look out of place. For example, from the transcript to Apollo 15:

145:41:19 Scott: Get that unusual one. (Pause) Here's some dense...And there's another unusual one; look at the little crater here, and the one that's facing us. There is a little white corner to the thing.

The unusual rock with a little white corner is the "Genesis Rock", the first piece of anorthosite to be found on the Moon. These rocks (more would be found by the Apollo 16 astronauts) date back nearly 4.5 billion years and solidified shortly after the Moon was formed when a Mars-sized planetoid hit the just-formed Earth. Developing algorithms that can spot slightly odd rocks on a field of more or less identical rocks is a difficult task. Fortunately for us, seeing something that looks out of place is a strong survival tool, so the evolutionary algorithm generator has been hard at work on this problem for a very long time.

So where should we go now that the last shuttle has launched? There are hints of a plan, if politics, greed, and stupidity don't screw it up too badly. Having commercial operations like SpaceX deliver supplies to the ISS sounds like a great idea. Let's face it, UPS and FedEx do a better job delivering packages than does the Post Office. The same will be true for crew transfers, too. Despite what some would have you believe, there is very little difference between delivering parts and people, at least on the way up. When returning to Earth, you want to be more careful with the goods when people are involved.

If there is a place for government involvement in manned space flight, it should be in the development of genuinely heavy lift rockets. These have been out of favor since Saturn, but a new rocket in that class would go a long way toward getting men and women onto the Moon.

As an old space cadet, I'll have more to say someday. I'll also put together some links where you can learn more about these topics from people who are far better qualified than I am. Until then, I say to the crew of Atlantis, best of luck and may the wind be at your back.

Four Rode Out (1970)

2011-07-04T20:43:00.001-05:00

Sue Lyon
Pernell Roberts
Julián Mateos
Leslie Nielsen

Inventory

Dead horses
$120,000
A wedding dress
Two canteens of water

Summary
This clearly is not going to be the typical movie that we have seen so far. Instead of the protagonist being introduced by killing someone or being released from jail, this one begins with a man sneaking through a window into the bedroom of a young woman. She peels off his boots, belts, and other assorted items and then crawls under the sheets with him. Just as they are about to get started on a detailed discussion on the virtues of romantic love, an enraged man storms into the bedroom. Before anyone can say a word, the first man uses a right jab to the second man's face as an opportunity to grab as much of his hardware as possible before defenestrating himself. After his departure, the second man slaps the woman, and repeatedly cries, "You're just like your mother." After a few repetitions of this anguished phrase, he rushes from the room and we hear him shoot himself.

The next scene begins looking up from a grave at the woman and a priest. Soon, Marshall Ross shows up to ask the woman, who we learn is named Myra, about the window-climbing gentlemen, who we learn is named Fernando Nuñez. The marshall claims Nuñez is a bank robber and a murderer. Maya proclaims his innocence and appeals to Ross, who tells her that he will find Nuñez, no matter what.

Leslie Nielsen then appears as Mr. Brown, a Pinkerton agent, also pursuing Nuñez, but with more concern about recovering the stolen money than about any abstract notions of justice. The two men join forces, although not by the marshall's choosing. Before long, they're joined by Myra. Brown is determined to kill Nuñez on sight, while Ross wants to bring him in for a trial. Myra is desperate to save his life, so Brown offers Myra a trade, Nuñez's life for her favors. A friendlier threesome has never ridden together.

When they catch up to Nuñez, the movie turns into a taut psychological thriller.

This is actually a paella western, as it a Spanish-American production. The DVD version is strangely censored, with the word "whore" blipped out repeatedly.

Dialogue
"You like girls, Mr. Brown?"
"Wa-well, what do you mean?"
"Well, the way you talk about hunting down Nuñez. You talk about every man you hunt down that way?"
"What way?"
"You know, the way some men talk about the women they've had. You strike me that way about this boy."

Story

This is a western for grown-ups. It's not a shoot-em-up and good and bad are all very relative. The plot is nuanced, the characters are detailed and not stereotypical, and the dialogue is rich and realistic. I cannot understand why this movie is not part of the Western canon. I consider the fact that I have never seen it before to be truly remarkable.

Music

The movie opens with a woman (Janis Ian) playing guitar and singing the theme song. Her playing and singing pop up again from time to time. There is nothing wrong with the music, but it doesn't play much of a role in this movie.

Acting

Leslie Nielsen does a wonderful job playing a dirty, low-down, scum-sucking bastard. It's a reminder of why he got leading man roles long before he turned to comedy. Pernell Roberts reminds me of Henry Fonda in There was a Crooked Man, a tired lawman who has seen too much. He brought major western credentials to the movie, having played Adam Cartwright on Bonanza. There was something about him and his beard that looked awfully familiar. Although I didn't realize it at the time, I was recognizing him from his time as the title character on Trapper John M.D. Julián Mateos is more than passable and Sue Lyon looks and acts like Lindsey Lohan, minus the stints in rehab. Ironically, much like Lohan, Lyon ruined her career through a series of bad decisions.

Fistful of Lead (1970)

2011-07-03T00:54:00.000-05:00

George Hilton
Charles Southwood
Erika Blanc
Nello Pazzafini

Inventory

Hard boiled eggs
A pepperpot pistol
Whiskey checkers
Trick #1
An ex-rooster
A parasol
A well-armed horse

Summary
Our hero, the bounty hunter Sartana, is enjoying a picnic lunch and watching his prey cross the prairie, when they are ambushed by a group of Mexicans popping up out of the ground. They kill all of the wanted men and then flee after tossing a lit bundle of dynamite into the wagon. Sartana throws his canteen down from the hilltop where he is dining and, with a single shot, puts a bullet into it, which douses the fuse. Investigating the wagon, he discovers that it is loaded with lockboxes filled with moneybags, which in turn are filled with dirt. Shades of The Road Warrior.

At this point, I wish to digress. If the real history of the West had been anything like the movie version, the bandit would have gone the way of the buffalo or passenger pigeon, given the number of bounty hunters that were indiscriminately shooting them. Our time should be a crime-free era, with banditry either extinct or dwelling in protected wildlife parks. Clearly one-third of the population west of the Mississippi served as bounty hunters, with the rest evenly distributed between outlaws and townspeople. Had I been governor, I would have mandated that civilians wear blaze orange vests to minimize the number accidentally plugged by undisciplined bounty hunters.

To return to this movie, we find Sartana, with a somewhat different look, still with a nasty habit of offending people. This time around, most of the people he offends don't have much time to nurse a grudge before he ventilates them.

The plot involves shipments of gold that keep getting stolen, or do they? There are double, triple, and quadruple crosses until it's impossible to guess who has what and who plans to take it. And then, when a gunfighter named Sabbath who reads Shakespeare's sonnets shows up, things get really confusing.

As bad as Fistful of Lead is as a title, it beats the original English title, I Am Sartana, Trade Your Guns for a Coffin. That, I'm afraid to say, is the translation of the Italian, C'è Sartana... vendi la pistola e comprati la bara.

Dialogue
"Damn this gringo, he killed seven of us. And my woman got away. He fooled Mantas. He's one clever hombre. Si, this gringo, he thinks with his head."

Story

Well, it's all stolen from something or another, but at least the writers put the pieces together in a new and interesting manner. On the whole, about as good as it gets for one of these.

Music

The soundtrack benefits greatly from a lack of a theme song. The background music has a surf guitar meets men's choir vibe going that works pretty well all around.

Acting

George Hilton, who was originally from Uruguay, does a more than acceptable job as a low-rent Clint Eastwood. This would be his only time playing Sartana. Charles Southwood, who plays Sabbath, is a good-looking SoCal actor who spent a few years bouncing around the European movie circuit before fading away. The supporting cast was surprisingly good, especially Nello Pazzafini, who played Mantas, and who appears to have been in in half of the movies and television shows filmed in Italy from 1959 through 1989.

This Man Can't Die (1968)

2011-07-02T21:01:00.000-05:00

Guy Madison
Lucienne Bridou
Rick Battaglia
Peter Martel

Inventory

A bugle
Trick #1*
Trick #2**
One coot
Two codgers
Chorus-line fu
Bodice ripping
A saloon gunfight

* Trick #1 is the old "put a stuffed blanket near the fire so that the bad guys will shoot it and give themselves away" routine. It is now officially the oldest trick in the book. It appeared in Johnny Yuma and at least one other movie already reviewed, but I don't feel like re-screening them to find out which one.

** Trick #2 is the old "let the bad guys follow my riderless horse, while I hide behind a rock" routine. This one also appeared in Apache Blood, as well as many others. It is apparently part of the villain recruiting process that only candidates that fall for one or both tricks can qualify for a position.

Summary
A bounty hunter takes a commission to find out who is running guns and whiskey into an Indian reservation. The commission is offered by the commander of the local fort, who is aiming for a promotion and who offers our hero a chance at redemption. What he is being redeemed from is, at least for now, a mystery.

We now cut to the Benson family, which consists of three brothers, one of whom has never come back from the war, although he sends the occasional parcel back home, and a pair of rather fetching sisters. While the two brothers and one sister are in town collecting the latest package, a band of brigands rides in and offs Ma and Pa, while having their way with the younger sister. One of the bandits catches a bullet and misses the departure, which leaves the siblings to decide that he is the man who cannot die, for if he recovers, he'll lead them to the other bandits.

Now, the sheriff shows up at the ranch and offers to help (the siblings hide the man who cannot die), but the elder brother waves off the help. His sister repeatedly implores him to let the sheriff help, but the elder brother brushes him off. The doctor, whom they bring blindfolded to the cave to perform surgery urges them to let the sheriff do his job, but the elder brother waves him off.

If you get the idea that the elder brother is both stubborn and thick as a brick, you're not far off the target.

The bounty hunter, we soon learn, is the eldest brother. He demonstrates his superior skills with a rifle, a horse, and in the sack, the latter by saying hello to an old friend, despite being shot in the arm.

In style, this movie falls somewhere between John Ford and Sergio Leone. That's not to say that it's in their class, but it has many of the characteristics of both the traditional and the spaghetti western. There are an impressive number of well-built sets that don't look familiar. Clearly this movie had a bigger budget than did the average pasta special.

Once again, the title appears to have wandered around a bit. While the DVD has this title, IMDB uses Long Days of Hate. The original Italian title is I lunghi giorni dell'odio which Google Translate mangles as "I hate long days." This is, by far, the best possible title for this movie, so it's a shame that the others seem to have won out.

Dialogue
"I'll have to operate. But even then, there isn't much hope."
"Then do the impossible, Doc."
"I'll need a lot of boiling water, Susie."

Story

Okay, it's not The Searchers. It's not even Fistful of Dollars. It is watchable, though. The quality of plot and writing isn't any worst than the grand old prime time dramas, like Dynasty.

Music

The theme song sounds as if it were intended for a Bond movie. The first chase scene also sounds as though it were written for a spy movie. After that, it settles down into average western fare, with just a touch of the spaghetti on the side.

Acting

Guy Madison is good looking and delivers his lines as though he means them. He made his career playing in westerns and this film, while probably not his best, was probably no where near his worst acting job. The remaining actors were, for the most part, serviceable.

Apache Blood (1975)

2011-06-26T20:06:00.003-05:00

Ray Danton
Dewitt Lee

Inventory

Bear fighting
Cactus calthrops
A music box
Rattlesnake chucking
Wild pigs
Biting the head off a live lizard

Summary
The movie opens with the notorious Apache war chief Yellow Shirt chasing, killing, and scalping an army courier. A narrator provides a bit of back story, which shows Yellow Shirt to have a legitimate beef with the U.S. Cavalry. The courier, we soon discover, was bringing a message to a small surveying team consisting of a Major, five troopers, and a civilian scout, telling them to return to the fort because Yellow Shirt is on the war path.

The directing, camera work, and editing are unspeakable. For some reason, this movie contains a lot of extreme closeups, occasionally of miscellaneous body parts, such as feet, and more frequently with the camera not well centered on the actor's face. These are normally reaction shots, either one of the troopers trying his best to look concerned or Yellow Shirt simply looking inscrutable. The frequent and inexplicable cuts within a scene bring to mind a seriously low-end music video.

This film actually made a respectable effort to depict the Apaches as great and mysterious warriors. None of them speak, which meant that they didn't have to fake Apache and pay for subtitles. The sad fact is that they end up looking like the least competent group of bad guys since Hogan's Heroes as the entire band is killed, one-by-one, by a nearly dead cripple. The climactic chase scene at the end could easily have been called the The World's Slowest Indian.

The movie staggers to an end three times. In the first, our hero is shot dead by a soldier a hundred yards from the safety of the fort. Not shot dead, as in Dawn of the Dead, where it was bitterly ironic, or as in Platoon, where it was allegory. This is clearly a case of the two Lee brothers, sitting around the table, trying to find an ending.

"Wait, I know. What if I shoot him just before he gets to the fort? No one will see that coming."

