I just conducted a little experiment. It’s one you can probably try yourself.
See, some time back I decided that I needed to watch the 2001 movie remake Planet of the Apes. I’d been on a bit of a Tim Burton kick, and figured that I should see this, even though it had been widely panned and looked dreadful. But before watching it, I figured that I should watch the original once again, so that I’d have it fresh in my mind for the comparison to the remake. So both movies went onto my NetFlix queue.
I saw Planet of the Apes when it first came out. I remember seeing it, and being just completely blown away by the phenomenal story and really cool ending twist. Hey, I was 10. But while I no longer consider it phenomenal, it is a good movie, and I have seen it probably a dozen times since.
Anyway, the 1968 version arrived yesterday. Since Monday is a holiday, I decided that I’d watch it and get it back in the mail today – no reason for it hanging around. Last night I wasn’t feeling great, and this morning was a little more busy than I had planned. So about 11:00, I sat down to watch the movie, aware that I wanted to be done before the mailman arrived (usually between 1:00 and 2:00 on Saturdays). Feeling a little time pressure, I figured I could maybe zip through some of the opening bits and whatnot at a faster speed, get done more quickly.
I decided to watch the movie on my computer, where I could set the speed at 1.5x normal. It compresses sound in some way automatically, so that things don’t sound too weird. I’d done this previously with parts of other movies I already knew and wanted to get through. And here’s the thing: I was able to watch the entire movie at 1.5x speed, and it seemed just fine.
OK, I slowed down some of the “action sequences” to normal speed. But those were like a total of 10 or fifteen minutes. All the rest of it – all the dialogue, all the traveling, all the plot development – seemed perfectly normal at 1.5x speed.
Hmm.
I was done in plenty of time, so I went back and rewatched the ending at the normal 1.0x speed. It seemed to take forever to get through it.
Hmm.
Now, this could just be due to the fact that I know the movie pretty well, and my mind was able to fill in the emotional development usually tied to visual/spoken narrative without a problem. But I think it has more to do with how we’ve been conditioned to experience movies currently. We expect them to move more quickly, for the information to be conveyed in a more rapid pace.
It could just be due to the style of current film-making, with quicker cuts and More Jam-Packed Special Effects!
Or it could be that our lives really are faster now than they used to be.
1.5 times faster.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Failure, Government, ISS, movies, NASA, Phil Plait, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Star Trek, Survival, tech, Travel, UFO
This item made the news yesterday:
Scientists eye debris after satellite collision
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Scientists are keeping a close eye on orbital debris created when two communications satellites — one American, the other Russian — smashed into each other hundreds of miles above the Earth.
NASA said it will take weeks to determine the full magnitude of the unprecedented crash and whether any other satellites or even the Hubble Space Telescope are threatened.
The collision, which occurred nearly 500 miles over Siberia on Tuesday, was the first high-speed impact between two intact spacecraft, NASA officials said.
Wow: two satellites have collided in orbit, destroying both. This is the first time such a major collision has ever occurred.
The satellites were Cosmos 2251, a Russian communication relay satellite that’s been defunct for a decade, and an Iridium satellite, one of a fleet of communication satellites launched by Motorola in the late 90s and early 2000s.
* * *
There have been collisions in space before, but never from such large satellites — the Iridium bird was about 700 kg, and the Cosmos was about the same — and never resulting in a total wipeout like this. Again, if I have my numbers about right, the explosion resulting from the energy of impact would have been about the same as detonating a ton of TNT.
I had to chuckle at this comment in that thread at Bad Astronomy:
But wouldn’t the impact have made a new, ever more powerful hybrid satellite? It would have an over-arching need to communicate and would do so in Russian. The only way to make it stop broadcasting a constant barrage at us would be if it mistook someone for its designer at Motorola and then. . . Oh wait, this isn’t Star Trek.
