Survival Arts

Testing new Olympus E-1 Zuiko macro lens

I'm testing my Olympus E-1 Zuiko 35mm macro lens with a new diffuser lamp assembly:

Quote of the Day

I code in Python, I don't gotta declare
drop vars left and right, interpreter don't care
and you'll notice my keyboard ain't got much wear

That's cuz py code is short like your schlong, with typing loose like your mom,
and curly braces missing like geeks at the prom,
all in this lovely little language by guido van rossum.

Patri Friedman
"...some python nerdcore lyrics I came up w/ yesterday while biking home..."
(with express permission)

"Roswell, Texas" by L. Neil Smith and Scott Beiser

Today's QOTD is a bit of background on the graphic novel "Roswell, Texas" by L. Neil Smith and Scott Beiser, which has been serialized in webcomic form on the Bighead Press website. It's a kick, and I recommend it highly.

Quote of the Day

Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it's breathtaking, I suggest you try it.

Dr. Evil

Scott Beiser and L. Neil Smith's "Roswell, Texas"

Scott Beiser and L. Neil Smith's Roswell, Texas is now online, serialized in webcomic fashion. I believe that my dear, recently deceased friend Chris Tame has a cameo somewhere in the comic's future.

"John Cleese's Wine for the Confused" (2004)

One of the pleasures of having a Netflix subsription is being able to add oddball titles to my queue, click-and-forget, and receive it later as a "surprise." One such title is a short wine documentary, "John Cleese's Wine for the Confused":

Wine snobs, beware: Monty Python's witty John Cleese aims to educate the masses with this enlightening, snoot-free wine guide. Cleese guides wine novices through the basics -- finding wines you like, getting the best value, and serving and storing wine at home. His vintner's tour includes lessons in wine vocabulary and identifying subtle flavors. Not a fan of snobbery in the least, Cleese also reveals how to cork up condescending sommeliers.

Unlike a commentator in the IMDB entry, I'm not surprised Cleese would do such a documentary: in the early 90's, working for a company in London, I found the tedium of mandatory training videos greatly lessened with Cleese as presenter. He has an impressive resume of this type of stuff.

"Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side to Everything"

I recently did some driving through Nevada and California, working remotely from a number of hotels. I loaded up my iPod (which I connect to a Pioneer black box installed behind the dash, itself interfaced with the sound system's head unit) with music, podcasts, and audio books (almost all of it purchased on iTunes,) including an unabridged copy of:

"Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side to Everything," by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

I thoroughly enjoyed the 6 hours of sometimes humorous, often surprising and counterintuitive anecdote. I highly recommend it: I do enjoy economic storytelling, from Braudel to Postrel to Friedman Jr. and now these guys.

Anyone else encountered this book or its audio equivalent?

I will add the qualification here that the work does gloss over the correlation between concealed carry laws and violent crime, primarily since the authors took John R. Lott as the authority on the matter... which is a double shame, since there's much there to explore, and since Lott seems to have screwed the pooch with respect to the issue of academic integrity.

Curt Howland has pointed me to a relevant blog entry hosted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Sci Fi Channel to air Firefly episodes

The Sci Fi Channel will be airing all episodes of Firefly starting 22 July 2005.

"Guns for Tots" segment being re-aired tonight at 4pm PST

Jim Lesczynski reports that "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on Comedy Central is repeating last night's new episode tonight at 4pm Pacific (7pm Eastern) time, with the 18 February 2003 segment in which he was featured, "Guns For Tots," spliced in.

"The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster"

This got slashdotted yesterday: Darth Vader's blog (or one of them.) My ribs hurt.

"Serenity" trailer now online!

Bruce Sommer informs me that Apple has released the online trailer for "Serenity," the film adaptation of Joss Whedon's tragically short-lived "Firefly" television series. It looks fantastic!

"Minarchy in the funnies"

Thanks to Anton Sherwood for pointing this out a few minutes ago on a mailing list:

In Sunday's "Beetle Bailey" strip (linked today by FFF), Pvt Plato writes a minarchist screed on walls, even supporting selfishness.

For non-American readers, Beetle Bailey is a very well known American icon, syndicated in newspapers for decades.

Interesting podcast on the Firefly phenom

Renny Manne has done an interesting podcast on the Firefly phenomenon.

Space tourism touted on the SuperBowl

Just saw this a few minutes ago on a SuperBowl TV commercial: Richard Branson & Volvo team up in a contest to give away a suborbital flight on Virgin Galactic.

Mark Quon's recent film recommendations

Mark Quon added an extensive set of recommendations to my post about "The Incredibles" yesterday; I'll be renting a few of those titles through Netflix myself.

Quote of the Day, or, what's wrong with this statement?

Computer, compute to the last digit the value of pi.

Spock
TOS, Wolf in the Fold

Guess I'll be seeing "The Incredibles" soon

The New York Times is pushing hard on campus to pick up new student subscriptions for the paper edition: for the last few weeks, they've been giving away free copies, many of which end up as seat blotters on rainy benches. I picked up a copy last Thursday, and glanced through a fascinating and typically snide review of the Disney/Pixar flick "The Incredibles" which opened this last weekend. One of the reviewer's complaints was that the film apparently expressed, under the veil of comedy, an unrepentent disdain for mediocrity. The reviewer speculated that Ayn Rand was a likely influence on the filmmakers. Intruiging!

This morning, the first thing my o-chem professor asked me in lab was, "Have you seen 'The Incredibles'?" He was raving about it. I guess I should check this film out. Anyone seen it yet?

Quote of the Day

The other way makers learn is from examples. For a painter, a museum is a reference library of techniques. For hundreds of years it has been part of the traditional education of painters to copy the works of the great masters, because copying forces you to look closely at the way a painting is made.

Writers do this too. Benjamin Franklin learned to write by summarizing the points in the essays of Addison and Steele and then trying to reproduce them. Raymond Chandler did the same thing with detective stories.