The movie then has a five-minute montage of the key scenes, in a slightly jumbled order. This may have been an attempt to get arty, as Sam dies, but he wasn't present for many of the scenes, so it makes no sense at all. Finally, the movie ends a third time with the camera panning slowly over a charcoal portrait of Yellow Shirt for three minutes, while someone sings a song called, "A Man Called She", which is just as bad as it sounds.

Dewitt Lee was one of the co-writers, along with his brother Jack, both of whom figure in the ridiculous ending. What's interesting is that they appear to have made exact one more film, The Legend of Jedediah Carver, that would appear (according to IMDB) to have the exact same plot.

Ray Danton had a successful acting career that ended soon after this disaster (go figure), but not before he played Derek Flint in a television movie. He did go on to become a highly successful television director. On a personal note, Danton went to school at Carnegie Tech, as did your humble reviewer.

Since the cast and crew are all clearly American, this doesn't actually qualify as a spaghetti western, particularly as it was filmed in central Arizona. I'm including it for completeness, since it showed up on the DVD.

Dialogue
Considering that almost two-thirds of the movie has no one speaking and that less than half the cast say a single word, it's just not possible to find a single quotation that captures the dialogue in this movie.

Story

If this isn't the worst movie that I've ever seen, I must have suppressed the memories of those that were worse. Honestly, a high school drama class could have done a better job.

Music

The oddest part of this movie, which is saying a lot, is that the soundtrack is actually pretty good (excepting the completely bizarre concluding song). Ed Norton is listed as having provided original music, but considering that he only composed for three movies (and based upon "A Man Called She", I've got a good idea why), but served as sound editor for literally hundreds of television episodes, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that much of it was put together using stock music. At least Norton made a serious effort to find music that fit the action on the screen, even when the dialogue, acting, or cinematography didn't.

Acting

The best acting by far is by the spouses of the two protagonists, to whom the movie cuts at regular intervals. Neither speaks a line, but both do a nice job of wandering around the set and trying to look busy.

Trinity and Sartana (1972)

2011-06-21T23:45:00.001-05:00

Alberto Dell'Acqua (Robert Widmark)
Harry Baird

Inventory

An old gnome playing piano
One saloon brawl
A top hat with a spring
Texas Rangers
A lot of pink long johns
A player piano
A slingshot
A Gatling gun

Summary
We have our first African-American primary character, Trinity, so called because he was born in Trinidad. This begs the question, if he had been born in Barbados, would he be called Barbie? These are the kinds of deep questions that watching very low budget movies can inspire. As is so often the tradition, he starts the movie in jail, with a sheriff who sports a hipster beard and a larcenous attitude. Before long, he runs into an old friend, Sartana, who tells Trinity that he can return to Trinidad in style with his share of one last holdup, the railroad payroll.

While Santana has a knack for offending people, Trinity makes friends easily, particularly after he repeatedly gives away their stolen loot. Along the way, they run into El Tigre, a bandit who looks like Ringo Starr. Sartana's gimmick is that he is remarkably gymnastic. Trinity spends a lot of time in his happy place. After an hour and forty-one minutes of this, I was definitely thinking about my happy place, as well.

This movie was originally shot in Techniscope at 2.33:1. Judging by the amount of cutoff in the opening credits, it was scanned at 1.85:1 at some time in the past. This causes some problems at times when conversations drift off the screen.

Dialogue
"That'll be two hundred and ten dollars."
"That's a pretty extravagent price. All I've got is a hundred eight dollars."
"Ah, no. That won't be enough. Ahhh, am I mistaken or do you have a mule?"
"Yeah, Jonathan!"
"Jonathan. Let's make it a hundred and eighty dollars plus little Jonathan. He ain't a horse, but your ass is worth something, I guess."

Story

The intention is certainly low comedy and the violence is Three Stooges, rather than Sergio Leone. The results are incoherent and uncontaminated by continuity.

Music

The music is inoffensive, which is more than can be said about parts of the movie.

Acting

Ralph Zucker is listed in the credits as having performed dialogue direction and lip synchronization. Whatever he was paid was a crime. For some reason, Harry Baird, who was born in British Guiana and raised in Canada and England is dubbed by someone with an Austrian accent. There are times when he sounds a bit like Conan the Barbarian.

Man from Nowhere (1966)

2011-06-21T00:09:00.002-05:00

Giuliano Gemma
Fernando Sancho
Corinne Marchand

Inventory

Exploding canteens
Pink long johns
A musical watch
An on-going card game with no respect for the laws of probability
One dead prostitute
A drunk with a nose for money
A Buntline Special
Mixed martial arts

Summary
The movie begins with when Gordo Watch stages a breakout from a prison that appears to be guarded by the Foreign Legion, so that he can restaff his gang. One of the prisoners is an American named Arizona Colt. (Really. I don't make this stuff up.) Gordo is the kind of psychotic gang leader who demands real brand loyalty from his men, so Colt declines to join the merry band. As may be expected, Gordo takes the rejection to heart.

When Gordo decides to rob the bank in Blackstone Hill, we learn that Colt is pretty much equally inept as a bounty hunter, card cheat, and lover. Later, to no one's surprise, Gordo takes himself out of the running for boss of the year.

This movie has a lot of trouble deciding what it wants to be. There are sterotypical comic minor characters, but they are mixed in with Peckinpah levels of violence. There isn't really much of a plot and while Arizona Colt is clearly supposed to be a real western hero, he comes across as an oaf and a buffoon.

For some reason, a great deal of effort was made to keep track of how many bullets everyone shot and there are many scenes of characters reloading.

Last, and certainly not least, the opening credits appear to have been done by the people who did the llama credits for Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Dialogue
"A couple of drinks."
"Two here." (starts to pour whiskey)
"Ah, no. Instead of that, some milk please."
"This is a bar, boy. This ain't no dairy."
"Oh. I thought it smelled like it."

Story

The movie started so badly that I worried about being able to watch the whole thing, but it got consistently better. The end was an amazing cat and mouse play in a darkened coffin-maker's barn.

Music

Okay, the opening and closing songs are pretty cheesy, but the incidental music through the movie is very well done.

Acting

Fernando Sancho wants to be Eli Wallach and Corinne Marchand desperately wants to be Claudia Cardinale. As best I can tell, Giuliano Gemma wants to be an actor. They go 0 for 3.

It Can Be Done, Amigo (1972)

2011-06-09T22:17:00.006-05:00

Bud Spencer
Jack Palance

Inventory

A dirt-eating lunatic
A sheriff who serves as preacher (or vice versa)
Dance hall girls
One saloon brawl
One bank brawl
One housewarming brawl
A deed to a miserable dump

Summary
A drifter named Hiram Coburn finds a dying man who hands Coburn an envelope and asks him to take his nephew to Westland, the next town. Coburn is pursued by Sonny Bronston, a pimp and gunfighter, who is chasing him with the intention of making Sonny's sister an honorable woman. And then, immediately after the wedding, he plans to convert her into an honorable widow. To the dismay of everyone, Westland proves to be a little different than expected, particularly when Coburn puts his glasses on.

True Grit it ain't.

The DVD appears to have been mastered from a grindhouse print that had been cross-processed and then staked out in the sun to die. The result is a remarkable mixture of high-contrast black and white with hand-painted skin tones that range from tritium green to tangerine orange. The only description that comes to mind is Randolph Scott on acid.

Palance spends the whole movie puffing on a cigarette holder. Keeping it in his mouth requires him to clench his teeth so tightly that he apparently had to redub all of his own lines. How Palance didn't die from lung cancer after this film is one of medical science's great mysteries.

On a personal note, Bud Spencer bears a remarkable resemblance to the author of this review, minus a few white hairs.

Dialogue
"Shall I put my hands up or is this okay?"
"It don't matter. It's an informal execution."

Story

This is not the usual rehash of the same tired themes. Even when you think you've got it pegged, there are a few twists to be had.

Music

The only bit about the music that is at all interesting is that the title song is sung by a childrens' choir.

Acting

Spencer does a very nice job, bearing in mind that we are talking about a spaghetti western here, but Palance really mailed this performance in.

They Call Him Cemetery (1971)

2011-06-08T21:34:00.003-05:00

Gianni Garko
William Berger

Inventory

A silver camp cup
A dead-eye granny
Four guys skinny dipping for no apparent reason
A bullet-sucking baby
A pair of knife throwing sidekicks
Two saloon brawls
A spinning coin

Summary
Two young dudes return home after growing up in Boston. When they stand up to the collector for a local protection racket, they bring all sorts of unpleasantness down on themselves and the rest of the locals. A gunfighter who goes by the name "Ace of Hearts" rides in on a white horse and teaches them how to defend themselves, at least until an old friend of his named "Duke" rides into town.

The title of this movie changes sides as often as do the characters. On the box, it's They Call Him Cemetery, while the DVD menu has it as They Call Him Graveyard (in the movie, they actually call him "Cemetery"). IMDB lists it as A Bullet for a Stranger. The Italian title is Gli fumavano le Colt... lo chiamavano Camposanto which translates to something like The Smoking Colt Called the Cemetery. Frankly, none of these really capture the movie. I'd go with Brothers of the Gun, which works on a couple of levels.

The movie steals Lee Marvin's closing line from The Professionals. What makes the theft even more embarrassing is that they use it as a throwaway line.

Dialogue
"On your feet, you son of a dirty whore."
"Ah, did you know her?"

Story

Music

Acting

Please note that from this point on, I'm going to grade the "Story" and not the "Plot". Let's face it, most of these movies don't really have a plot. The question is whether the story is interesting and well told.

The "Acting" score tends to focus upon the movie's leads. The depth of the cast is pretty thin in many of these movies and it's hard to fault them for that. Considering that many of the roles are dubbed, blaming the actors seems pretty cruel.

Johnny Yuma (1966)

2011-06-05T00:04:00.002-05:00

Mark Damon
Rosalba Neri

Inventory

Card cheating
A saloon brawl
Two bathtubs
A stereotypical comic sidekick
An urchin who never forgets a favor
A gratuitous swap of a gun belt that leads to confusion
A branding iron
A wall safe hidden behind the Stargate ring

Summary
Rosalba Neri plays a scheming wife who sends her husband to an early grave. This should allow her to inherit the ranch, except for the inconvenience of a nephew to whom everything has been bequeathed. Mark Damon is Johnny Yuma, a gunslinger with a George Hamilton tan, a Southern California accent, and a collection of shirts in primary colors. In between him and his fortune is his aunt's slimy brother and a gunfighter who honest enough to stay bought, sort of.

The plot is pretty much non-existent and the soundtrack features a title song that marries third-rate surf rock, bad singing, and lyrics like, "Johnny Yuma don't go, Johnny Yuma stay here. What do you think that you'll find beyond the mountains?"

Mark Damon, who had a long career as an actor, had a much longer career as a producer, so he must have learned something along the way. We'll assume that this movie fell into the category of learning from a bad example.

Update
Mark Damon is a lot more impressive than this film would ever lead you to believe. I had done a quick glance at his IMDB page, but I hadn't checked out his producing credits until I discovered that he is the producer for The Ledge. He has been producer or executive producer of the following movies (among many others): Monster, Bat*21, The Lost Boys, Flight of the Navigator, Short Circuit, 9 1/2 Weeks, Clan of the Cave Bear, The NeverEnding Story, and Das Boot. While I won't claim that these were all great art, there are some big budget movies in this mix.

Dialogue
"Sorry, but one needs to be careful about who dies, you know. Seems to me you're new around these parts. You just can't imagine how many false cadavers we have around here. We buried at least six Jesse James within a year."

Plot

Music

Acting

Grand Duel (1974)

2011-06-04T21:37:00.002-05:00

Lee Van Cleef
Peter O'Brien (Alberto Dentice)
Jess Hahn

Inventory

A town run by a band of smarmy brothers, including an effete smallpox scarred sadist
Revenge for murdered fathers
Bounty hunters
A dynamited stage coach
A belt-fed machine gun massacre of peasants
A hidden lode of silver
A brothel
A one-eyed bartender

Summary
A sufficiently twisty plot is interrupted by a few quick action sequences. Continuity is a bit weak, and there are a few loose threads left at the end. Okay, there are a couple of genuine hawsers that are left hanging.

Alberto Dentice plays Philip Wermeer, who is an escaped murdered. Lee Van Cleef is Marshall Clayton, who is hunting him (or is he?). Dentice must not have had much in the way of English skills, because this is his only credit on IMDB, despite his good looks and passable acting. Van Cleef plays his usual role as the man with the mysterious past. One other notable is the lovely Dominique Darel, who's short life included a role in Andy Warhol's Dracula..

Dialogue
"Dear, you could have everything. A beautiful life, a family. What does it take to make you say yes to me?"
"Easy. Just ten dollars, like everyone else."

Plot

Music

Acting

Spaghetti Western Reviews

2011-06-04T21:08:00.001-05:00

In order to keep me blogging about something, I'm going to post reviews of spaghetti westerns.