No, not at all. When you have two large satellites, each moving at something on the order of about 5 miles a second hit one another at nearly right angles, then you don’t get any kind of hybrid. You get a mess. As in a debris cloud of upwards of a thousand bits and pieces of space junk, some of it substantial, most of it still moving at thousands of miles an hour, and all of it dangerous.
I’ve written previously about the threat of real ‘UFOs’ to our space exploration. From the quoted article in that post:
The reason is life-and-death. Since Mercury days, NASA engineers have realized that visual sightings of anomalies can sometimes provide clues to the functioning — or malfunctioning — of the spaceships that contain their precious astronauts. White dots outside the window could be spray from a propellant leak, or ice particles, flaking insulation, worked-loose fasteners (as in this latest case) or inadvertently released tools or components.
Whatever the objects might be, they pose a threat of coming back in contact with the spacecraft, potentially causing damage to delicate instruments, thermal tiles, windows or solar cells, or fouling rotating or hinged mechanisms. So Mission Control needs to find out about them right away in order to determine that they are not hazardous.
Right now the bulk of that debris cloud is about 250 miles higher than the ISS. But it will slowly drift closer (the effect of atmospheric drag – even at that altitude, it will slow anything in orbit, meaning that the item in question will drop to a lower orbit). At some point, this could be a real threat to the space station.
And beyond that, it is a further complication to *any* effort to get into something other than a low Earth orbit. Currently we have something like tens of thousands of bits of “space junk” that have to be tracked – and while all of it will eventually fall back into the atmosphere and burn up, it can present a real danger. If we’re not careful, we could encase ourselves in a shell of so much junk that it would basically eliminate the possibility of travel beyond our planet for decades.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Cosmic Variance, General Musings, Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling, movies, Science, String theory
(This is one of my newspaper columns from Columbia Daily Tribune, updated with links. Thought it might be of interest while I am away for a few days. – JD)
Harry Potter and the Superstring Revolution
One of my favorite String Theory blogs (yeah, I have rather eclectic interests) recently got into a discussion of the new Harry Potter movie. Even hard-core physicists like to discuss movies in addition to the latest research into 11-dimension supergravity and the advantages of D-branes over M-theory. Which is good, because when these people start throwing around the advanced math wizardry needed to really understand these concepts I’m just a Muggle. But if they talk movies or art, I can chime in with the best of them.
Anyway, the discussion of Goblet of Fire turned into a debate of whether or not the Potter books themselves should really be considered literature. And, frankly, it was rather funny to watch a bunch of really smart people try and wrestle with something so completely outside of their field of training. Sure, most of them had taken some lit classes while undergrads, but they were working with tools not really suited to the problem. It’d be like me, with a little bit of math from college 25 years ago, trying to engage one of them on the validity of the Superstring Revolution. I might have a general understanding of the issues involved, but I’m completely unequipped to contribute anything meaningful to the debate in the language of science.
What was really interesting about this, though, was that none of them saw it that way. They were all certain that their opinions of literature, as an intellectual exercise, were completely valid. They had fallen into the trap of thinking that their likes or dislikes in literature was all that was necessary to have an informed debate.
This is a common problem with all the arts. Non-artists usually think that their personal preferences are all that matters. If someone doesn’t like a Pollock drip painting, then it isn’t “art.” If they think that opera is boring, then that’s sufficient to consider it outmoded and useless. And conceptual art . . . well, it’s beyond the conceptual boundary horizon for most folks and so doesn’t even exist. Might as well be magic.
Furthermore, if you challenge these opinions people will get really indignant and defensive. They don’t want to hear that an understanding of the issues involved is necessary to appreciate some art. The old line “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like” will pop up in one form or another very quickly.
And on one level, that’s OK. I wouldn’t think of telling someone that they couldn’t form an opinion about what they like or dislike in art any more than I would consider telling them what they liked to eat for breakfast. But if you’ve never even heard of eggs, how can you have an opinion on the proper preparation of a nice quiche? It’d be like having strong feelings about word choice in the translation of Rilke’s Der Schwan when you don’t speak German. Sure, you can have an opinion, but it’s not something I’m going to take particularly seriously.