Hackers, likewise, can learn to program by looking at good programs-- not just at what they do, but the source code too. One of the less publicized benefits of the open-source movement is that it has made it easier to learn to program. When I learned to program, we had to rely mostly on examples in books. The one big chunk of code available then was Unix, but even this was not open source. Most of the people who read the source read it in illicit photocopies of John Lions' book, which though written in 1977 was not allowed to be published until 1996.

Paul Graham, in "Hackers and Painters"

"A Brief Monetary History of Gilligan's Island"

Thanks to David Purves for the pointer to an entertaining article published yesterday, "The Monetary Economics of Thurston Howell II (sic)," which I've discovered is also today the subject of intense discussion on Slashdot.

"Keep Your Jesus off My Penis"

"Keep Your Jesus off My Penis: The Video"... pretty funny stuff, from a guy with an obvious ax to grind.

Monica White's Firefly article in The Atlasphere

Monica White has really gotten the Firefly bug: today, her extended recommendation of the series, "The Ascendance of Firefly,' was published on the Objectivist culture site The Atlasphere. It's particularly interesting to see how a Joss Whedon fan site has reacted to Monica's just-release piece. See also Monica's short announcement of the piece on her own blog, and the interesting speed with which some Whedon fans have engaged her in some image-correcting commentary. I love the Web.

Was that me in that commercial?

I'm answering email just now, with a local Mandarin-language cable TV channel playing in the background (2 years of Mandarin in college, gotta keep it up... besides, I admit to a silly fascination with "Pawnshop No. 8"), when I see an advert for my dentist - a part-time semiretiree who's also a professor at a local dental college - and glanced a white guy with black hair leaning back in The Chair. What the hell? Wonder if that was me... don't remember consenting to filming. I did spend an inordinate number of visits recently getting my dentition reconstructed from the effects of "overlarge crown placement... aiyah!" from a few years ago.

This reminds me... every dentist I've ever had - American, English, Filipino, Persian, Japanese, Taiwanese - seems to have been drilled in The Dark Art of Attempting Dialogue With a Patient Pinned Helpless with Cheek Retractors.

About that "price gouging" thing in Florida

I often keep the Fox News Channel playing in the background while I work, and the last couple of days I've heard the occasional newstwit breathlessly report on incidents of "price gouging" during and after the recent hurricane there. I'd been wanting to comment on the idiocy of the whole "price gouging" thing, but have been knee-deep in work. Doug Allen, I think, has said what I wanted to say (thanks Patri) in 'The "G" Word."

Monica White on "Science Friction"

I really enjoy this woman's writing: "Science Friction," by Monica White.

Relatedly, Monica has informed me that she's working on an extended, adapted version of her Firefly review (of course she loves it too) for The Atlasphere, which I'll pass along when she tells me it's been published.

Quote of the Day

There have been posters for the movie up around LA for a few weeks now, saying "Alien vs. Predator: Whoever wins, we lose." Remarkably appropriate for an election year..

Ken Hagler

Quote of the Day

Roxanne,

How are things in Seattle? Quieter, I hope. I had a close call today, I tracked a goblin in on my shoe. Actually, to be precise, my boot, since I was luckily wearing my black leather western-style riding boots. At first, I thought it was a chunk of mud and hay from the pasture out back. Its arms and legs looked like twigs and were covered up by the real pieces of hay and grass and dead vegetation that had been captured by its evil stickiness. I didn't realize what it was until I had pried it off my boot with my Buck Knife. Something about the way it hit the carpet just wasn't right for a mud-clod. That attracted my scrutiny and allowed me to see past the camouflage, that and the smell. The goblins here don't smell very strong, unless they're in rut and mark at you, but even during the dry season they have a putrid wrenching metallic stench that isn't any more pleasant for being subtle.

It had obviously been a typically ugly little abomination, even before I accidentally smashed it with my boot: all head and spindly appendages, like a cross between Humpty-Dumpty and a daddy-longlegs, but with a gross parody of a human face with a gaping slash of a snaggle-toothed mouth across its belly and rank greasy black hair everywhere but the face. The head-body was about two inches in diameter and the arms and legs were around six to eight inches long. I don't doubt that the thing that had saved me from its toxic bite was the sterling silver decorations you sent me for my boots, the toe-tips and faux spurs, one of which still held a nasty little gobbet of goblin-stuff on its point. The eyes had burst under the pressure and still leaked rancid jelly onto my carpet. I was pretty sure it was really dead, since I'd never seen one reanimate with its eyes busted. Still, you can't be too careful, so I got out the tongs and brought it over to the fireplace receptacle and flash-burned it into grey ash and a puff of grey-green smoke that vanished up the vent. Then I popped a beer from the fridge and congratulated myself on a job well done. Thanks again for the silver
boot decorations.

Harley, down the road, has a suggestion for the Troll in your culvert out at the country place. He says the red-orangey ones with big green teeth, like you have, are resistant to the Black Flag Troll-Away and the Raid Trollacide, too, which would explain why those didn't work for you. He says the only way to get rid of this kind is to immobilize them with liquid nitrogen and throw them into a volcano, which would be very expensive. He also says you could wait until a really cold night, fifteen below or colder, and very carefully toss a loop of rope onto it while it's sluggish and just drag it twenty or thirty miles away and leave it by the culvert or bridge of some rich S. O. B. who could afford to have it frozen and transported to Hawaii. I assume you know this is illegal as well as dangerous. Until you figure out what to do about this, I guess you'll just have to keep using the back road into your place.

Your suggestion about the deal with the cookies has solved my brownie problem; I haven't seen a single one for over a month and the cows have been undisturbed. Now, if I could just figure out an easy way to clean the fairies off the windshield of my pickup...

Sincerely Yours,

Rocky Frisco
"Varmints"

Monica White's own "Firefly" recommendation

Monica White also recommends the Firefly series in her own article appropriately entitled, er, "Firefly" (scroll down, after the article entitled "Bugged.")

Claire Wolfe on Firefly: "Hardyville in Space"

Claire Wolfe recommends the Firefly series in this article, "Hardyville in Space."