Yes, I have a weakness for these, and I recently acquired Mill Creek Entertainment's collection of forty-four pasta specials. Don't expect brilliant reviews, as I've never done this before, but I'll try to keep them brief and entertaining. There may be spoilers, but I'm not particularly worried about that; for one, these movies are three to five decades old, and for another, they're horse operas, not Citizen Kane.

In addition to the key actors, I'll include a brief summary, a sample of the dialogue, and I'll grade the movie on plot, acting, and the music. Grades are on a scale of one to six bullets.

Flying the Dragon

2010-12-11T16:08:00.002-06:00

SpaceX successfully launched their Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the Dragon spacecraft into orbit. With all due respect to Burt Rutan and the folks at Scaled Composites, this is a much more significant event, as putting a craft into orbit and successfully recovering it is a much more difficult task than a sub-orbital hop.

What is interesting to me is that the next flight is scheduled for 12 April 2011, which will be the fiftieth anniversary of the first manned flight and the thirtieth anniversary of the first flight of the space shuttle.

It's hard to believe that it's been thirty years for the shuttle. Many of my coworkers weren't even born when it first flew, yet for me it seems to be only a moment. What's even harder (and more painful) to believe is that it only took twenty years to go from Vostok 1 to Columbia, but that the last thirty years has taken us from Columbia to soon to be nothing at all.

The darkness of space is nothing more than the veil of willful ignorance. How many of today's engineers and scientists were inspired by watching those early launches? What will inspire the builders of the future?

For Elon Musk and his crew, I congratulate and thank you. In your honor, I think that I'll break open my copy of Heinlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon.

Godspeed, Falcon.

Tradition

2010-12-11T15:53:00.000-06:00

I think that most sporting traditions are over-hyped. You hear all the time about how the rivalry between team X and team Y is one of the greatest in sports and then the teams switch conferences and it's no longer so important. Alternately, one team could go into the tank for a decade, which puts a damper on the enthusiasm. Finally, (and let's face it) sports is a business and business does what business must.

One of the few sporting traditions that I truly support is the Army-Navy football game. This isn't because of the great players or the quality of play; for the most part neither school attracts the best players and neither is likely to challenge for whatever passes as the national championship. Nor is it because of the importance of the game; nothing of any real meaning will be decided on the field.

Instead, it is a great tradition precisely because it is a trivial event. When the United States is at war, many of the young men on the field will face opponents for whom the stakes are literally life and death very soon. They will have the opportunity to make critical decisions that could alter the fate of nations and they will be commanding dozens and then hundreds of other young men and women. But for one day each winter, all of this lies far ahead of them and all that matters for the hundred or so men on each team and the few thousand of their fellows in the stands is winning a football game.

How could any sporting event have a greater tradition than that?

It's a Good Time to Be a Space Cadet

2010-10-10T20:51:00.000-05:00

As long as your horizon extends farther than manned missions, it's a pretty good time to be a fan of the space sciences. There are a number of terrific space probes out and about in the solar system (and even slightly beyond). It's truly incredible to go outside on a dark night and imagine that we've got little robots whizzing around visiting some of the neighbors.

My favorite active spacecraft are:

Opportunity and Spirit
Until NASA calls it for Spirit, I'm sticking with her. In the cosmic scheme of bang for the buck, these two little girls have definitely reset the bar. I have friends who joke that I can't go to the restroom without having an adventure, but Opportunity is the queen of the pop-up adventure. She's found so many meteoroids just lying on the surface of Mars that it seems as though someone held a galactic rock concert and she's the clean-up crew.

Dawn
Dawn is going to orbit the asteroid Vesta and then she'll wander off and orbit Ceres. How cool is that? It's moderately neato to actually visit an asteroid, but hopping between the (dwarf) planets is what the future was supposed to be about. Of course, doing it with an electric engine is so 21st Century, too.

Voyagers 1 and 2
The ultimate Energizer bunnies. The first man-made objects to leave the solar system. They're out there in the great beyond now. One neat thing about the Voyager Interstellar Mission is that they are calling home with 23-Watt radios. This is less power than a standard marine-band VHF radio.

Middle-Age in Suburbia

2010-09-18T11:00:00.001-05:00

For some reason, I feel like going to a bar in Havana and drinking
mojitos and daiquiris until the wee hours of the morning.

Black Hole in the North

2007-08-12T17:25:00.001-05:00

I'm not a climatologist and I don't play one on television, but even I can recognize what the current conditions in the Arctic mean. The area covered by sea ice is at the lowest level in recorded history and it's a month before the normal seasonal low. A look at the satellite image shows that the ice is barely connected to Asia. On the American side, the seas are only fifty to sixty percent covered. An unbelievable amount of open water exists, almost from the Bering Straits to the Pole. This open water is what represents the biggest threat. The same day in 1979 shows the ice to be almost continuous from Severnaya Zemlya to the Bering Straits in Asia and from Newfoundland to Prince Patrick Island in the Canadian North.

All reports indicate that the weather in the Arctic has been unusually cloud-free this summer. Since normal summer ice has an albedo of about 0.45 on average and deep sea water has an albedo of less than 0.1, the ice-free region is soaking up roughly nine times the energy that it has in the past. Even without knowing the hydrology of the Arctic Ocean, it's not hard to guess that the additional heat will result in more stirring of the basin and generally thinner ice this winter. This is a classic feedback loop that doesn't look promising. We may be on the verge of witnessing a climatic change greater than any ever recorded: the annual melting of the Arctic Ocean.

There has been a lot of speculation as to what this might mean for the global climate. I think that the initial fears about the end of the Gulf Stream have proven to be overblown. My guess would be that with warm, open water available, we'll see more and heavier snows early in the winter in the northern latitudes. Winters will be warmer, as the basin serves as a moderator that cuts down on the number of Arctic cold fronts coming down across Canada, the Upper Midwest, and Siberia.

We live in interesting times, my friends. Let's hope that they don't get too much more interesting.

Which Side Is The Corp of Engineers On, Anyway?

2007-08-05T21:49:00.001-05:00

Okay, the Army Corp of Engineers comes and dumps a couple of thousand rounds of ammo on your beach and then tells you that you'll have to pay to have it removed. You'd think that after Katrina, they'd be a little more concerned about their public image. Of course, this is the same Corp of Engineers that screwed up in 1993 and almost washed Iowa City, IA off the map, so anything is possible. Here's the scoop. It's an AP wire report, so I'm including it all, since they're harder than heck to find again:

Army Corps Dumps Old Bombs, Charges Town
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 5, 2007

Filed at 10:01 p.m. ET

SURF CITY, N.J. (AP) -- The Army Corps of Engineers, which accidentally dumped sand filled with old military ordnance on Surf City's beach, now wants the town to help pay to remove it.

Local officials are angered by the suggestion that they should help foot the bill for a federal goof that already has cost the town an unknown amount of tourism business.

''If they're talking about getting any money out of Surf City to pay for their mistakes, they can forget about it,'' Mayor Leonard T. Connors told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Army Corps spokesman Khaalid Walls said local governments are routinely asked to help pay for projects.

''That's protocol. All our projects are cost-shared,'' Walls said.

The town had to close its beach in March after World War I-era ordnance, including fuses and other military hardware, started surfacing in sand pumped ashore during a $71 million beach replenishment project.

According to Walls, the Army Corps unwittingly took sand from an offshore site where the military had dumped explosives decades ago.

More than 1,100 explosives, each about 4 inches in diameter and 8 inches long, were removed from Surf City's beach.

Surf City reopened its beach over Memorial Day weekend with new rules: Don't use metal detectors, don't dig more than a foot into the sand, and report anything suspicious to lifeguards.

Even so, visitors since then have found about a dozen more munitions, the Army Corps says. The Army has an ordnance specialist at the beach full time to take charge of discovered explosives.

It's unlikely that one of the explosives would ever detonate, but it would be extremely dangerous if it did, said Keith Watson, the Army Corps' project manager.

The Army Corps, along with state and local officials, are considering a possible closure of the beach during the winter to clear out more ordnance.

The Army Corps might sieve the entire beach with machinery, or it might bring back the ground-penetrating metal-detection equipment used in the spring.

The federal government has gotten completely out of control. It was bad enough when they didn't care about us, but now they've actively turned to evil. I mean really, now. How can you accidently dump thousands of rounds of ammunition onto a beach? Getting the sand out of the dredge barge and onto the beach had to involve some kind of crane or bucket. And I'd be awfully surprised if they didn't run a bulldozer back and forth leveling it all out.

Freaking incredible.

What It Means to Be a Christian - Part I

2007-08-04T15:29:00.001-05:00

Rule 1: Being a Christian does not mean throwing your arms around every moron who professes Christianity while behaving badly.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is holding its 49th annual convention. Their president, Charles Steele, announced that as part of the celebrations for their fiftieth year, the organization would find some way to honor and recognize Michael Vick of the Atlanta Falcons. This is the same Michael Vick who is facing federal charges for running a dog fighting ring. It's the same Michael Vick who settled a lawsuit with a woman to whom he is alleged to have given herpes. Steele's comments? "We will work with anyone who opens their heart and arms to us," said Steele. How can you not love an organization like this?

What Steele and SCLC could have done, since simply keeping their mouths shut was probably not possible at a convention located in Atlanta, was to say. "We condemn the heinous crime of dog fighting. It is our sincere wish that these charges prove to be unfounded and that Michael Vick can return to his normal life." Clean and simple. You offer a measure of support, confirm that dog fighting is vile, and make no commitments that might haunt you later.

I'm Back

2007-08-04T15:03:00.001-05:00

Okay, I'm back.

I realize that no one particularly missed this blog, which has a readership best described as singular, but I'm going to dump content here anyway. Why? Two reasons:

My coworkers, including my maanger, have urged me to write a blog. Of course, I'll never direct anyone to this, as my opinions are probably not in line with those of our corporate vision.
I need to get back in the habit of writing something daily. It exercises the mind and it exorcises demons.

Please note that neither of these reasons has anything to do with any claimed value of the content. Don't expect to find any wisdom here.

Ad Rates for Blogs

2007-01-21T09:59:00.000-06:00

BlogAds, the company that puts ads onto blogs, shows the number of weekly ad impressions for each "hive". The statistics are interesting, if not educational:

The Gossip blogs hive, with 93 blogs, has the most with 66,377,180 impressions. In fact, the top three hives are all gossip/entertainment-related with Hollywood blogs (108) at 52,668,824 and TV blogs (30) at 29,774,435 (a million impressions per week per blog is not shaby).

The ranking non-entertainment hive is Gay blogs (62), at 21,851,743 (a nice demographic to target).

Next comes Liberal blogs (117) at 20,588,252. It's another three places to Conservative blogs (162) at 7,373,020. Are liberals really three times more likely to read blogs, are they merely more likely to advertise using BlogAds, or is this just another attempt by the liberal media to smear conservatives by painting them as illiterate knuckle-draggers who get their opinions shouted at them by the neolithic cretins on Fox News?

Heading further down the list, we find Economics blogs (14) at 405,459 impressions. Looking at some of the blogs in this hive, I suspect that most of the impressions are in one or two blogs. I'm going to add The Oil Drum (http://www.theoildrum.com/) to my daily reading list for a while.

Gun blogs (11) at 290,671 beat out Oregon Progressives at (13) at 228,990. These, perhaps to the surprise of no one, beat out Evangelical blogs (17) at 169,396 and Christian Moms (17) at 165,797. The Libertarians (7) come in at only 80,201.

What's even more surprising is the cost per impression:

Gay blogs are a steal at $0.17 per thousand impressions. This is a highly favorable demographic, being on average wealthier and better educated than the typical breeder. I suspect that the rates are so cheap because of companies afraid to be associated with the gay market, but if I were selling something, I know where I'd be putting my money.

The gossip and entertainment blogs follow the gays in close order on cost per impression. In this case, I tend to agree with the pricing, as the audience for these blogs are probably not as affluent.

Liberals are still on the cheap side at $1.11 per thousand. Strangely enough, Law blogs are at $1.25. I guess that lawyers don't click on ads unless they're able to bill for the time.

The conservatives just slip in above the median at $1.78 per thousand, followed by evangelicals at $2.15 and Science blogs at $2.40. Jewish blogs are $5.14, which would make for the beginnings of a great joke, if not for the fact that Christian blogs are the third most expensive at $7.42. I suspect that what makes these blogs so valuable is the fact that the readers will believe anything that they read.

And the two most expensive hives? Wine blogs at $8.53 and our friends, the Oregon Progressives at a whopping $45.10 per thousand impressions. In the interest of science, I did some more homework and found out that the Or-Pro's price is artificially inflated by a single web page that wants $9,999 for someone to become the sole sponsor.

All-in-all, very curious. As you'll note, BS remains blissfully ad-free.

06-06-06 A Beastly Tuesday

2006-06-04T20:27:00.000-05:00

According to the SF Chronicle, you can bet for or against Armageddon at BetUS.com -- "which gives Earth a better than sporting chance. At 100,000-to-1 odds, if you bet the maximum $500 that the world will survive and it does, you win half a penny."

And if the world doesn't survive, you'll never collect! What a deal!