This isn’t to say that only an ‘expert’ can have a valid opinion about art. Hardly. By its very nature art is designed to elicit a response even in the uninformed. It’s perfectly OK to say “I like that painting.” Or, “I don’t care for opera.” But when someone starts to try and talk about the validity of a particular work of art (or music, literature, et cetera), they need to know what they’re talking about. Otherwise, people will treat you like the guy sitting in the sports bar who keeps yelling “pass the ball” at the TV during the baseball game. Or, perhaps more appropriately, like the guy at the Quidditch match who keeps calling for a relief pitcher.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow, Health, Humor, movies, Politics, Survival
I suppose on some level this would be the perfect food for the end of the Bush era – but you’ll forgive me if I don’t add it to my celebratory smorgasbord on Tuesday:
Casu marzu (also called casu modde, casu cundhídu, or in Italian formaggio marcio) is a traditional sheep milk cheese, notable for being riddled with live insect larvae. Although outlawed there for health reasons, it is found mainly in Sardinia, Italy on the black market. Casu marzu literally means “rotten cheese” in Sardinian and is known colloquially as maggot cheese.
Derived from Pecorino, Casu marzu goes beyond typical fermentation to a stage most would consider decomposition, brought about by the digestive action of the larvae of the cheese fly Piophila casei. These larvae are deliberately introduced to the cheese, promoting an advanced level of fermentation and breaking down of the cheese’s fats. The texture of the cheese becomes very soft, with some liquid (called lagrima, from the Sardinian for “tears”) seeping out. The larvae themselves appear as translucent white worms, about 8 millimetres (0.3 in) long. When disturbed, the larvae can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in). Some people clear the larvae from the cheese before consuming; others do not.
* * *
Casu marzu is considered toxic when the maggots in the cheese have died. Because of this, only cheese in which the maggots are still alive is eaten. When the cheese has fermented enough, it is cut into thin strips and spread on moistened Sardinian flatbread (pane carasau), to be served with a strong red wine.[6][7] Casu marzu is believed to be an aphrodisiac by local Sardinians.[1] Because the larvae in the cheese can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in) when disturbed,[5][8] diners hold their hands above the sandwich to prevent the maggots from leaping into their eyes.[3] Those who do not wish to eat live maggots place the cheese in a sealed paper bag. The maggots, starved for oxygen, writhe and jump in the bag, creating a “pitter-patter” sound. When the sounds subside, the maggots are dead and the cheese can be eaten.[9]
It’s a bit late for it, but it has to be said: “They’ll eat your eyes out, kid!”
No, actually, the greatest threat seems to be from ingesting the the maggots, and having them survive in your gut. Charming. Not unlike Bush administration political appointees who are trying to burrow their way into permanent positions in the Justice Department, I suppose. So cheesy.
Jim Downey
(Via BB. Excerpted description from Wikipedia entry on Casu marzu. Cross posted to UTI.)
***Say, someone linked this to some site, or spread it amongst their Twitter friends, or something – there’s been a huge increase in hits. Which is cool, but if someone would be kind enough to let me know how it got out into the wild, I’d appreciate it. I’m used to my posts mostly being domesticated, see . . . JD
Filed under: Climate Change, Emergency, Failure, General Musings, Guns, Health, Humor, movies, Nuclear weapons, Predictions, Preparedness, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Weather
Gah – it’s 55 degrees here. Inside, I mean. No, we don’t have the thermostat turned that low. The heating system, an old hot-water radiator setup, just can’t keep up when the temps get down to below zero Fahrenheit. Not in an old house with minimal insulation (and no simple way of adding any). So we wander around, playing Quintet, waiting for something resembling normal weather to return, trying to get done what we can.