Jack Vettriano at the Portland Gallery, London

A few days ago, Monica White pointed me in the direction of the Quent Cordair Fine Art gallery in my own neighborhood. Today, I find out about an exhibition in the neighboorhood of St. James Wood in London (which many years ago was my neighborhood too): Jack Vettriano, at the Portland Gallery. Sounds very interesting indeed... too bad I can't see it in person anytime soon. Of course, some of Vettriano's work seems like the type of thing that the Cordair Gallery might carry someday. Hmm....

My visit to the Quent Cordair Gallery on Saturday

About three weeks ago, I wrote that my friend Monica White had indirectly informed me (through her blogroll) of the existence of the Quent Cordair Fine Art Gallery in Burlingame, California, about a mile from San Francisco International Airport.

Well, on Saturday - on a whim - I suggested to Peggy that we head up to the gallery for the short remainder of the afternoon. We arrived about two hours before closing... and left about an hour after closing.

I'd called ahead to confirm that the gallery was, as indicated on their website, indeed open for the afternoon. When we arrived, a friendly lady greeted us and, upon hearing my voice, recognized me from my call-ahead. When I mentioned my name, she remarked that it sounded familiar, and that she'd actually - somehow - come across my blog recently and had even recommended that a friend of hers named "Carter" (whose contact I welcome) contact me about gun-related issues! I was happily astounded. I quickly found out that this friendly - and sharp - lady is Linda Zimmerman, the director of the gallery.

Linda spent the better part of three hours talking with me about the purpose of the gallery, the only one of its kind in the world, specializing strictly in high-quality painting and sculpture of the Romantic Realist variety (see Ayn Rand's "Romantic Manifesto" for an in-depth introduction to the genre.) I was deeply impressed at the operation, the selection, and the director. The storefront has had 8 years of profitable operation, but its recent years of online operation alone keep it sufficiently profitable that it can continue in business, without diluting its collection with low-quality pieces which would otherwise meet "school of art" requirements or with technically high-quality pieces which are outside those stated requirements.

The gallery itself has on display about one-third its total collection, the other two-thirds of which is in storage, but pieces of which can be viewed by the seriously interested. The walls are arrayed with paintings, as would be expected, and a number of bronzes are also on display. Linda encourages a healthy, tactile approach to the sculptures: touch them. At one point in our long, animated chat, she took my right hand and placed it on the hip of this statue, "Gratitude" by Danielle Anjou:

This is a lovely piece, and was strangely reminincent of the 1987 Boris Vallejo cover art for the Robert A. Heinlein novel "To Sail Beyond the Sunset," itself a triumphalist riff on Sandro Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus." I love it, probably as much as Monica White loves Bill Mack's alto-relief sculpture "Forever," which was not on display the day I visited... but which I hope Monica can eventually acquire.

Linda and I talked each other's ears off, happily, while Peggy enjoyed one of the overstuffed leather couches near the front of the gallery. We talked about the business of art, and the multifarious ways the gallery has connected Romantic Realist artists, including the recently immigrated Chinese master Han Wu Shen, with deeply appreciative customers, including passionate-but-temporarily-impecunious college students who've arranged payment plans for their "must have" pieces. We talked about a great many other things, with most of the conversation led by Linda cheerily educating me in the business of her gallery, and with me responding with semi-articulate "Wows!" and "Cool!"

I do plan to spend quite a bit more time in the gallery, and may even hold a party of friends there in the near future. Yes, I did say "party"... anyone interested? It would be a great excuse to gather a few dozen of my closest friends and acquaintances in a fantastic setting near the near San Francisco. This is a very real possibility, since Linda did say that the gallery encourages people to hold their parties there. I'm thinking sometime in September, when my good friend Tom Burroughes is in town visiting from London with his girlfriend: first a morning sailing on the Bay (Tom's a qualified yachtsman), then shooting at the range, then a catered affair that night - after cleaning up - at the Quent Cordair Fine Art gallery... sounds like good living to me.

Winchester '73 (1950)

Someone, some months ago, recommended to me that I rent and view the 1950 Jimmy Stewart western flick " Winchester '73." I did rent it, and watched it tonight, courtesy of Netflix. I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were a number of interesting surprises, not the least of which was a young Rock Hudson in a minor role, the plains Indian chief "Young Bull."

Ben Affleck on the Bill of Rights

I meant to publish this a couple of days ago, but since I've been busy with work and school, I simply made some quick notes on an index card, which I'm posting here now.

On Tuesday of this week, while wrapping up some work and getting ready to head out to my night class, I had the TV in the background tuned to the Fox News Channel, and was about to turn it off, since the segment that was starting to air was that of Bill O'Reilly, a rude, populist jerk whom I can't stand, broadcasting from the Democratic national convention in Boston. I decided to leave the tuner alone and watch a very short segment (1701-1710 Pacific time) of an impromptu, live interview with Ben Affleck, who was attending the convention.

Unscripted, Affleck actually acquitted himself well; he's not quite the empty shell the press makes him out to be. I was particularly interested to hear him make the following assertion, when questioned by O'Reilly about his political leanings, after calling himself a "moderate liberal" and emphasizing that he doesn't necessarily hew to a party line:

I believe in all the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment.

That's a direct quote from Ben Affleck, which I'm preserving here, without editorially correcting "all the" to read "all of the." I'm not sure why I'm preserving this, but it's not inconceivable that the guy might run for some public office eventually, as his career (continues to) wane.

"Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow"

As I mentioned earlier, I saw "I, Robot" last night. Right before the movie began, I saw a spectacular trailer for an alternate universe fantasy, "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," starring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Angelina Jolie. It looks like a great deal of fun, and I'm looking forward to its September release.

I mentioned this on a mailing list last night, adding that Zeppelins were featured prominently in the trailer, to which listmember Chris Claypoole offered this observation:

...[this phenomenon falls] under the purview of Hite's Law: "All change points, from Xerxes to the last presidential election, create worlds with clean, efficient Zeppelin traffic."