100,000 to one? We have survived the year 666 and 6/6/1006. I'm pretty sure I could get Lloyd's to insure me against apocalypse on that day on much better terms. As long as you are going to pull odds out of the lower reaches of your digestive tract, one moreover, that you will NEVER have to make good on, why not a billion to one? Then you can get a lot of free publicity and help separate fools from their money.

OTOH, You may want to keep the odds high, but low enough to encourage larger bets. For instance, 10M:1 may get people to place larger bets than 1B:1. Depends on the psychology of greed. Still, 100k:1 seems too low to maximize profit.

Can We Have a Little Welfare for Our Friends At Boeing and Lockheed, Please

2006-05-05T19:42:00.000-05:00

I had started to write an entry entitled "Michael Griffin is a Two-Faced Rat Bastard" when the NASA adminstrator announced that he was going to gut the agencies science budget in order to keep funding that piece of decrepit shit known as the space shuttle. Unfortunately, I was unable to do so, because my monitor kept getting covered with spittle every time I sat at the keyboard to compose it.

Now that I've had a few days in which to cool off, I'd like to request that all of our readers (don't laugh, someone might be reading this) head on over to the Planetary Society and sign their petition against this budget. Then, use the links to send letters to your Congresscritters and the White House telling them what you think.

Maybe that lying sack of shit will get the message.

Houston, We Have a Problem

2006-05-04T20:06:00.000-05:00

Years before the publication of "The Bible Code", Jerry Woodfill was finding hidden meaning in the Bible. Of course, so has everyone else. What makes Woodfill's interpretation interesting is that he was a NASA engineer on the Apollo program. As you might guess, this means that he finds space exploration tidbits salted away among the parables. What makes his findings really interesting is his record for crying wolf. You see, Woodfill was no ordinary engineer - he was the Apollo 11 Warning System Engineer. It was his system that kept flashing the "1201 Program Alarm" that indicated that Neil Armstrong should abort the descent.

Woodfield waxes eloquent about the "amazing correlation" between the moon landing and a verse in the Old Testament. What is this verse? Obadiah 1:4, which reads (in the King James Version): "Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD."

Get it? Eagle. Stars. What more could you want?

Woodfill explains it all

Returning to the words of the Prophet Obadiah, an EAGLE would SET ITS NEST AMONG THE STARS. As the ancients looked heavenward, the Moon was said to be among the stars. Obviously, no biological creation of God, even an eagle, can achieve escape velocity of seven and a half miles per second. Additionally, eagles require oxygen which is absent in outer space. Therefore, Obadiah’s eagle must be a spaceship named Eagle. Certainly, it would not be the Soviet’s craft. The American eagle embodied all that communism opposed: free enterprise, Christianity, the independent freedoms of citizens. The Soviet’s ship would have been the BEAR, their regime’s mascot.

Creepy, eh? It gets better

There is then a valid application of the number 13 to a space mission. Does it demonstrate God’s plans and purposes as an after-the-fact element of testimony? Using 13 in a Bible sense shows forth praise for what God accomplished. This requires knowledge of thirteen’s meaning in scripture. As a frustrated college math student, I inventoried Bible stories that dealt with numbers. Thankfully, this exercise dealt with arithmetic not the advanced differential equation course I failed in my junior year. The story of Joshua’s army marching around Jericho for seven days came to mind. Turning to the account, I read: "On the seventh day, Joshua marched around Jericho SEVEN TIMES." A quick tally of Jericho orbits was once each day for six days then seven orbits on the seventh day. Six plus seven equals 13 times. And what happened? There was an explosion of sorts, the sudden destruction of massive stone fortifications. The walls crumbled in response to the Israelites’ shout. This certainly was a convincing Bible definition of thirteen as far as Apollo 13 was concerned : DESTRUCTION, COLLAPSE, perhaps, AN EXPLOSION. Even Joshua’s march around Jericho matched Apollo 13’s intended orbit around the Moon. Furthermore, the name Jericho in Hebrew means MOON.

Woodfield isn't finished, though

But most remarkable are the first words spoken from the Moon, "Houston, Tranquillity Base, the Eagle has landed." The word, Houston is derived from hus meaning spirit and ton meaning town or place of dwelling. In a spiritual sense, Armstrong unknowingly communicated to the place where the Holy Spirit dwells.

Actually, Houston (the city) is named after Sam Houston, first President of the Republic of Texas. Houston's (the person) name is Scottish and derives from the Old English spelling of Hughstown, which was a settlement south of Glasgow. Woodfill's site also discusses the Mayflower, Christopher Columbus, and the Challenger, all with the same insightful presentation.

In the end, it must be admitted that Woodfill is mostly harmless. The only people likely to take it seriously have already drunk the Kool Aid. At least he doesn't deny the Moon landings took place, he only claims that they were biblically presaged.

Water, Water, Everywhere

2006-05-03T20:43:00.000-05:00

I bet that you think that water is that H2O stuff that they taught you about back in the second grade. If you wasted too many years in institutions of "higher learning", as Tentakles and I have, you probably have all sorts of details about bond lengths and angles crammed back in the cobwebs of your head. Well, friends, John Ellis is going to prove you wrong.

Mr. Ellis has invented a machine that fixes everything that's wrong with water. "What's wrong with water?" I hear you asking alliteratively. Well, according to Ellis

ANY LAB will tell you, many other health promoting activities can't work without the ELECTRONS found in CHARGED WATER because OXYGEN levels have dropped to as low as 8%, in today's water molecules, they are SMALLER and CAN'T HOLD the additional donor ELECTRONS (from OXYGEN) needed to make them work!! As a result, VIRUSES and BACTERIA are mutating out of control... CAUSING almost ANY problem you can name!

He goes on to add

MOST VITAMINS CAN'T WORK because there aren't enough donor electrons to make them work! It's like a leaf that falls off of a tree, the nutrients are still there, but it's ELECTRICALLY DEAD...they must be reactivated by ELECTRONS! Since OUR WATER MOLECULES are LARGER (as any lab will confirm), they HOLD MORE ELECTRONS...like it was when OXYGEN was at38% and rainwater was highly charged, potentially explaining the incredible ages mentioned in the BIBLE! THAT'S WHAT OUR PRODUCT DOES, nature's way!

Fortunately for us, Ellis' machine uses

A PATENTED METHOD OF EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION OF THE WATER MOLECULES SEVERAL TIMES/MINUTE TO CONSUME OXYGEN, WHILE TAKING ON DONOR ELECTRONS!

In fact

This was recently confirmed again by a Bio-Tech firm that tested TWO of our fine-tuned machines in their labs. Most importantly, our water molecule is LARGER with the same molecular weight as an ordinary water molecule and since the electrons kill viruses, they are using the water for proprietary medical applications. They also found the angle between the hydrogen atoms is 10 degrees greater, the viscosity is different and it has a beautiful crystalline structure at ROOM TEMPERATURE that is dodecahydronal (12 planes).

Now, how much would you pay for such a marvel? Before you answer, listen to some of the Wonders (Ellis' word) that his water can do

Treat a well (one time) with only 10 gallons and it lasts for years! Also, this water will eliminate the smell in waste lagoons and septic systems (it kills only bad bacteria)! When you drink either water you won’t smell up your septic system with the horrible smell of disease!!

In all the dairy farms we treated the contaminated water contained bacteria, parasites, fungus, chemicals and viruses and it was coming straight through into the milk. Once the water was treated, the milk was no longer contaminated. This would hold true for nursing mothers as well.

In another case, a woman wanted their well treated but her husband was dragging his feet so their oldest son did it. In the process, he broke a rusty part of the well head. When the husband went to look at the well head a day or two later he found the broken area and pipe as shiny as new. He’s a believer now!

Another family was watering two horses from a large tub and it took the horses 7 days to drink all that water. After the water treatment the two horses would drink that much water in only 3 days!

Another family that raises dogs always had to deal with the green, slimy watering pans. After the treatment, the problem was gone.

Another family wanted their well treated but the husband wasn’t convinced in spite of telling him story after story until they put a 5 gallon bucket of the water out in the sun for one week, nothing happened… no green. So, he said, leave it another week… still nothing. The proof was in the bucket. After they went ahead and treated the well, the neighboring house noticed a change in their well water also. The water traveled the vein and purified their water also!

Ellis' site is filled with such heartwarming testimonials as

"After a serious accident, I was barely able to move. Now, in a short while, I am stronger than I was 20 years ago!"
M.M. Londonderry, NH

"A problem I had for 12 months stopped immediately!"
R.G. Mariposa, CA

"I lost 10 pounds in 3 weeks and so did my wife. A plant that hasn't bloomed in 3 years bloomed!"
J.C. Gulf Breeze, FL

My test revealed properties so amazing, I am using it for proprietary medical use!"
Dr. G. A. Torrance, CA

"A friend in Texas said his gray from his hair is disappearing! Already, 25% of my wife's hair has turned dark and 50% of mine!"
R.H. Anoka, MN

So, friend, having heard all that, what would you pay for such a marvel? For a limited time, the LWM ELECTRON 3™ is only $1,500. That's a savings of $495 off the suggested retail price of $1,995. But, as they say, there's more: for only two hundred dollars more, you can upgrade to the LWM ELECTRON 4™, which is

Same as LWM ELECTRON 3™ but with levels 15 times higher (with CORNING™) in passing vapor through an air gap.

I can hear you saying, "But, Hephaestus. I have real water problems. If I don't get help, I'm shuffling off this mortal coil." For you, and you alone, Ellis has the LWM ELECTRON 5™. This is the BIG ONE folks. It'll set you back $2,800, but look at what it can do

Same as Electron 4™ except with twice the oxygen and electron output with two bulbs and a more powerful transformer!! 50 Years ago oxygen was much higher in the atmosphere and you rarely heard of people with cancer and diabetes etc. Today, oxygen is much lower and, as a result, it's an epidemic. This is the only product that keeps blood oxygen levels high! Also, we break down the hydrogen bonds so blood gets to the extremities.

Customer: "I went for a physical and the doctor said I was one person in a million. My blood oxygen levels are near 100%!!"
You can't develop these problems with high blood oxygen levels and these are the only products that can do that.

Diabetic: "I was already scheduled for surgery to remove my foot one week after I received your machine. That's how close I came to losing my foot...one week! If I had listened to those pure water companies I would have lost my foot!!"

Now, Ellis makes the point that his machine is covered by US Patent 4,612,090. In the interest of saving you time, I've read his patent and the fifteen claims that it makes. None of them even touch on wonderous. In fact, it's a patent for a two-vessel, self-regulating boiler.

The patent states

This invention constitutes an improvement over prior known distilling apparatus including the apparatus disclosed in applicant's prior United States patent in that it embodies a novel and improved small boiler including instantaneous heating means, a condenser and a reservoir which provides an automatic supply of water to the boiler and may function to cool the condenser. With this arrangement, the water in the reservoir, as will be shown, circulates to and from the boiler to repeatedly interrupt boiling and heat thus imparted to the water in the reservoir together with the heat at least part of which may be imparted by the condenser will heat the water in the reservoir to a temperature that will effectively boil off chemical constituents of the water and the time required for operation of the distiller in order to produce a distillate free of chemicals and undesirable odors is materially reduced.

Another object of the invention resides in the provision of novel and improved water distillation apparatus which not only avoids control means for feeding water from a reservoir to a boiler but also embodies an arrangement and organization of elements wherein all portions of both the reservoir and boiler are readily accessible for cleaning and maintenance.

A still further object of the invention resides in the provision of hot distilled and substantially odor-free water for the brewing of coffee and tea as well as for use in the preparation of other foods such as soups and the like.

A still further object of the invention resides in the provision of a novel and improved water degasification and distillation apparatus characterized by its simplicity, ease of operation and maintenance and relativly low cost.

A still further object of the invention resides in the provision of a novel and improved boiler for the distillation of water which minimizes the accumulation of foam in the boiler caused by salts, detergents and other water contaminents which can contaminate the water being distilled.

He goes on to add

Means may also be provided in association with the tank for feeding condensed distilled and degasified water into brewing apparatus for making coffee, tea or merely provide hot water for other purposes.

Strong stuff indeed! That odor free coffee water will do wonders for the diabetes. His patent 6,409,888 adds an ozone generator to the apparatus, while 5,203,970 adds a mechanical stirrer and optional oversized filter.

The sad fact is, there are probably hundreds of people who have sent Ellis a good chunk of change to get one of his coffee water distillers. Unfortunately, the Justice Department doesn't fill its halls with scientists or engineers, so Ellis and his kind are likely to continue to remain in the miracle business.

Two NFL teams in LA?

2006-05-02T19:59:00.000-05:00

Continuing my random walk through blog topics, the proposed expansion of the NFL is my next stop. As reported today by the AP:

After meeting with a group of NFL owners, Schwarzenegger said he was there to make sure "we're getting not only one NFL team to the Los Angeles area, Southern California, but to actually get two teams. That's why I came. Why limit it?"

