Author Archives: wellsdc

You won’t be summering on Gliese 581g any time soon, so don’t get too excited

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Artist's conception of the Gliese 581 system by Lynette Cook, via NASA

Artist's conception of the Gliese 581 system by Lynette Cook, via NASA

Digital Journal ran a slightly hyperbolic headline this morning, “Habitable planets like Earth ‘now in the billions'”:

An international team of astronomers have discovered “billions of planets” not much bigger than Earth and have the potential to sustain life, BBC News reports.
Planets like Earth are circling the faint stars in the Milky Way according to the new research. The estimate for the number of so called “Super-Earths” are based on detections of the number of red-dwarf stars in the Galaxy.

Harps employs an indirect method of detection that infers the existence of orbiting planets from the way their gravity makes a parent star appear to twitch in its motion across the sky.

The team’s leader Xavier Bonfils from the Observatoire des Sciences de l’Univers de Grenoble, France said:

“Our new observations with Harps mean that about 40% of all red dwarf stars have a super-Earth orbiting in the habitable zone where liquid water can exist on the surface of the planet.

“Because red dwarfs are so common – there are about 160 billion of them in the Milky Way – this leads us to the astonishing result that there are tens of billions of these planets in our galaxy alone.”

The only reason this isn’t quite as exciting as it sounded to my un-scientifically-trained ear at first is because “discovered” doesn’t necessarily mean “directly identified.” I think most people know that, but the way it’s phrased makes it sound much more earth-shattering (pun sort of intended) than it is. Based on the findings made so far, it seems safe to extrapolate, but it’s not like the researchers will be publishing a billion-entry guidebook to the planets of the Milky Way. It almost seems like the headline and lead-in to this story were specifically designed to disappoint laypeople.

The team investigated a total of 102 of carefully chosen red dwarfs, which are stars that are dimmer and cooler than our sun.

The team found nine super-earths, which are planets with mass one to ten times the size of Earth, with two of these planets being inside the habitable zone of their stars.

So we’ve gone from “billions” to nine, with two in the “Goldilocks zone.” And about that whole “habitable” thing…

Liquid water is deemed a necessity for life to develop on potentially habitable planets.

“The habitable zone around a red dwarf, where the temperature is suitable for liquid water to exist on the surface, is much closer to the star than the Earth is to the Sun,” commented co-researcher Stephane Udry from the Geneva Observatory.

“But red dwarfs are known to be subject to stellar eruptions or flares, which may bathe the planet in X-rays or ultraviolet radiation, and which may make life there less likely.”

Rachel Nichols as Gaila in "Star Trek," from Historyguy.com [Fair use]We know there is life on earth that can exist without liquid water, or even oxygen. It’s kind of a leap to assume that all life needs liquid water, although every mechanism of evolution that we know of required liquid water at some point. It also doesn’t help that no one has ever come up with a clear, concise definition of “life” in a biological sense (cf. viruses). Alien life is highly unlikely to be anywhere near our level of technological advancement, and is most likely to be microbial. Aliens certainly won’t look anything like Rachel Nichols. Won’t that be a disappointment?

Getting back to the number of planets, keep in mind that this is only about the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of at least a hundred billion galaxies in the known universe. That’s potentially (I think this is the scientific term) a shitload of planets. Unless we come up with some kind of wormhole or super-warp technology, though, we’ll never know very much about planets in other galaxies.

So this is exciting news. Just don’t get too carried away with it.

On the other hand, we could just send James Cameron to look for other planets. That guy goes everywhere.

Photo credits: Artist’s conception of the Gliese 581 system by Lynette Cook, via NASA; Rachel Nichols as Gaila in “Star Trek,” from Historyguy.com [Fair use]

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Winter is coming again

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(SPOILERS MAY ABOUND WITHIN)

To say I am excited about “Game of Thrones” season 2 would not do justice to the concept of excitement. Even words like “stoked” don’t truly convey the feeling. Of course, the stokedness is mixed with any fans apprehension that adapting such a huge novel to a TV screen will invariably screw it up somehow, but consider this: I had misgivings about season 1 when it started, and now I don’t remember what they were. That is either because (a) I did not blog about them at the time and so therefore they were not retained in my mind, or (b) any misgivings were overshadowed by how great the show turned out to be. I prefer option (b).

Season 2 will be largely based on the second book of the series, A Clash of Kings, although I fully expect that the show’s story arc will delve into other volumes now and then, as it did in season 1. HBO has put out a couple of shorts that introduce some of the new characters and showcase the new settings.

Fans of the books might notice that they seem to be giving much more prominent roles to Margaery Tyrell and Qhorin Halfhand. I’m all for that. Qhorin is a great character, and I have always been curious about Margaery (no spoilers, but she goes through a lot of crap.) My only complaint regarding her is that they put the accent on the first syllable of the Tyrell name, which means I have been mispronouncing it for years (the same was true for both “Daenerys” and “Targaryen,” though. I’m just glad I know now.)

Brienne of Tarth, from dear-westeros.tumblr.com

Gwendoline Christie as Brienne of Tarth

Now then, here’s the burning question: Brienne of Tarth, where the hell is she??? She may come closest to being the moral center of this part of the story, and they don’t even see fit to introduce her? Think about it: through the first four books, she is instrumental in turning one bad character (Jaime Lannister) sort of good, and in showcasing how one good character (Catelyn Stark) has turned bad, sort of. She’s also one of the most interesting characters overall–in a universe full of people who have lost all control over their own destinies, she is one of the few who dares to try to be who she really is. It almost never works out for her, of course, but the scorn and ridicule that nearly all of Westeros puts on her just makes her that much more heroic. She deserves to be prominently featured.