Every alternate history can be differentiated from our own by the presence of airships. *Every* one. So, if you're ever not sure whether you're in an alternate universe, look up.

A quick comment on "I, Robot"

I'd mentioned yesterday I'd be seeing this film, and I did. I also mentioned in a short comment followup that I'd seen a few old friends leaving the cinema, who confirmed my suspicions that the film was very loosely based on Asimov's work of the same name, so I went into the cinema not expecting a film realization of the original story.

There were tips of the hat all over the film to Asimov's original work, mostly in the naming of characters (Sonny, Dr. Susan Calvin) and in partial buzzword compliance (e.g. "positronic"), but as the credits honestly acknowledged, it's "based on a work of" Isaac Asimov. With that in mind, I determined to enjoy the film on its own merits, and was not disappointed. I was particularly impressed with Alan Tudyk's portrayal of Sonny (as an aside, I hope whatever name recognition this earns him - as a greenscreen actor - helps in the success of the forthcoming Firefly movie "Serenity".)

It's interesting to see that the movie treated Asimov's 3 Laws as sacrosanct, considering that Asimov himself later saw flaws in that approach to robot safety, working in a hack he called the "Zeroth Law." See this interesting commentary for a summary of the Laws... which might have prevented the disaster dramatized in the movie (that's the closest I'll come to a spoiler), or might not, given the rationalizations employed by the villain, which were the same as almost every tinpot dictator of the 20th century or before.

Here's a related amusement: the Singularity Institute apparently saw fit to ride the wave of the movie's popularity by launching a website called "3 Laws Unsafe".

If you can't run commercials

Watching "I, Robot" today, I noticed product placement for:

• Converse
  
• FedEx
  
• Audi
  
• JVC
  

Hope I don't regret this

I'll be seeing "I, Robot" later this afternoon, after hitting the gym... both to see Alan Tudyk playing a robot and to see how badly Asimov's original formulation gets mangled by Hollywood.

Quent Cordair Fine Art in Burlingame, California

Thanks to my London friend Monica White for alerting me to the Quent Cordair Fine Art gallery in Burlingame, California, a haven for (apparently very good) representionalist art, which is billed as "Contemporary Romantic Realism." I suspect very much that Quent Cordair was heavily influenced by Ayn Rand's "Romantic Manifesto":

Romantic Realism, the movement which renews the high esthetic standards and techniques of pre-20th century ateliers, brings a rebirth of comprehensibility, beauty, romanticism and stylization to contemporary subject matter. The gallery's collection emphasizes themes which celebrate the moments of happiness, joy and success possible to Man on earth.

ANARQUÍA: An Alternate History of the Spanish Civil War

Anders Monsen informs us of the publication by Brad Linaweaver and J. Kent Hastings of "ANARQUÍA: An Alternate History of the Spanish Civil War," which sounds like a great deal of fun in the vein of L. Neil Smith's "The Probability Broach." I'm a fan of Linaweaver's work, such as his excellent "Moon of Ice," which comes to market far too rarely.

Quote of the Day

If money becomes more important than making good art for you, you will become a hack. But money attaches you on the audience or the reader. It forces deadlines out of you. It makes you focus. It forces you to edit, to rewrite, to start over. And above all, to make choices. When there's no money, then there's the deadly freedom that kills all artists. You should fear it, because it will make you indulgent and self-obsessed, and above all, boring. It will drive you to write that 1,200-page novel entirely from the point of view of an ant just about to get eaten. It will make you a performance artist. Who wants that?

Paul Bibeau

Michael Badnarik on the O'Reilly Show tonight

Eric Pavao reports that Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik of Austin, Texas will be interviewed by Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly tonight.

Quote of the Day

Abolishing the FCC does not mean airwave anarchy. What it means is returning to bottom-up law rather than the top-down process that has characterized telecommunications for the last 80 years...

...If the FCC had been in charge of overseeing the Internet, we'd likely be waiting for the Mosaic Web browser to receive preliminary approval from the Wireline Competition Bureau.

Declan McCullagh (cited by Anton)

Quote of the Day

I refuse to allow anyone or anything to bring me to my knees. If there is a god I will find a way to free myself of him.

The best mythology I have ever heard on gods is from the Klingons of Star Trek. The Klingons had gods, but they killed them when they realized that they were more trouble than they were worth.

Philip Welch (on Orkut)

Where is John Galt Boulevard?

Huh... Peggy just got physical mail advertising the products of:

Omaha Steaks, Inc.
10909 John Galt Blvd.
Omaha, Nebraska

"Once Upon a Time in Mexico": a stinker

Another Netflix arrival I viewed in the last couple of weeks: "Once Upon a Time in Mexico." My short take: don't bother. Yes, this movie has its moments, but those moments are remarkable in their contrast to the dull rolling cliche of the rest of this overlong "contractual obligation" flick. What a waste of the lovely Selma Hayek, the talented Willem Dafoe, the sometimes interesting Mickey Rourke, and the solid Rubén Blades. The only saving grace to this movie is the over-the-top performance by Johnny Depp, who rendered Banderas' bland performance even less memorable by comparison.

My friend Geoff and I - in a rambling Memorial Day barbeque chat about this film - both expressed our annoyance that Banderas (a Spaniard) literally wrapped himself in the Mexican flag. As I said, don't bother.

On a totally unrelated note, I see that one of the bit actors is named "Dagoberto Gama." I've never seen that given name... I can't help but think Dogbert.

"Ninjas" on Discovery Channel tonight

Just heard on our dojo mailing list that Discovery Channel will air "Ninjas" tonight twice, at 1800 and 2100 PST. I've heard Stephen Hayes will put in an appearance. I have no idea whether this show will suck or not, but I'll be recording it regardless.

C-SPAN archive coverage of the Libertarian Party national convention

I found out from posters to the smith2004-discuss list this morning that C-SPAN keeps video archives of recent shows available for downloading. A search for "libertarian" on their website yields all the video coverage of the recent Libertarian Party nominating convention in Atlanta along with a follow-up interview (which I'm playing now) with the newly nominated presidential candidate Michael Badnarik.