To which I have only to add: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. NFL committee member Steve Tisch said, "Dude, that is like so not going to happen." (Well, that was the general sense of his comment.) This is all just Arnie's way of avoiding having to back either proposal. A wise political choice given that he's been riding the same approval rollercoaster as Bush.

LA may be the second largest television market in the country, but that doesn't really matter if the games are blacked out. There is a reason why the league let Rams and Raiders skip town. The Rams hung on for 24 years, the Raiders for 12. That allows me to mindlessly extrapolate: every 12 years LA gets a team that lasts half as long as the last one. So the LA Backbiters or whoever will last about 6 years before moving to a smaller market. One that actually cares more about football than getting an even tan.

Of course, the last NFL expansion team went to Houston mainly because LA couldn't sort out its competing bids. They still have LA and Anaheim with competing stadium proposals.

All I can say is sweet Minerva DON'T LET ANAHEIM GET IT. They've given us the Angels and the Mighty Ducks. I shudder to think what they would give us -- the Magnificent Sprites?

Pardon me while I dissect a joke

2006-04-25T23:49:00.000-05:00

Several blogs have linked to an email joke at the expense of Bush Cheney and Rumsfeld that is posted at Needlenose

While that is a worthy cause, I do object to the bad economics demonstrated:

George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are flying on Air Force One.

The President looks at the Vice President, chuckles, and says, "You know, I could throw a $1,000 bill out the window right now and make somebody very happy."

The Vice President shrugs and says, "Well, I could throw 10 $100 bills out the window and make 10 people very happy."

Not to be outdone, the Secretary of Defense says, "Of course, then, I could throw 100 $10 bills out the window and make a hundred people very happy."

The pilot rolls his eyes and says to his co-pilot, "Such arrogant asses back there. Hell, I could throw the three of them out the window and make 6 billion people unbelievably happy."

My objection is that the parallelism used ("make X people very happy") is faulty. Obviously, people are less happy to get smaller windfalls. (Being struck by high velocity coinage would offset the incremental happiness, so I'll restrict my comments to aerial distribution of paper money.) From a Utilitarianism Utilitarian perspective, it is better to make 100 people very happy than one person. But in the current format of the joke, our arrogant asses could drop one dollar bills and make 1000 people very happy. Whether happiness is directly proportional to dollar amount is another question.

Anyway, by my reckoning the correct formulation for this joke is:

George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are flying on Air Force One.

The President looks at the Vice President, chuckles, and says, "You know, I could throw a $1,000 bill out the window right now and make somebody extremely happy."

The Vice President shrugs and says, "Well, I could throw 10 $100 bills out the window and make 10 people very happy."

Not to be outdone, the Secretary of Defense says, "Of course, then, I could throw 100 $10 bills out the window and make a hundred people somewhat happy."

The pilot rolls his eyes and says to his co-pilot, "Such arrogant asses back there. Hell, I could throw the three of them out the window and make 6 billion people unbelievably happy."

Practically speaking, Bush has given vast sums to the wealthiest 1% of taxpayers in the form of tax cuts. Their logic has nothing to do with utility theory and lot to do with the fact that the wealthy can kick back a portion of the proceeds to the Republican Party. The poor and middle class will merely spend it on necessities. Ingrates.

I do appreciate the sentiment

2006-04-24T22:38:00.000-05:00

There is a vocal group out there in the blue states calling for Bush's impeachment. While I agree that Shrub, Jr. has undoubtedly committed impeachable offenses, I'm content with letting Russ Feingold's censure motion percolate slowly. There are several reasons for this: First of all is practicality. The Republicans aren't ready to turn on Bush yet, so there is no chance of hearings until / unless House changes hands. there is an added synergy that having Bush to kick around makes such a change more likely.

Alternatively, look at the current succession list and tell me who you'd like to see as President:

2 The Vice President - Richard Cheney
3 Speaker of the House - John Dennis Hastert
4 President pro tempore of the Senate - Ted Stevens
5 Secretary of State - Condoleezza Rice
6 Secretary of the Treasury - John Snow
7 Secretary of Defense - Donald H. Rumsfeld
8 Attorney General - Alberto Gonzales

Even assuming Fitzgerald takes out Cheney, that doesn't solve the problem. Spiro Agnew's resignation allowed Tricky Dick to appoint Ford under the 25th Amendment, but he had to be approved by both Houses of Congress. Do you trust Bush, Hastert and Frist to choose a VP? The rot runs too deep.

OTOH, I will say that if Bush & Rove are serious about attacking Iran then you have to use every means available to stop them and I think there will be enough public opinion against it to make impeachment more viable.

The more things fail to change....

2006-04-20T18:27:00.000-05:00

As Hephaestus alluded to I was off in the Land of the Rising Sun for the past month, then recovering from jet-lag, reverse culture shock and blunt force taxation.

Fortunately, I'm back just in time for the big news! Karl Rove officially won't be doing what he hasn't done since he was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy a year ago: Make administration policy.

There are certainly worse jobs in this world than Press Secretary to Bush the Lesser, but none of them broadcast your humiliation globally every night. It appears Fox's Tony Snow is a leading candidate for the job. I sincerely hope he gets it. It's one thing to parrot the administration talking points to a camera in a studio as an "independent" commentator and it's another to be directly under the thumb of Bush and Rove and pilloried daily by people who know you are a stooge.

On a side note it's interesting how the press is covering the disruption at the Bush-Hu welcoming ceremony. The headlines split fairly evenly in calling Wenyi Wang a "heckler" or a "protester".

AP: Mackin said she had gained access to the event with a temporary White House pass and had been cleared through all the appropriate levels of security.

Stephen Gregory, a spokesman for the Falun Gong-affiliated newspaper The Epoch Times, said she had received a press credential through the newspaper. He identified her as a doctor with a specialty in pathology, a Falun Gong practitioner based in New York.

She shouted in Chinese and in heavily accented English: "President Bush, stop him from killing" and "President Bush, stop him from persecuting the Falun Gong."

Heckling is what drunks do at comedy clubs and baseball fans do to Barry Bonds. Shouting "Laura dresses you funny" or "It's pronounced 'nuk-u-ler'" is heckling Bush. Substantive calls for changes in US-Chinese policy is a protest.

Slso, did the Chinese not get a list of attendees for their review? I have to assume that they would object to having a rep from The Falung Gong Daily in the audience. It's equally hard to imagine Bush administration would balk at disbarring a member of the media on political grounds. Most likely, it was just the Shrubites we're-a-superpower-bogged-down-in-the-Middle-East-and-you're-not attitude.

I'd much prefer Machiavellian to self-delusional.

Bad Day to Be a Creationist

2006-04-11T22:06:00.000-05:00

The discovery of a genuine "missing link" fossil on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic is a kick in the teeth for the Intelligent Design crowd. Tiktaalik roseae is one of those things that creationists have always demanded to see: a truly intermediate form that bridges a gap between one clearly defined branch of life's tree and another.

In the case of Tiktaalik, what has been found is the holy grail of evolution: a fish that has begun to develop the characteristics found in land animals. These include fins, scales, and the jaws of a piscine, along with a wrist structure, a flexible neck, and a rib cage like a tetrapods.

The discoverers reported that in addition to being in remarkably intact condition, it was just possible to make out a faint design embossed on the scales:

So, Tell Me How You Really Feel

2006-04-01T21:55:00.000-06:00

Seen on a bumper sticker: Only criminals, terrorists, and Democrats fear an armed populace.

That's Why They Call It "Running an Ad"

2006-03-29T18:24:00.000-06:00

Sometimes you have to wonder what possesses a company to run the ads that they do. Did anyone at this briefcase company really think about whether it was a good idea to put a picture of someone stealing a briefcase on their website?

Savannah on my Mind

2006-03-22T22:00:00.000-06:00

The world's first nuclear-powered merchant ship is looking for a port. The Virtual Office of Acquistion of the Maritime Administration is trying to find a home for the decommissioned N.S. Savannah. This comes about as a result of MARAD's plan to remove the reactor and piping from the vessel in order to reduce its liability as a potential target for terrorist attack.

The Savannah was launched in 1962 and spent 1965-1971 sailing the oceans for the American Export Isbrandtsen Lines under a contract from the U.S. government. While a technological and aesthectic success, it was not financially practical, and was decommisioned in 1972 to save money for the war in Vietnam. The ship was built as a passenger/cargo hybrid, with thirty staterooms, but the size of the engineering plant and the space taken up by the passenger quarters meant that it could carry less than 10,000 tons of cargo. She was built with the knowledge that it could never be profitable, but it was hoped that she would demonstrate the benefits of atomic power.

The Savannah was fast, with a maximum speed of twenty-three knots and a sustained cruising speed of more than twenty knots. She was equipped with active roll stabilization and had rolling cargo cranes instead of the common kingposts. Her reactor was surrounded by armor designed to prevent a collision from rupturing the core. This included two feet of crushing material made up of high-strength steel and redwood, and concrete reactor shielding eighteen inches thick. The reactor containment vessel had a pair of spring-loaded manholes on the bottom, which were designed to open in the event of the ship sinking. These would allow seawater in, to balance the pressure as the vessel sank, in order to prevent it from being crushed. When the pressure equalized at the bottom, the springs would drive the hatches shut, sealing the reactor.

In reality, there wasn't any way to make a nuclear ship profitable. Imagine a tramp steamer with a crew of nuclear engineers. Only two other merchant ships have ever been nuclear powered: the N.S Otto Hahn in Germany, which was launched in 1964 and which served from 1970-1979 before it was converted into a conventionally powered ship; and the "Sevmorput", an icebreaker-freighter in Russia which was launched in 1988 and is still active. The "Sevmorput" has a bit of an unfair advantage though, as it is on a highly subsidized route across the Northeast Passage. Japan built a nuclear ship, the Mutsu, which was launched in 1969. Her reactor was a technical disaster and her career consisted of four voyages in 1991 before she was decommissioned the next year. The Japan Atomic Energy Institute emphasizes the success of her 1991 cruises, but doesn't mention the twenty-two year gestation period.

It's interesting to note that the U.S. Navy has decommissioned all nine of the nuclear-powered cruisers that it built, leaving only the carriers in service. Apparently, even they couldn't make the economics work in their favor.

As an aside, the Savannah's namesake was the first steam-powered ship to cross the Atlantic, in 1819. She carried enough fuel to run her boilers for eighty-nine of the 707-hour voyage.

Apologies

2006-03-20T06:58:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the lack of postings lately, but I'm busy packing a household into twenty thousand little boxes and Tentakles is off in far-away lands. Expect more in a day or two.

Good News. Bad News

2006-03-10T18:09:00.000-06:00

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter successfully entered orbit around the Red Planet this afternoon. Everything seems to be nominal at this point. We'll hear more at the press conference later this evening.

On the other hand, word on the wire is that NASA is going to change out the ECO sensor in the external tank, pushing the launch of Discovery to July at the earliest. That's for the best, as the first results from the wind tunnel testing of the reconfigured tank were not good. This could change as the complete series of tests is run, but it's better not to rush at this point. With the launch moved back, there will be plenty of time to run (and re-run, if necessary) all of the tests needed to be certain about the aerodynamics.

Blackstar

2006-03-08T21:39:00.000-06:00

There is a must-read piece at Aviation Now. The folks at Aviation Week and Space Technology have decided to release what they know about an ultra-black two stage to orbit system that was developed in the 1980's to launch a small manned craft into orbit.

For 16 years, Aviation Week & Space Technology has investigated myriad sightings of a two-stage-to-orbit system that could place a small military spaceplane in orbit. Considerable evidence supports the existence of such a highly classified system, and top Pentagon officials have hinted that it's "out there," but iron-clad confirmation that meets AW&ST standards has remained elusive. Now facing the possibility that this innovative "Blackstar" system may have been shelved, we elected to share what we've learned about it with our readers, rather than let an intriguing technological breakthrough vanish into "black world" history, known to only a few insiders. U.S. intelligence agencies may have quietly mothballed a highly classified two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane system designed in the 1980s for reconnaissance, satellite-insertion and, possibly, weapons delivery. It could be a victim of shrinking federal budgets strained by war costs, or it may not have met performance or operational goals.

What's more, they claim that this system was operational in the 90's and has only recently been terminated, due to the high cost of the war in Iraq. It used a B-70-like mothership that was built out of pieces that had been purchased for the third (unbuilt) prototype of that Mach 3 bomber. The space capsule was derived from the X-20 Dynosoar (everyone has wondered why that technology hasn't been used for something).

What evidence exists for this program? I definitely recommend that you read the article.

Here We Go Again

2006-03-07T21:12:00.000-06:00

There is a report today from NASASpaceflight.com that an Engine Cut-Off (ECO) sensor in the shuttle's external tank is acting up again and that sources within Lockheed Martin and NASA have indicated that it must be changed. This involves entering the tank, which would guarantee a miss on the May launch window. NASA PR people are denying that any decisions have been made.