It’s sobering. And instructive. In Communion of Dreams I stipulate a long period of harsh winters for much of the northern hemisphere, following the ‘small’ nuclear war in Asia. Having lived through some 15 Iowa winters, it was easy to imagine what that would be like. But I was younger, and memory is fleeting. Combine those cold conditions for a prolonged period with an economic collapse, and those years in my novel would be brutal – moreso than any of us probably understand.
And let’s hope it stays that way. When I read things like this, I wonder whether I have been entirely too optimistic about our future. Then again, not like these geniuses have been right about anything else for the last couple of years.
Wait – they’ve been entirely too optimistic, too, haven’t they? That’s what got us into this financial mess.
Gods, now I really am depressed.
And cold.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Gene Roddenberry, General Musings, movies, Science Fiction, Star Trek, The Prisoner
I caught the news last night, but somehow had managed to miss this comment to my post of a week ago – Patrick McGoohan has passed away.
Ah, damn.
And so has Ricardo Montalban.
Ah, damn.
We tend to think of actors as their most important (to us) roles. People who won’t recognize the name of McGoohan probably know him as #6 from The Prisoner. Likewise, Montalban is forever known better as Khan Noonien Singh to generations of SF fans. And while this is unfair – both men were accomplished actors who played many roles, and who lived interesting lives – it is understandable, because they came into our lives for only a limited time and in this particular context. And they live on in those characters in our minds.
So, yes, farewell to each. But I will always cherish their memorable performances.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Emergency, Failure, Flu, Government, movies, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Society, Writing stuff
Sometimes I wish that I listened to my own advice. For literally decades, my mantra of advice for friends has always been “trust your instincts”. This isn’t just some mystical mumbo-jumbo: a healthy, functioning human brain with a decent amount of education and experience is an amazing data processor, with multiple layers of analysis always going on – and one of them is what your subconsious is considering that kicks up to your conscious awareness as a “gut feeling”. This is the premise behind the book Blink (which I haven’t read, but have read enough about from the author and others to have a decent understanding of).
OK, so what am I going on about now?
[Mild spoilers ahead.]
Just this, when I originally conceived Communion of Dreams, I was writing a book about . . . wait for it . . . the aftermath of an economic collapse. Yeah, the bulk of the book you see now was pretty much the same. But the backstory was more about how a series of severe but not pandemic flu epidemics lead to the collapse of the world economy around 2011 – 2012. And how that collapse would lead to a significant downturn of the human population worldwide, as the carrying capacity of the planet changed. Yes, I still had the extant plot device of the Fire Flu there, but it was to be what Diabolus became in the current version – a terror threat that played off of the memories of what happened a generation previously.
But I was writing this initially around 2000 – the economy was just too good, things seemed like they would be smooth sailing forever. Trying to get people to think about, let alone believe, that an economic collapse could occur was just too difficult. Most people only understand the functioning of the economy when it smacks them in the face – and in spite of the brief downturn following the 9/11 attacks, few people understood what was building on the horizon.
So I went with the current revision of the book.
I should have trusted my instincts. They have only very seldom let me down. Because now there is a growing awareness of the precariousness of our economic situation. Most people are still only thinking that we’re in for some “rough times”, which I gather they think will be a limitation of how many new plasma televisions they can buy. But even that level of understanding would be enough for them to understand what I was (or, rather, would have been) writing about in that earlier version of Communion.
And yes, if you look at what I said above, you can conclude that I think that things are actually going to get a lot worse for a lot longer than what the current awareness believes. It really depends on how foolishly our government and business leaders act – right now I am not optimistic. Will it mean a global economic collapse? As one of my favorite actors in one of my favorite roles said:
Personally, I’d give us one chance in three. More tea anyone?
Jim Downey
(With apologies for having my Monday doom and gloom a day late – it was a busy weekend launching Ballistics by the inch.)
Communion Of Dreams 