Interstate 60 (2002)

Here's a film I heard about on the smith2004-discuss list a few months ago and placed on my Netflix rental queue: Interstate 60, a bizarre road flick with Gary Oldman, Christopher Lloyd, Kurt Russell and Chris Cooper. No one I've spoken to about this film has heard of it, which is too bad: it's great. I won't give a comprehensive review here, and no spoilers, but I will say I hurt myself laughing during the protagonist's stopover in "Morlaw".

Imagine PBS and NPR with police powers

I remember the odious BBC television licensing fee from my days in London long ago, but had thought the fee had been repealed. Not so, reports UK-resident Australian Monica White:

For those of you who don’t live in the UK, you may be interested in the phenomenon that is the TV License – I was truly surprised by it a year ago. Essentially, if you have a TV or receiving equipment, you are obliged to pay the government £121 per year to view the BBC channels.

Don’t watch the BBC? I’m afraid that TV Licensing doesn’t believe you. EVERYONE who owns an operational set must watch the BBC. They're compelled to. There’s something in the water.

TV Licensing ‘Enquiry Officers’ also seem to get a hoot out of slapping £1000 fines onto anyone within spitting distance.

"We do get to take one home with us, right?"

My friend Peter Chang called a few minutes ago to let me know he was getting ready for a 100-mile bike ride/race in Tahoe in a few weeks, and mentioned along the way that he'd been asked to play the male of an Asian couple in a Jaguar television commercial. Here are pics from the recent filming; his "wife" Lily Chai is certainly a lovely woman!

"Devils Hit Cyber Church"

Kevin Cole on Orkut passes along this bit of only-in-the-new-world news: "Devils Hit Cyber Church".

"Would you like a bag and board with that?"

If you're used to hearing the question, "Would you like a bag and board with that?" every other week or so, what habit do you have?

Hellsing or Van Helsing? Gabriel or Abraham?

L. Neil Smith, on a mailing list this morning, mentioned he'll be watching "Van Helsing" soon at the cinema. I'm not yet seen it, and was surprised to have heard about it when the trailers hit the cinemas and TV: I was familiar with the Japanese animation series "Hellsing" (note the spelling), in which the daughter of Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (correctly giving homage to Stoker), and present head of the "Hellsing Foundation", creates an uneasy vampire hunting alliance with the semi-psychotic vampire Alucard (note the spelling, but backwards), for whom Hugh Jackman, in the movie "Van Helsing" is the (slightly effeminate) spitting image, but as the amnesiac "Gabriel Van Helsing".

All very confusing.

I'm not sure whether this is a licenced, retooled-for-American-audiences live action adaption of the Japanese original, or yet another blatant slightly altered ripoff a la "The Lion King", Disney's theft of "Kimba the White Lion" ("Jangaru taitei", or "Jungle Emperor".)

All this having been said, I'm certainly open to enjoying "Van Helsing", if it's good... regardless of provenance or inspiration.

There's a nasty little story behind Géricault's "The Raft of the `Medusa'"

I mentioned to Andy Chen this morning, when I saw him in front of our cancelled chemistry lecture, that I'd actually seen Géricault's The Raft of the `Medusa' on a visit to the Louvre in 1990. Hell, you can't miss it: it's gargantuan. Andy had mentioned yesterday on his blog that his biology teacher had discussed the work in class as a lead-in to a discussion of the urinary tract.

I'd read a bit of the sordid backstory of the tragedy of the Medusa, but never in depth. I just found a fascinating and tragicomic account of the wicked mess of blundering incompetence that inspired this monsterpiece of Romantic painting, an article on History House:

In 1819, when French painter Theodore Ge'ricault first exhibited his dramatic masterpiece, "Scene of Shipwreck" to Paris society, he could little imagine the reaction the painting would receive. Onlookers were fascinated and horrified, rather the way they'd react if they saw a particularly large and hairy spider. The painting is enormous. Sixteen feet high, twenty three feet, six inches wide (about 5x7 m), it depicts a group of desperate men floating on a few planks of wood, trying to get the attention of a tiny little ship on the horizon by waving their shirts around. There was a sordid, true tale behind this raft, and everyone knew what it was. It had taken place three years prior. It involved desperate men, howling stupidity, and cannibalism. And, with the painting looming over them, everyone was talking about it.

Tom Burroughes recommends the Firefly series

[Occasional blog contributor and fulltime friend Tom Burroughes returns to us with his own endorsement of the Firefly series - Russell]

I have watched a lot of science fiction in my time, and although many films and television shows have hit great heights of drama and special effects wizardry, such as Babylon 5, very few have ever really engaged me emotionally and in humorous ways to the extent achieved by the Firefly series, now available in Britain on a DVD format.

I bought the whole set last week and it is one of the best investments I have made in a long time. I think it is a notch above B5 (high praise indeed), and I love the way it weaves in the culture of the old West with the format of a science fiction adventure. The cast are excellent, particularly the lead actor playing the ship's captain, who has a sense of humour so dry it sounds like Clint Eastwood at his best. The women are great -- frequently more than a match for the men, and ahem, very easy on the eye indeed.

The core of Firefly, as Russell has already noted, is its unmistakably libertarian sense. These adventurers, smugglers and desperadoes are up against a totalitarian world government; they are unabashed traders and entrepreneurs, fun-lovers, individualists, not to mention serious partygoers when required. Think of a series containing elements of Robert A. Heinlein, L. Neil Smith and Eastwood's finest Western, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and you will get what I mean. Oh, and throw in some superb country backing music for good measure.

I find it very distressing that as yet, Joss Whedon's creation has only made it to one full series. Back here in Britain, where our domestic TV drama is a swamp of tragic soap opera crud and the occasional historical re-reun, Firefly is like a shot of brandy to a half-drowned man. What a great series. More, more!