This is a reprise of last year's launch fiasco where an erratic ECO was giving erroneous signals. NASA issued a variance of their flight rules and flew with only three of the four ECOs operating then, under the explanation that the anomoly was intermittent. Reports from the Cape indicate that it was indeed intermittent, as it would disappear when the SIM circuit was shut off and reappear when it was turned back on. Unfortunately, the purpose of the SIM circuit is to detect failures in the ECO — signals that should only appear when the SIM is on.

Anyone with any doubts as to what NASA's internal politics are like should read Dragonfly, about the American astronauts on Mir. Managers from low-level up to the director are willing to do whatever is necessary to keep the money flowing. Astronauts know that to speak up means that they'll never fly in space, so they keep their mouths shut and hope that when their turns come, nothing will fall off or explode. It is not an environment designed to elicit clear rational thought.

Make no mistake: spaceflight is a terribly dangerous activity. People will die on the way to and from the heavens. If advances are to be made it is probably the case that people should die; for if not, we are probably not pushing the envelope hard enough. What is not necessary is that people die because of bureaucratic stupidity.

Hephaestus' First Law

2006-03-05T18:25:00.000-06:00

Any sufficiently unlikely event will immediately be siezed upon as a miracle by true believers.

I mention this because The New York Times Book Review has added a science fiction column by David Itzkoff. This event will immediately be forwarded to the Vatican as evidence of Octavia Butler's first miracle. For those of you who didn't notice, Ms. Butler died last week, far too young. The NYT did give her a decent sendoff.

Who knows what inspired the editors of the Grey Lady to rush into this move a mere sixty years or so after the beginning of science fiction's Golden Age. Still, we'll take what we can get.

Addendum: Itzkoff's list of his ten favorite science fiction books shows that he has promise. It's not my list, and I don't recognize some of the titles (I'll go look for the ones that I don't), but I can't argue with any of the selections that I do know.

Penultimate Failure

2006-03-05T12:51:00.000-06:00

Airbus recently tested the wing of their new A380 to destruction. Unfortunately, it failed a little earlier than anticipated. The test that failed is known as the Ultimate Load test. It involves mounting a wing in a jig and bending the tip up to simulate the strain that the wing might face in service. The first series of tests are to the "Limit Load" — the maximum amount that the aircraft is to carry in service. The European aviation authorities then require the wing to withstand a strain of 1.5 times the Limit Load for three seconds before failing.

The A380 wing failed between 1.45 and 1.5 times the Limit Load. Airbus will attempt to convince the authorities to approve the wing based upon models of any changes, rather than testing another actual wing. This is in accordance with standard Airbus practice. The A330 wing also failed just short of the standard. Airbus actually points to the failure with pride, pointing out how it means that there is no wasted weight spent on excessive strength, as compared with the Boeing 777 which didn't fail until 1.54 times the Limit Load.

While there is something to be said for avoiding excessive conservatism and the fact that the wing did fail at precisely the point predicted by the models, I'd prefer to fly on a plane that had been designed with the extra little bit of strength built in.

One for the Visiting Teams

2006-03-03T06:20:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, the heads of the Russian, Japanese, and European space agencies all met at NASA to announce the new IIS construction schedule. The transcript of the press conference is an interesting read. The European and Japanese science modules were all moved up in the assembly sequence. The Russians have agreed not to fly one of their power modules, instead taking power from an American module.

When Mike Griffin was asked whether any American modules would not be flown, he deferred the question, saying that the head of space operations would know better than he. This is disingenuous, as Griffin knows full well that the American habitation module, which would have provided living quarters for four astronauts, and the propulsion module, which would have given the station the ability to correct its own orbit have been cancelled, even though both have been built. The Centrifuge Accommodation Module, which was built by the Japanese to pay for their shuttle flights has been grounded as well. He knows all this because he was the one who cancelled all of these projects.

All-in-all, the partners sounded very pleased to have the schedule compressed and to have their components moved up in the schedule. There was much talk about the Americans leaving the ISS program after 2015 ("abandon in place" is NASA's unofficial motto) and the whole assembly schedule is based upon the shuttle launches matching their twenty-five year average of 4.56 flights per year.

Ad Astra Per Aspera

Let's Make a Deal

2006-03-02T12:07:00.000-06:00

Well, the media is hailing the US India nuclear agreement. (E.g. WaPo: U.S., India Seal Historic Nuclear Energy Deal.)

Just last week, the WH downplayed expectations of an agreement. Perhaps there was a last minute breakthrough. Far be it from me to suggest that the WH, after the Katrina tapes this week would be desperate to get a deal done. Or to suggest that the Bush administration would rubberstamp a bad deal for political expedience.

The initial reports are that India will keep 8 of its 22 reactors as military installations, including a fast-breeder reactor. These will not be subject to inspections. This was given as the main sticking point last week, and it appears that Bush just caved.

On the positive side, this "agreement" probably isn't going anywhere. As mentioned by the NYT today:

Mr. Bush acknowledged that the deal now faces a difficult battle for approval and a change in American law by Congress as well as approval from a group of 35 nuclear-armed nations.

My guess is the press euphoria won't last 24 hours. Shortly will come the analysis indicating Bush wimped out and the muttering that he sold out to buy some good publicity will start. When you're less popular than Brussel sprouts, you just can't catch a break. (Of course, Cheney is less popular than oral surgery.)

As Dr. Samuel Johnson said: "Patriotism is last refuge of a scoundrel." Bush has practically smothered himself in Old Glory, but now he's gone to the last refuge of second-term president's -- foreign policy. There isn't much there for him and we can expect a lot more bad deals as he negotiates from weakness and desperation.

The Schedule is Everything

2006-03-01T14:07:00.000-06:00

The folks at NASA are working hard to get Discovery off the ground during the May launch window. For those of you who might not be following along at home, the space shuttles are doomed to the Sisyphean task of pushing space station parts into orbit. In order to maximize the loads they carry, they must launch when the station is properly positioned. After Columbia, it was decided that at least the first two shuttle flights had to take place when both the launch and the point where the external tank is discarded is in daylight, to allow for visual and photographic inspection. This inspection is what showed that huge chunks of foam were still falling off of the tank.

After both Challenger and Columbia, NASA officials were taken to task for creating an environment where adherence to schedule trumped concerns for safety. Now, with an launch window available in May, NASA is doing it again, rather than waiting for the July window.

The external tank that will fly has just left the construction facility outside of New Orleans, having been rushed out a week ahead of schedule. Even still, the normal preflight foam inspections and repairs will eat up every day of contingency time in the schedule. At the same time, leaking helium seals have been replaced in two of Discovery's engines. Unfortunately, three of the four seals don't meet specifications, despite being hand-picked as the best available in the inventory. There are also metal shavings that have been detected in a filter screen in the oxygen line of one engine. More have been found in one of Endeavour's engines. NASA has no idea of where this metal came from or what it's made of.

Even with all of these problems, the shuttle program manager remains very optimistic that there will be three shuttle flights this year. The launch director, Mike Leinbach, has said, "What we've done this time is, we've put together a schedule that has no contingency in it. Some people could call that an aggressive schedule. I like to call it an exciting schedule. It has a reasonable chance of success. If we run into a significant technical issue, we don't have much time to resolve it, obviously. But barring the big 'gotcha' in the processing, we feel pretty good about making that schedule."

There is a reason for all of this haste. Many of the remaining components of the space station have been built and have been sitting for years awaiting launch. For various technical reasons, these parts are reaching the end of their viable storage lives. If they are not put into service soon, they will require extensive (and expensive) refurbishing to replace seals, batteries, and other items. So, just as happened before Challenger and Columbia, NASA has become schedule-driven to meet arbitrary dates. It will be interesting to find out how many variances of the Flight Rules will be needed to get Discovery into the air in time for two more launches this year.

Stop the Presses!

2006-03-01T09:35:00.000-06:00

Much to my amazement (and that of most of the rest of the world), not all American Olympic athletes are slimy, self-centered buffoons with the social graces of an enraged hippotamus and the myopic world view of the current occupant of the White House. Apparently, speedskater Joey Cheek actually spent his post-victory press conference talking about things other than himself and his sport. He also donated his winnings for the games (a $50,000 bonus for a gold medal and $25,000 for a silver, from the US Olympic Committee) to an organization called "Right to Play" that benefits third-world children.

This story in Sports Illustrated describes how he also encouraged corporate sponsors of the games to match his donation, raising a cool half-million dollars.

Of course, such selflessness won't go unnoticed in America. When the New York Times asked one of the principals of a large New York marketing firm about Cheek's potential as an advertising spokesman, he replied, "Has he won anything yet?"

Olympics Redux

2006-02-28T20:18:00.000-06:00

Unlike Hephaestus, I did see a fair amount of Olympic coverage. I was mostly interested in watching the skiing and snowboard events for inspiration and technique. (The women's figure skating was purely for inspiration.) Rest assured, however, that Mrs. Tentakles didn't miss a single second of Dancing with the Stars due to my viewing habits.

I will say that a tape delayed Olympics in a media saturated world simply isn't working. Our local NBC news affiliate would warn viewers before showing the results, but the major news websites did nothing of the sort. Not only was it virtually impossible not to know the results, but every major controversy and faux pas was just as visible.

If there were outstanding performances, people might tune in despite knowing the outcome, but given the toxic mix of disappointment and churlishness they did just the opposite.

On the American side, we can say our teams are truly professional. That's in the sense of Barry Bonds and Terrell Owens: overhyped, egotistical crybabies. We've come a long way from from the Olympic amateur ideal. At least the men's hockey team didn't trash their hotel room like last time.

The Winter Olympics are at a strong disadvantage to the Summer Games given the potential audience, number of participating countries, and ability to add sports. They will remain the stunted sibling and may well decline in commercial value. The 2010 venue is Vancouver – which may prop up US ratings for a cycle.

The Decline of Ancient Civilization

2006-02-27T12:23:00.000-06:00

The 2006 Winter Olympic Games have apparently ended. I confess to having not watched any of it and to having read preciously little as well. My wife and ten-year-old daughter watched about fifteen minutes of ice skating early on and then abandoned it. They did watch every minute of "Dancing with the Stars" for the last three weeks, though. I predict that the next round of bidding for television rights is going to be postponed once or twice before a "new paradigm" of broadcasting is announced, with the television rights going for a fraction of the current rates and one or more companies picking up iPod and other digital media rights.

Intelligent Designs

2006-02-27T06:04:00.000-06:00

I had the opportunity to listen to a one of the leading experts on the subject give a talk on the development of herbicide resistance among weeds. It's a problem every bit as serious as the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria, if not more so, as there has not been an herbicide with a new mode of action developed in over a decade and there do not appear to be any new products on the horizon. After the talk, when I went up to him and asked how he hoped to get the message of resistance across to a population who doesn't even believe in evolution, he shrugged and shook his head.

That's the problem. It's not enough to say "you believe in religion as the answer to everything and I'll believe in science, and we'll all go our merry ways." A small handful of sufficiently stupid people have the potential to screw things up for everyone. Unfortunately, when it comes to using antibiotics and herbicides, it's not a small number of people, but a substantial portion of the population. Ignorance of basic biology represents a threat to the health and welfare of all of us.

The problem seems to lie with the fact that many people are unable to understand the most basic of syllogisms; if it requires independent thought, it's beyond their ken. They rely entirely upon the rule of authority. Since science admits that there are things that are not yet understood and which may never be understood, while the answer to all questions in religions is that it's all god's fault, religion obviously has the greater authority.

So how can rational people deal with the "the bible says it, I believe it, end of story" crowd? Simple. When they get sick, encourage them to go with faith-based interventions. Talk them out of medical solutions and into prayer groups. If we can't outbreed 'em, let's outlive them.

Going Nucular

2006-02-26T02:00:00.000-06:00

Bush's recent -- and no doubt heartfelt -- commitment to (slightly) reducing America's addiction to oil has led him to highlight renewable energy sources and even to use the c-word -- conservation. While these have gotten a lot of attention in the press, it's worth noting that he also gave a quick shout-out to "safe, clean nuclear energy" in the SOTU. The US nuclear energy industry is on board as noted in this Chicago Trib article (free reg). More importantly, the most recent energy bill provided up to $13 billion in subsidies to the nuclear industry. (This compares to only $7 billion or so to oil companies).

This reminded me of a online poll done by the SF Chronicle just after the SOTU. Of course, as they say the results are unscientific. In practice, the SF Gate online polls trend even more liberal than public opinion in the Bay Area. This makes the results of their nuclear energy poll all the more startling. A narrow plurality favors additional nuclear power plants. That level of public support is equivalent to school children holding bake sales for Advanced Light Water Reactors in the Heartland.

Obviously, a lot of this is dependent on Yucca Mountain or some equivalent facility moving forward, but if the public has swung to a "lesser of two evils" attitude, then the obstacles are a little lower. The key opposition has always been NIMBY and that is certainly more obdurate.

There is talk of a big push on nuclear energy from the administration soon. Right now publicly plugging domestic nuclear energy could complicate negotiations with Iran and North Korea since they are using loopholes in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It is less of an issue with India, since the US goal there is to move all of their power-generating and fast-breeder reactors into a civilian program under IAEA monitoring. (The latest from the White House is downplaying any chance of an agreement during Bush’s upcoming India visit.)