Penn & Teller BULLSHIT! new episode tonight

Penn & Teller are back for another season of the excellent BULLSHIT! debunking series on Showtime. Set your PVRs: there's an episode tonight.

Lou Dobbs: CNN's own nasty little populist

One of my regular gym workout times coincides with the CNN news show "Lou Dobbs Tonight", which is usually playing on one of the overhead TVs in the aerobics machine areas where I warm up. The show is broadcast with closed captioning, so I can usually follow it if I care. Last night's show, apparently, was a continuation on the "Exporting America" theme that Dobbs seems to be so passionate about. One of the guests was Walter Wriston, chairman emeritus of Citibank (which they acknowledged), but who is also in my recollection the author of "The Twilight of Sovereignty: How the Information Revolution Is Transforming Our World".

Wriston was giving Dobbs a run for his money, effectively skewering Dobbs' anti-offshoring populist arguments ("American jobs are being shipped offshore! This is bad!"), pointing out that the principle of comparative advantage is as true now as it was in the 19th century (see Ricardo). After the segment with Wriston, Dobbs had a roundtable of business journalists, including Steve Forbes, with whom he was particularly nasty. He really has a hard-on about "shipping jobs overseas". In a weird sort of way, he seems the lefty mirror-image of Bill O'Reilly, the nasty little populist of the religious right on Fox News. Both of them seem to be shilling for each of the major Boot On Your Neck political parties.

I know the offshoring issue is a hot button issue with Dobbs, because a week or so ago I saw him try to skewer Marc Andreesen on the same issue. Marc also acquitted himself well. Dobbs hates that.

Almond-shaped Natalie Portman?

Bad habit, I know, but I often have TV playing in the background as I study. Tonight's white noise is the execrable Lucasian fantasy "Star Wars: Episode II", which I saw first-run to give homage to Yoda (who rocks!). After something my girlfriend told me a couple of weeks ago, I can't help but think "Queen Amygdala" when I hear "Amidala".

Of course, the Lincolnian "Grand Army of the Republic" irony is not lost on me, the only other reason (besides Yoda!) for catching the flick. Why, oh why with Lucas' budget - and Ewan McGregor - did the acting suck ass in this flick?

"Century City" cancelled after 3 weeks / 4 episodes

Just found out today that CBS has cancelled their law drama "Century City" after only 3 weeks' run of 4 episodes. That's too bad. The show, employing a mix of inspired and insipid storyline, dealt with issues extropians have been mooting for over 15 years. The show had promise, if the two episodes I saw were any indication of promise. I do share Virginia Postrel's opinion of the series:

Real lawyers in the future would take for granted legal, cultural, and technological developments that strike us as strange. It's the background, not the cutting-edge issues, that makes the present feel different from the past. A 1978 show about 2004 might have featured a plotline on cloning. It wouldn't have routinely shown 40-year-old new parents of twins or business people walking down the street talking to no one, with wires hanging out of their ears. It wouldn't have Starbucks, or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, or rock-and-roll megachurches.

It was an interesting try.

Firefly DVD Series Officially Issued To All U.S. Navy Ships

Terry Egan passes on the stunning news, written up by Ricky James, that the Firefly DVD series has been officially issued to the viewing libraries of all U.S. Navy ships.

Navy Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) recently signed a commercial sponsorship agreement with FireflyFans.net, a fan-based organization for the television series "Firefly," that will provide 250 DVD box sets of 13 "Firefly" episodes in support of the Navy's afloat library program.

"I can't believe I spent $10 on that!"

I've noticed a changed pattern in my movie viewing habits, attributable to having taken up with Netflix in the last year or so. For starters, I no longer do Blockbuster (which is not at all surprising, given they're head-to-head competitors). Also, I see fewer 1st-run movies, itself also not surprising.

No, what surprises me is that I no longer feel compelled to finish a movie I've started, if it truly sucks. I've rarely in the course of my lifetime walked out of a movie theater, feeling compelled (against reason, usually) that I should get "all the value" from my $10 admission price. Nowadays, most of my movie viewing is from Netflix, on a fixed monthly all-you-can-view plan, so if something I've ordered sucks, such as Daredevil, I can simply switch off the DVD player, eject the DVD, and move on to the next. Quite liberating.

Short note about last night's MicroMiniShindig

Last night's Firefly MicroMiniShindig was a more intimate gathering than the previous one in January, with 13 attending. We got a late start on the TV viewing part of the night, since I'd forgotten the DVD player's remote, so I ran home nearby to pick it up. Of course, that gave the rest time to enjoy the excellent food (the elkburger was a popular pick last night) and chat before my return. We had exactly the right amount of time to air "The Train Job" and "Bushwhacked", finishing just as the Tied House was being closed.

Unfortunately, in all my rushing around doing hostly things, I didn't get around to taking any photos for posting here. Maybe next time... if there is a next time. My original reasons for hosting these types of events included spreading freedom memes so nicely packaged in the series, as well as doing my little bit to increase the possibility that the series might get picked up again by a television network. Well, in the interval since the previous MicroMiniShindig, something like the latter has indeed happened: the Firefly movie has recently been greenlighted. So, we've won, at least to that extent. If I do hold one of these things again, it will only be as the result of at least 30 people agreeing to actually appear at a particular time and place. If you're one of those interested people, let me know, otherwise this Shindig thing is happy history.

If you're interested in this series, I strongly recommend you buy the 4-DVD box set and watch it for yourself.

Reminder: Firefly MicroMiniShindig tonight in Mt. View, California

Reminder: Firefly MicroMiniShindig tonight in Mt. View, California. RSVP if you'll be attending (if you haven't already done that).

31 March 2003: 2nd Silicon Valley / San Francisco Bay Area Firefly MicroMiniShindig

Following on the success of the 1st San Francisco Bay Area / Silicon Valley MicroMiniShindig which was held in January of this year, the 2nd will be held in the same venue:

Day: Wednesday 31 March 2004
Time: From 8pm onward

Place:
Mountain View Tied House Cafe & Brewery
(in the big biergarten out back)
954 Villa Street, Mountain View, California 94041
Ph: (650) 965-2739

The first MicroMiniShindig attracted around 30 people, and was great fun; see pics and a short account in an earlier account on this blog here.

I've reserved a section of the same beergarden for 30 people, but if we have more this time (and I suspect we will), I'll need to plan accordingly. Leave comments on this blog entry with your RSVP if you're planning to attend.

As was the case last time, I have reserved the use of the TV in the beergarden (which I'm assured will function properly), and we'll be airing the 2nd and 3rd episodes of Firefly (we watched the pilot "Serenity" last time). This airing will start at 8:30pm, after some of us are at least a bit liquored up.

Alan Weiss, AKA "WINBEAR2" on the Prospero Firefly Forum, will be in town again, visiting from Austin, Texas.

Looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones!

Remember that scene from "Real Genius"?

I took this shot two hours ago. These are the digital and tape audio recorders of a number of students in our chemistry lecture section:

Look familiar? Anyone else remember that running sight gag from the 1985 Val Kilmer flick "Real Genius"? As one writer describes the scene (yay Google, saved a bit of typing on my part):

Do you remember the scene in the movie "Real Genius" that showed students at the beginning of a university semester sitting in a large lecture room listening to the professor? As the semester wore on, one-by-one each student left a tape recorder on their seat. The scene ended with the professor's recorder pontificating to a room full of other recorders.

I found a screenshot of that scene, which looks amazingly like our chem lecture hall, down to the same phenolic resin desktop:

Whoa. Life converges on art. Fortunately, ours is a very dynamic professor... most of the students are simply trying to capture his superb lectures for replay later. As a matter of fact, on most days the professor records his own lectures with studio-quality equipment for posting on his personal website. If only more of the good ones did that, we'd have more "Feynman Lectures on Physics" preserved for posterity.

Millenium Actress / Sennen joyu (2001)

Another excellent flick to add to your Netflix rental queue: Millenium Actress AKA "Sennen joyu" (2001). If you enjoy epic Japanese animation such as Spirited Away (Studio Ghibli's "Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi"), and film in the style of Kurosawa-style chanbara, you'll really enjoy this labor of love from Satoshi Kon, the director of the 1997 psychological thriller Perfect Blue.

Of course, I do have a lot of Japanese cinema and history under my belt, which I think might be a requisite to truly enjoying this piece, which does very heavily rely for its humor and grandeur on that cultural grounding. Still, I think even the uninitiated can thoroughly enjoy this film for its spectacular sweep and touchingly benevolent sense of life. As a reviewer on one fan site puts it:

Millennium Actress has the stylistic sophistication of Perfect Blue with the empathy, warmth and truth of a Ghibli movie!

If this film had been done with live actors & live action you'd be seeing it awarded on Oscar night. It's that good. The editing is superb. Likewise the animation. As for the "confusing" flashbacks, my daughters (8 & 9) watched this and after explaining that the old actress is telling her life story by using the films she starred in as parts of her actual life, they had no problem following the story. I didn't find the story to be depressing although it is bittersweet. The characters are so strongly drawn that halfway through I found myself forgetting they weren't real people! Strong, gentle story, superb visuals, pacing & editing make up one of the best anime movies ever! In fact, forget anime, this belongs in the top 100 films period.

It's official: Firefly movie is set to go!

Thousands of fans have been agitating for the return of the Firefly television science fiction series, and it is returning... to the silver screen, as Joss Whedon's "Serenity"! All the original ensemble cast have signed contracts to star, and shooting starts in June. Woo hoo!

Still hot after all these years

I have the TV playing in the background in "white noise" mode while I'm working. Just now, that populist windbag Bill O'Reilly had on as a guest an actress on whom I had a crush in my pre-teens (late 70's): Adrienne Barbeau. She's pushing 60, and she still looks hot. Genetics, money, and healthy living, I suppose. I've been happy in the last couple of years to see that Farrah Fawcett and Bo Derek are also still American Foxes. Yes, when I was 11 I had one of those "Farah swimsuit" posters.

"I'm a physician, not an engineer"

The writers of the new "Star Trek: Enterprise" just couldn't resist reprising that old Bones TOS line with a tiny variation in last night's episode. The ship's doctor, a guy named Phlox, slipped in the line "I'm a physician, not an engineer!" in dialogue with T'Pol... in a situation where he did indeed find himself in the emergency role of a substitute engineer.

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry...

Another Firefly recommendation

Anorakish mentions a review of Firefly by Micha Ghertner on Cattalarchy, "Whoa. Good Myth." (See my own review on this blog.)

"What Tolkien Officially Said About Elf Sex"

My friend Anton Sherwood posted a link to this cute little quasischolarly piece, "What Tolkien Officially Said About Elf Sex"; an excerpt:

Happy Begetting-Day To You!

Elves do not remember and celebrate the day that they were born as the day they came into existence. Instead, they celebrate the day their parents begat them. That's the day their parents had the sex that conceived them... apparently, there was some parental will involved in the act of begetting. Either that, or they were having so little sex that it was easy to remember. "Pregnant? How did that happen? Oh, that Thursday three turns of the seasons ago. Oh yeah…" This seems like a good moment to mention that Tolkien was Catholic, so this was compatible with his religion and belief system.

Deterrence, with Kevin Pollack

A few days ago, I watched a Netflix-rental DVD of a film from 1999 that had been recommended by someone on a mailing list I frequent: Deterrence, with Kevin Pollack. This is a fascinating and tightly acted piece, and I recommend it.

Kitano Takeshi starring in new Zatoichi film!

Garth Lynch just posted a note to our dojo mailing list mentioning that the great Kitano Takeshi, one of my favorite actors, is starring in a new movie adapation reprising the character of Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman (originally played by Katsu Shintaro), one of my all-time favorite chanbara movie series. The trailer for the new film looks great!