Of course, Bush isn’t letting proliferation issues keep him from resurrecting reprocessing. This has all the earmarks of his earlier let’s-look-like-we’re-doing-something initiatives (hydrogen fuel, Mars exploration, etc): high tech, long time frames, low initial investment. Plus it adds his patented Pandora’s box approach to international relations. By pursuing a reprocessing strategy that won’t produce anything for decades Bush is validating the existing reprocessors (France, Japan, Russia, India and the UK) and making it a permissible goal for new entrants. There’s a reason why Jimmy Carter banned it in 1977 and he’s a damn sight more knowledgeable about matters nucular than Bush the Lesser.

Bush’s vision is that a selfless group of countries (presumably the UN Sec Council P-5) will supply nuclear fuel to other less blessed countries like Iran. Given the US standing as the pre-eminent global bully and the potential for UN sanctions to cut off the supply of fuel – what country would accept that dependency? (In reality these countries want nukes in order to get a seat at the table like Pakistan.) It’s not clear how the Bush administration would organize or manage such an operation. Suddenly depending on the UN to perform such a useful function would be out of character and despite Bush’s insight into Putin’s soul, it doesn’t seem like the US has much direct influence over there.

Leave it to Bush to take a simple idea whose time may have come and turn it into a expensive debacle that undermines US security and national interests. The Reverse Midas Touch indeed.

Lame Duck or Turkey Flambé?

2006-02-24T15:01:00.000-06:00

It seems to be the conventional wisdom to say that Bush needs to have Republicans maintain control of the House if he wants his presidency to end on a high note. There are two problems with that reasoning. First on the carrots side: Bush and Cheney are so isolated in their White House Berchtesgaden that there is essentially no hope of them producing meaningful initiatives. Rove is obviously distracted or out of the loop -- how else can one explain the Dubai ports fiasco? With approval ratings at 40% and below and no Karl to lead the spin chorus, Republicans are more likely to distance themselves from Bush's initiatives than rally around. There is very little upside to Bush in retaining control -- in fact obstructionist Dems would be a convenient excuse for non-achievement.

The downside is not that Bush will not be able to build a shining city upon a hill in his second term, it is that the Dems will get control of the investigative machinery. This is the Republican's worst nightmare. A real expose would leave Bush in impeachment territory. (I hasten to add that the Dems shouldn't pursue impeachment. That doesn't mean they can't do everything in their power to show what a disgrace this administration has been. Leave it to the Repubs to take out their own trash.)

The White House is dislocating member's shoulders to keep the NSA wiretapping investigation from happening and a lot of other scandals are cross-pollinating. Rather than taking some high visibility but low impact actions, the Repubs appear to be willing to let this fester. It's understandable. There is a real chance that the issue will get away from them if they admit anything. This total denial, however, is likely to convince more and more voters that the Republican majority is itself the problem and increase the chance of them losing power.

A smarter move would be to take limited steps to appear like there is some oversight of King George the Lesser and admonish those who are already indicted. Yeah, there is a risk it will create a public demand for actual reform and accountability, but at least there is a better chance the Republicans will be in control to squelch it.

So why don't they do that? The main obstacle is that a damage-control model requires discipline, leadership and trust from a fearful and fractured Republican Party. So many people are tied into the scandal that it is difficult to know where you can build a firebreak. Once the sacrifices start it's easy to think you may be next and you have to trust the leadership to hold their ground. Add to that a White House that is congenitally unable to accept bad news and is consumed with its own investigations and the status quo seems the most likely alternative.

This is good news for the Dems, but it seems likely that Repubs will take some highly visible action if it looks like the election is turning against them.

Tough Challenges vs Easy Money

2006-02-20T23:42:00.000-06:00

Based on a limited sample of Olympics viewing, Exxon Mobil is pushing their new slogan "Taking on the world's toughest energy challenges."

Generating electricity cost effectively through fusion is a tough energy challenge. Generating and delivering hydrogen gas on the scale of gasoline using renewable resources is a tough energy challenge. Extracting obscene economic rents from existing oil fields is not.

Aside from some happy talk about working with automakers to increase efficiency and cogeneration, their website is primarily focused on the standard challenges of using technology to find and more efficiently extract oil, natural gas, and assorted other petroleum sources.

They tout a "plan to invest up to $100 million" in Stanford University's Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP). The Stanford GCEP site indicates that the project's sponsors (ExxonMobil, General Electric, Schlumberger, and Toyota) will invest a total of $225 million over 10 years. So it is not unreasonable to assume that the $100M is actually $10 million a year. To put this in perspective Exxon earned $4.5M an hour in profits in the past three months.

When It's Not Your Year

2006-02-18T08:02:00.000-06:00

NASCAR's truck division ran the GM FlexFuel 250 at Daytona, NASCAR's hallowed ground, yesterday. GM must have shelled out a healthy seven-digits to get the race sponsorship, which celebrates their line of pickups and SUVs, all of which can run on either gasoline or E85 (a mixture of 85% ethanol, 14% gasoline, and 1% highly enriched uranium).

Unfortunately for the sponsor, the fastest Chevrolet truck finished in twelfth place, behind two Dodges, four Fords, and five Toyotas. In fact, only three of the top twenty places were held by Chevys, although the back of the pack was well stocked. Even considering the knuckleheads of the NASCAR nation this sort of performance can't be good for sales.

BTW, There Is No Santa...

2006-02-17T02:51:00.000-06:00

Just wanted to blogviate on the latest blow to medical conventional wisdom from the Women's Health Initiative -- namely that calcium plus vitamin D has negligible benefits for preventing osteoporosis in older women.

The basic idea seemed sound: women's bones lose density as they get older and become brittle, so supplements should slow this down. (Men experience the same thing, but they start with stronger bones and don't sacrifice calcium in pregnancy and nursing. Anyway, men tend to die of other things before they get frail. An interesting exception is endurance athletes. Sweat actually contains quite a bit of calcium and serious bikers, runners and even basketball players can experience significant loss in bone density. But I digress.) Anyway, around this time, it was discovered that vitamin D3 increases the uptake of calcium significantly and that became part of the standard recommendation.

The problem was that while it makes sense in principle, it is difficult to prove that this is effective -- it would take a large, long-term, double-blind study to say anything conclusive. This is exactly what the WHI is. The results, as reported, are less than overwhelming.

Gina Kolata's fine NYT article
Big Study Finds No Clear Benefit of Calcium Pills does an excellent job of explaining the results and has lots of quotes from different experts.

When they looked only at adherent women, or those who took 80 percent of their pills, the supplements reduced hip fractures by 29 percent. The annual rate of hip fractures in adherent women taking the supplements was 10 per 10,000 as compared with 14 per 10,000 in adherent women taking placebos.

As noted in the article, this sort of subgroup analysis is viewed with great suspicion by statisticians, because it is almost always possible to find a narrow enough group that shows a positive result. For example, they might see that women between 53 and 55 with no history of smoking showed a significant increase in bone density. Most likely, that is just a random fluctuation in the direction they'd expect to see.

Now I see the quote above a differently. It seems perfectly legitimate to examine what happened with people who actually followed the damn directions. No numbers are supplied with this breakout to say how many women fell into this "adherent" group, but with 36,000 in main study I would think it's enough to be statistically significant even after dividing it into the treatment and placebo groups. And note the result is for actual fractures -- not just increased bone density or some other dubious indicator.

The quote that really got me going, however, was from David Freedman, a statistician at the University of California, Berkeley. Kolata summarizes him this way:

Women who take their pills as directed year in and year out are known to be different from ordinary women, so it is a mistake to generalize from them to the entire population.

I find this analysis dumbfounding for two reasons:

1) This is a double-blind study. There are two groups of women: one who gets calcium without knowing and one who gets a placebo without knowing it. So we are comparing apples to apples -- adherent women who got calcium to equally adherent women who got a placebo. It *doesn't matter* how different adherent women are from "ordinary" women.

2) If this is a real effect then there shouldn't be any problem recommending it -- a lot of women will start and the adherent women will adhere and reap the full benefit. The ordinary women won't. Telling everyone it doesn't help is depriving a certain portion of the population needlessly. The correct message would be it only helps if you do it everyday.

One thing drug trials look for to increase their confidence is dose dependency. That is they provide several different dosages in addition to the control group. If there is a genuine effect, they would expect it to roughly increase along with dosage. In the WHI, there weren't multiple doses, but they obviously did track adherence. If they have the data, it would be extremely interesting to see if there was a lesser benefit in the 60 - 80% adherent group. These are professionals, so I assume they may well have already done that and not found a statistically significant result.

I'm certainly open to the idea that supplements provide no benefit to women who are getting sufficient calcium and vitamin D in their diet, but I don't think the arguments in the article are as compelling as they first appear.

Anyway, this comes on the heels of results from the same study indicating that low fat diets don't prevent cancer or reduce weight and hormone replacement therapy has more risks than benefits. All three of these are decades old mainstream public health messages that have apparently wasted hundreds of billions of dollars. I don't know what lessons the medical community will take from these or how cynical the public will become. The simplest solution is to tune out the doctors and wait for an anti-obesity pill. Then you can eat whatever you want and at least still look healthy.

Out of the Loop

2006-02-15T23:11:00.000-06:00

Well, there's very little I can add to Dick Cheney's own words, but that won't keep me from trying.

DC: "And it was also important, I thought, to get the story out as accurately as possible, and this is a complicated story that, frankly, most reporters would never have dealt with before, so —"

Very true. Sarah McClendon died back in 2003 and she had only started covering the White House in the FDR administration. I doubt that anyone still working the Washington beat is likely to have covered Aaron Burr shooting Alexander Hamilton.

DC: "I had a bit of the feeling that the press corps was upset because, to some extent, it was about them — they didn't like the idea that we called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times instead of The New York Times. But it strikes me that the Corpus Christi Caller-Times is just as valid a news outlet as The New York Times is, especially for covering a major story in south Texas."

Possibly true as well. Of course it would have played better if Dick hadn't just said: "In terms of who I would contact to have somebody who would understand what we're even talking about, the first person that we talked with at one point, when Katherine first called the desk to get hold of a reporter didn't know the difference between a bullet and a shotgun — a rifle bullet and a shotgun." I'm reasonably confident that the Times has someone on the National Desk who can tell the difference between being sniped and being blasted, even on a Saturday.

DC: "I think this decision we made, that this was the right way to do it."

Now we know the real mastermind of Adminstration policy. This is almost a direct quote to explain away the debacles of Iraq and Katrina. Consistency is a fundamental virtue.

And finally, Dick shows that he's a real softy at heart.

Brit Hume: "Will it affect your attitude toward this pastime you so love in the future?"

DC: "I can't say that. You know, we canceled the Sunday hunt. I said, look I'm not — we were scheduled to go out again on Sunday and I said I'm not going to go on Sunday, I want to focus on Harry. I'll have to think about it."

What more can you say about the guy? After blasting his friend in the face and chest, he was concerned enough not to go out shooting the next day.

Conspiracy Theory

2006-02-15T07:00:00.000-06:00

In the short time since this blog was founded, I've had two postings lost before I could post them. One disappeared when the computer went to screen saver and never came back and the other was eaten last night when Windows Update tried seven times to install a security update, gave up and rebooted the computer anyway. These events are even more suspicious, as neither posting had anything to do with politics or Microsoft. Considering the competency of both Washington and Redmond, I doubt that any genuinely dangerous postings would even have been found had they made it to the blog. On the other hand, innocuous comments are almost certain to set off the detectors.

If I disappear after posting this, please spread the word to all the planespotters out there to keep an eye out for my rendition flight.

Snow Crash

2006-02-14T14:42:00.000-06:00

Well the 2006 Winter Olympics are, at this moment, looking a lot like human pinball. That's the challenge of trying to do things on ice. Granted, the ancient Greeks wouldn't have had much respect for sports that require fleece rather than a thick coating of olive oil, but still it's getting difficult to keep track of who is injured in which sport and how badly. I guess suggesting an injury count instead of a medal count would be in bad taste.

The downside of being the subject of pre-Olympic hype is you wind up in commercials that play endlessly even when you've finished in the coveted also-also ran position. I think any time the reigning world champion fails to reach the podium they should receive a consolation medal made out of depleted uranium.

Depending on your level of cynicism, combined events are either a throwback to an earlier age when all-around athleticism was esteemed or a way to spread the medals down to the second tier players.

Nordic Combined would be much more interesting if it were ski jumping and target shooting simultaneously. For tech porn, BTW, it's hard to beat a biathlon rifle. Of course, a .22 RF won't do in these high-windage situations, besides some extra recoil will make it more challenging. Allowing semi-automatics, though, should make it easier to maintain an aerodynamic position.

If they're not going to go that far, at least they could have the competitors jump right into the XC course. Clock starts running at the top of the jump. No change of equipment allowed.

Given the surge in backcountry skiing perhaps Alpine Avalanche Self-Rescue is in the wings for Vancouver 2010. (Style points and time both count. DNF is particularly unfortunate.)

Those of you who would prefer reading some good science fiction to watching hour-long tributes to people who won't actually be competing, there is the original Neal Stephenson Snow Crash.

Saddam Under Glass

2006-02-13T19:10:00.000-06:00

As show trials go, this is being handled exceptionally badly. The tirades by Hussein are contrary to the goal of undermining him as an authority figure. The Bush administration obviously couldn't go the UN tribunal route for a number of reasons, but they should at least provide the stage management expertise since that is their core competence.

Eichmann spent his trial in a bulletproof glass booth with headphones. I don't see any reason why this couldn't be adapted for Saddam. Give him a microphone and give the judge the switch to the speakers. His lawyers can have their own communication channels open at all times. A couple of minutes of Hussein ranting impotently while the court carries on with its business would put an end to the theatrics, I suspect.

It's easy enough to say there have been threats against Hussein by the families of Shiites killed in bombings and the box is for his protection.

Cheney Invokes Executive Privilege in Shooting

2006-02-13T15:26:00.000-06:00

Vice President Dick Cheney sharply defended his actions following the shooting of a 78-year-old Republican campaign contributor. Today on Good Morning America, Cheney said he would wouldn't provide any details of the incident in order to "protect the ability of the president and the vice president to shoot at anyone we want."

In related news, Representative Tom Delay (R-TX) has announced a Dove Shoot and BBQ fundraiser. The twenty-dollar-a-pellet event notes that it is a "thrilling, once-in-a-lifetime chance to interact" with the former House majority leader. In a bipartisan gesture, registered Democrats can get in free.

Vandalism

2006-02-09T20:41:00.000-06:00

The University of Idaho's football coach, Nick Holt, resigned last Sunday to take a position as an assistant coach for the St. Louis Rams. The Idaho Statesman quotes Holt as saying, "I feel good about it. It's bittersweet to leave this place, especially when I know it's headed in the right direction. I know we can be good now."

It's not hard to see why he feels good about it. Idaho was 5-18 under his coaching.

The school seems pretty broken up about it as well. Athletic director Rob Spear said, "We're disappointed we're losing Nick. But we're Vandals, so we're excited about a Vandal getting an opportunity at the next level." (Yes, the University of Idaho nickname is the Vandals. There are no reports as to whether any East European barbarian hordes will be suing the NCAA to get them to change it.) Holt left spud country to work for Scott Linehan, the new head coach of the Rams, who is a former Vandal quarterback and assistant coach.

But before he even set foot in the Gateway City, Holt bolted. Spurning the defensive line coaching position offered by the Rams, Holt decided to accept the role of defensive coordinator at the University of Southern California instead. The Statesman has not received a statement from Holt regarding his new position, but they quote him as saying on last Sunday that the Rams job was "an opportunity I just couldn't turn down.''

In the bitter irony department, the U of I has hired former NFL and college head coach Dennis Erickson. Erickson coached for four years at Idaho in the early eighties and ran up a 32-15 record. His overall college record is 144-57-1 over seventeen years.

I'm Thinking Settlement...

2006-02-09T12:12:00.000-06:00

The SF Chronicle reports that jurors in a product defect suit against Wal-Mart were examining the bicycle wheel quick-release mechanism when the part broke.

Reportedly the Next bike by Dynacraft was straight out of the box and had never been ridden. Jurors had just begun their deliberations. Doubt they'll need to send out for dinner.

[Note: The article doesn't say so explicitly, but I assume the defendents supplied the sample bicycle.]

Framed

2006-02-08T23:12:00.000-06:00

Kevin Drum quotes Andrew Sullivan about what the Democrats message should be (Short form: homeland security, winning back our allies, taking on the Iranian dictatorship, energy independence, universal healthcare and balancing the budget) and asks why we don't hear this from Dems.

A related topic over at AlterNet talks about Democrats fear of framing, ascribing it to:

1. Our insistence that the Facts Alone Will Set Us Free.

2. Our resistance to ideas that feel like marketing and "selling."

3. The challenge that we might be fundamentally mistaken about how things operate.

4. The idea that framing is some kind of "magic bullet" to fix our problems. (Though no one is suggesting that it is.)

Having watched the Republican Party get sucked down the maw of its own spin machine, I think Dems are justifiably wary of the slippery slope. Sadly, elections are won on simple themes and positive visions -- not lists of comparative statistics or unpleasant truths. Democrats have too many planks and no frame to hang it on.

Campaigning on honesty and good government is consistent with the idea that the Federal government matters, that it can have a profoundly positive impact on people's lives. This is turn is perfectly matched by the principles of fairness and helping those less fortunate. People who don't agree with these principles are NOT fellow travelers. Write them off.

Once there are a few principles in place -- two or three, no more -- then it is possible to frame issues in terms of these core values. There is a tendency for liberals to create laundry lists, so the urge will be to add tolerance or social justice or multiculturalism.

I think there is still room for marketing even once the principles and frames are in place. This is just practicality. Take Sullivan's list he has "Universal Healthcare" as one of the items. While there are a lot of perfectly rational reasons based on efficiency to go with a single-payer system, using the phrase Universal Heathcare is daft. It plays into the conservative talking points of Big Government and Evil Bureaucracy and Socialism, too.

People will have a justifiable fear of losing what they have now. Plus it is a red flag for those who make billions off the inefficiency we're seeking to fix. Going straight from what we have to a single-payer system is a pipe dream and probably bad policy. It would be better to ramp up to such a system. So I'd ban Universal Heathcare as a phrase. The better phrase is Guaranteed Heathcare. Everyone who cannot get healthcare through their employer is eligible and not for some punitive welfare-like benefit, but something close to VA benefits. The goals are 1) to split off the insurers and pharmaceutical companies from the bulk of the business community and 2) reassure voters that there is a safety net, but they are not going to be forced into the federal plan. Once there an even remotely viable alternative in place, the problem will be preventing employers from dumping their employees into it wholesale. It may be possible, by picking the right incentives, to even buy off some of the initial resistance by the insurance and pharmaceutical players. There's no need to telegraph the end game.

It this devious? Does it sound creepily Republican? Yes. Is there a moral hazard involved? Again, yes. But smugly assuming that single-payer is inevitable and letting the conservatives and healthcare industry own the terms of discussion can push off this outcome for decades.

It's Rocket Science

2006-02-08T07:12:00.000-06:00

NASA has just released their FY2007 budget request and it shifts 4.63 billion dollars out of the space science budget between now and 2010. Where is this money going? You might think that it's supposed to pay for the work that's needed to put men back on the Moon and for the first landing on Mars, but you'd be wrong. Exploration Systems, which NASA says, "develops and demonstrates new
technologies that will enable NASA to conduct future human and robotic exploration missions, including the development of robotic precursor missions for lunar exploration" is losing $1.51 billion over the same time frame and Human Systems, which according to NASA: "advance knowledge and technology critical for supporting long-term human survival and performance during operations beyond low-Earth orbit,with a focus on improving medical care and human health maintenance", is getting whacked for $2.41 billion. That's an $8.55 billion decrease in the science budget.

Of this, $2.95 billion is going to pay for additional space shuttle missions, the destination of each being the International Space Station. You may remember the ISS, which was widely promoted by NASA hacks as being the greatest scientific tool since the invention of the microscope. If you do remember it, it's almost certainly not for the science, as it hasn't generated enough data to provide source material for a single decent dissertation.

Another $1.23 billion is earmarked for a new program called the Innovative Partnerships Program. This is a handout to private industry and a handful of national laboratories. NASA makes a big deal of talking about the Small Business Initiative for Research, which earmarks some of this money for small companies. They don't mention that the SBIR program accounts for only 2.5% of this spending. They also trumpet their Enterprise Engine which is a venture capital fund to sponsor "youngyoung, privately-held companies developing innovative, multi-use technologies that will meet NASA's future mission needs, as well as better position these technologies for future commercial use." This fund accounts for all of 1.0% of the IPP.

The rest of the windfall, some $6.8 billion including additional funds, is going to down the hole to create the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), the Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV), and the Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (HLLV), about which more will be said in the near future.

A Penny for Your Thoughts

2006-02-07T01:22:00.000-06:00

A New York Times article Postage is Due (by way of Kevin Drum's ) notes plans by Yahoo and AOL to work with Goodmail Systems to provide companies with a class of premium mail that will -- for a price -- bypass their spam filters.

One small concern I have is that this creates a divergence between my interests as a user and Yahoo's interests as a company regarding what constitutes spam. Bear in mind half the money goes to Yahoo. A hoodia peddler or mortgage seller may be a "legitimate" company in the Goodmail world (e.g., they agree to a code of conduct and their checks clear), but I consider them spam. Can I opt out or blacklist them from appearing in my inbox? Probably, but if it's too easy for me, such companies may be less willing to cough up money to Goodmail / Yahoo. Note that the US Postal Service would be a lot smaller organization without junkmail.

A bigger question is whether this will be a way to collect more revenue across the board. Email has been treated as a free good, but it's a fairly straight path from this to a model where every email has to have a postage stamp. The certification costs mentioned in the article are 1/4 to 1 cent per email with the lower price going to high volume senders. The graphic accompanying the original article shows the daily volume of mail as 25 billion a day. Assuming a half cent each, that's $125 million a day or $45 billion a year globally. For scale, that this nearly equal to what the USPS collects for first class and standard mail in a year. Those kind of bucks mean big service providers will quickly disintermediate Goodmail.

Yahoo, AOL, BellSouth, and AT&T can get together and ratify a standard. They could create a company to pass out the e-stamps or trust each other to generate them. The originating and receiving ISPs get to split the price of the stamp and a small residual goes to the issuing org, if necessary. No point stopping there, of course, they can tack on a penny for attachments under a meg and a penny per meg after that. The oligopoly gets to set the price.

The easy way is just do it like bandwidth -- provide a base level say sending 10 emails a month and then have premium levels above that. In reality, competition would probably force the pricing below the list price and potentially back down to the original levels, but the best part would still remain. That would be companies paying for access to their users -- not preferred access, but any access. Of course, governments can get into the business, too. They can collect the postage directly or add a postage tax.

Perhaps network neutrality will prevail, but given the sums involved for businesses and the government and the ease with which it can be spun as a necessary evil to fight spam / terrorism, I'm dubious. Plus it's market solution! How can we say no to that?

Congratulations to the Steelers

2006-02-05T22:16:00.000-06:00

The launch of this blog and the end of the football season with Superbowl XL today are not entirely coincidental since, for me at least, the end of the NFL season means an extra helping of time that won't be filled by other televised sports until September.

I do follow the Steelers and would like to congratulate the entire organization on a job well-done. Certainly they conducted much better games against the equine teams (Indy and Denver) in the playoffs, but they played solid defense and had flashes of brilliance on offense. In the larger sense, the best part of this win is how the Steelers built up to it. Despite some hard years and tough losses, Dan Rooney kept the right perspective. Wholesale changes weren't required. Painful playoff losses have led to coaching shake-ups or star free agent signings at other franchises, but they didn't in Pittsburgh.

High performance teams require respect, trust and a common understanding. All of these take time and stability to establish. Cowher did a good job of finding players who fit the philosophy and then finding schemes that made them productive. A lot of players left along the way (Thigpen, O'Donnell, Stewart, Burress). While they made good money, they weren't as successful as they were with the Steelers.

It would be nice to think that after the Patriots run and now the Steelers, a few of the self-aggrandizing players and owners sitting at home on Superbowl Sunday might think twice about destructive antics or throwing money at free agents, but that's not too likely. Patience is an extremely difficult strategy to follow in any high-stakes, highly public endeavor such as stock markets and pro sports. The businessmen who buy teams now mostly made their money on big bets and blockbuster deals, not incremental improvements. Players who make it to the pros are very talented and very successful and have a high degree of self-confidence. Fans and the media exacerbate these tendencies, so there is little likelihood that patient management and low-key teamwork will spread across the league like a bad rash in a kindergarten.

Now, of course, the challenge for the Steelers organization is holding things together in the face of success.

The Creation Story

2006-02-04T11:40:00.000-06:00

In the beginning the universe was a simple place, without distinctions such as matter and energy, good and evil, and Republican and Democrat. Modern physics tells us that this period of rationality lasted roughly one billionth of a billionth of a femtosecond, which is about how long it takes to realize that you just ran a stop sign right in front of a cop, and then someone dropped the universe and it shattered into countless fragments, none of which fit together. Science, which feels obligated to give everything a name, refers to this as symmetry breaking.

Broken symmetry has a lot to answer for. It's responsible for the fact that the visible universe is comprised almost entirely of matter, and not anti-matter. It is the reason that gauge bosons have mass (thus distinguishing between the weak and the electromagnetic forces). And, most troubling of all, it explains why people have a morbid fascination with which celebrities are sleeping together.

This blog is dedicated to broken symmetry and all of its effects. It's a place for random fragments to come together and just possibly restore a bit of order to the universe.