Quote of the Day

Even when you're dead, the chains don't come off. That's why I'm so fond of the indie/DIY/Open Source movement, in all its low budget, cacaphonous, disorganized, multifaceted glory. Local band I used to do management/booking/road work for, years back, spent far too much time trying to get label attention. If we'd just put the stuff out ourselves, we'd have saved a lot of hassle and time, and probably made more money than we'd have ever squeezed out of any label. Still kicking myself over that, especially now that the production and distribution tools are so damn easy to get and use.

Most [music] labels are a honeytrap, only without the hot sex from a Russian spy chick. Just the unlubed prisonsex.

Joe Crow, on the smith2004-discuss list today

As promised, the rest of the pics I made at last night's Firefly Shindig

I have one more entry to write after this one, an actual writeup of my impressions of the event, but as promised earlier today, I'm putting up the rest of the (useable) pics from my tiny Sony CyberShotU digicam, after a bit of cropping, enhancement, and redeye reduction:

In the foreground are Alan Weiss ("WINBEAR2" on the Fox Firefly Forum) and a nice lady whose name I've forgotten (apologies!) Alan is a libertarian friend of mine from the smith2004-discuss list, visiting from Austin for the week on business, and the mystery lady is a Democrat activist... proof that disparate fans can booze together and have fun! Old friend Dr. Kurth Reynolds ("yes, I actually am a rocket scientist!") is lurking in the background over her shoulder.

Kim ("EARTH2KIM" on the Fox Firefly Forum), me, and Jeff Chan. Kim, like me, is an enthusiastic newbie. Here she's holding up a Firefly "Keep Flying!" patch.

Have you ever been introduced to someone but can't recall their name, through no lack of interest, but simply because you're the host and you're tasked with remembering everyone's name? Well, I'll admit with embarrassment that I didn't get this lady's name... but I put up her picture anyway. I'm assuming I'll see her next time!

[UPDATE: I mixed this lady's name up with the lady in the first picture. This is Patti Henkhaus from the "firefly_over_30" Yahoo! Groups list; sorry about that Patti!]

Kim, again with "Keep Flying!" patch and Jeff Chan.

Longtime extropian friends Kennita Watson and Terry Egan, and recently-acquired-2nd-Amendment-purist-buddy Mark Quon (aka "Genghis Khan") out in the parking lot after the beerhall shut down. Can you see it in the guys' faces?

Me (Russell Whitaker) on the left, Alan ('WINBEAR2' on the Fox Firefly Forum) Weiss on the right... before he remembered to smile!!

Belaboring the already-known, it's me again, with Mark and Jeff. This is not a vanity blog. Really.

This was a great little event and, as I mentioned, I'll be writing some general impressions of it in the next 24 hours or so. I did want to get the pics out there first, of course, so here they are. Enjoy.

The first of a number of photos from last night's Shindig

I have about half a dozen or so photos I took at last night's Firefly MicroMiniShindig. I have to identify some people and get some people's permissions to post before I put them all up. Here's one for starters, though:

From left to right: Kim ("EARTH2KIM" on the Prospero Firefly Forum), me, and Mark Quon ("Genghis Khan").

Movie adaptation of "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" in the works

Thanks to Anarchist on the smith2004-discuss list for passing on SciFi.com's report today that Tim Minear is working on a screen adaptation of Heinlein's libertarian classic novel:

Genre TV producer Tim Minear (Angel, Wonderfalls) told SCI FI Wire that he has been hired to write a screenplay adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's 1966 SF novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. The novel deals with a 2076 rebellion on a former penal colony on the moon and has been read as an allegory about libertarianism and its costs.

Great time had at last night's Firefly MicroMiniShindig

We had about 25 people at last night's Firefly MicroMiniShindig in Mt. View, California, and a great time was had by all. I'll be posting some pictures later.

Quote of the Day

The pattern of information embodied in a fictional movie is created, not discovered: the producers didn't stroll into the Mojave one day and find a set of characters ready to be filmed.

Anton Sherwood (on intellectual property)

Reminder: 1st Silicon Valley Firefly MicroMiniShindig tonight in Mt. View CA

The 1st Silicon Valley Firefly MicroMiniShindig will be held tonight in Mt. View California, and looks to be great little gathering of friends old and new. If you're planning to come but haven't told me yet, traverse the links to the RSVP instructions to tell me privately, or you can do so publicly as a comment on this blog entry.

Firefly "Wild Posting" Marketing

"11THHOUR" on the Fox Firefly Forum has put together some samples of really cool posters for "guerrilla marketing" of the Firefly series DVDs. I wouldn't mind putting up a few of these on campus myself.

The first San Francisco Bay Area / Silicon Valley Firefly MicroMiniShindig

If you want to get something done, you've got to do it yourself. To that end, I've taken it upon myself to hold the first San Francisco Bay Area / Silicon Valley Firefly MicroMiniShindig next Monday night in Mountain View, California. Details:

Day: Monday 19 January 2004
Time: From 8pm onward

Place:
Mountain View Tied House Cafe & Brewery
(in the big biergarten out back)
954 Villa Street, Mountain View, California 94041
Ph: (650) 965-2739

Other details can be found here. If you're attending, you should RSVP. If you're wondering what all this Firefly business is, read up on it here.

FireFlyMovie.com: Guerrilla Marketing

FireFlyMovie.com is a "Guerrilla Marketing" effort of the Firefly fan community...

...dedicated to assuring that Joss Whedon's television masterpiece Firefly will someday grace the silver screen.

Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001)

At lunch a couple of weeks ago Michael Reed asked me if I'd seen "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie". I responded that I used to watch the series when I lived in Tokyo, and enjoyed it, but I hadn't yet seen the movie. I watched it last night courtesy of Netflix and thoroughly enjoyed it: good story, great animation, lots of attention to detail (Faye Valentine carries a Glock 30 - an old favorite of mine - in one scene), and a fantastic musical soundtrack by Yoko Kanno, performed by the Seatbelts.

As usual, I watched this anime subtitled with the original voice talent: voice acting is an A-rated entertainment profession in Japan; Faye Valentine is not right to my ears without