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Fun Word of the Day: Stonking

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'A Pint of Beer,' copyright Ian T and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons LicenceThe second I saw this word, I knew it had to be British. Sure enough, it is:

[“Stonking”] been popular slang in the UK for many years, and enjoyed a certain vogue there in the late 1980s and early 90s…The Brits, of course, are famous for their intriguing but opaque slang. No one, for example, has ever come up with a convincing explanation for either “boffin,” meaning “a technical researcher or expert,” or “bog standard,” the equivalent of our “standard issue.” Sometimes I suspect they’re doing it on purpose. Perfidious Albion, y’know.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines “stonking” as an adjective meaning “Excellent, amazing; considerable, powerful” (“The Kenwood receiver is …  stonking value for anyone wanting to take their first steps into home cinema,” 1993), and as an adverb (modifying an adjective) meaning “extremely, very” (“Snogging tackle for stonking wet smackers, warm and reassuring like a comfy settee,” 1993). (Please don’t ask me what that example means. As I said, they’re probably messing with our minds.) The noun “stonker,” which means something very large or impressive of its kind, first popped up in print in the late 1980s.

(h/t to Antonin Pribetic for bringing the word to my attention, and to Natasha Phillips for actually using it.)

This is one of those words that, if you say it with anything other than a spot-on British accent (preferably a London variant), particularly anything even hinting of a Texas drawl, you will just sound like a jackass.

For some reason, it reminds me of this joke that is only funny when said with a English accent with a hint of Cockney:

Bartender: How’s your beer?
Customer: It’s like making love in a canoe!
Bartender: What do you mean?
Customer: It’s fucking close to water!

I will add “stonking” to the list of words I can only say when I am portraying a pompous Englishman in an improv show.

Photo credit: ‘A Pint of Beer,’ copyright Ian T and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

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At this point, let’s call it an invasion

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Unwelcome guest

You are not welcome in my home

Seriously, what are these giant mosquito-looking bugs??? They are everywhere, not just in Austin, but apparently all over Texas. I can’t walk through my front door without a few coming in with me. They have turned my entire backyard into a breeding ground–if insects had their own pornography, my backyard is their Van Nuys.

A Google search for “giant mosquitoes in Austin” turned up nothing. I’m not even sure what to call them, since “giant mosquito-things” gets old after a while. According to Wikipedia, they might be crane flies, part of a very large family of insects that shares a suborder with mosquitoes.

Crane Fly Porn

If there is an equivalent sexual position for humans, I do not know what it is.

They are also quite fearless. Or just very stupid. As I sit at my desk trying to work, at least one lands on me every 20-30 minutes or so. I assume all the recent rain has brought them out in droves. I also know that they eat mosquito larvae. Or mosquitoes. Or something that we would prefer be eaten. In the winter absence of the bats, I welcome that. Just please, stay out of my house. And stop landing on my nose when I’m trying to go to sleep.

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I forgot a few very obvious “Hunger Games” influences, may the Great Geek God forgive me

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I am embarrassed to admit a few omissions from yesterday’s post about influences in The Hunger Games. In order to shore up my geek creds, let’s just go ahead and list them here and pretend this never happened, okay?

The SPOILER ALERT from the previous post remains in effect.

  • Running Man Theatrical Poster [Fair use claimed]“The Running Man” (movie): The 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie offers a disturbingly-prescient view of today’s reality TV lineup, with the only difference, really, being that no one actively tries to kill anyone on actual reality shows today (that we know of). Arnold, as a convicted (but innocent) criminal, doesn’t have much choice but to participate in “The Running Man,” in which he must escape various celebrity “stalkers,” portrayed by real-life sports celebrities like Jesse Ventura (wrestling is sort of a sport) and Jim Brown. If he wins, he gets all manner of fabulous prizes (or does he???) Much like The Hunger Games, the game takes place in a large arena with various resources scattered about. It has a smarmy host who seems kindly but is actually a monster (Richard Dawson, soon to be channeled by Stanley Tucci). The biggest difference is likely to be in the fact that “The Running Man” is very, very ’80s.
  • “The Running Man” (novella): Where the 1987 Arnold movie errs on the side of cheesiness, the 1982 Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) novella is dark. Dark to the point of being downright cynical. The Ben Richards character doesn’t enter the game because someone coerces him, but because he needs money and really has no other options. Instead of a game arena, the game is played out in the real world in a dystopian future U.S., and in addition to “hunters” tracking him, anyone else can bring him in or kill him. He wins money for every hour he stays alive, and if he can survive for 30 days, he wins the grand prize of $1 billion. Much like The Hunger Games, the “Games Network” is ubiquitous in society, and there is even a mention, after televisions become required in all households, of instituting a requirement that they always be on. In a strange foreshadowing of today’s YouTube culture, Richards must make a video recording of himself every day and mail it to the Games Network. This keeps the audience updated on his doings and, of course, allows the powers that be to track him. In a final bit of foreshadowing, easily the most troubling of all, Richards brings the Games Network down, literally, by crashing an airplane into the Games Building. The novella ends with “…and it rained fire twenty blocks away.”
  • “The Long Walk:” This is another Stephen King book written as Richard Bachman and first published in 1979. It is set in a dystopian alternate United States controlled by a military dictatorship of some sort. Young men volunteer to participate in the annual “Long Walk.” The prize for the last man standing is, essentially, everything. Winners supposedly receive whatever they want, which must be tempting in what is described as a desperately poor and subjugated society. Losers “buy a ticket,” a term whose meaning is not made clear at first (I’m getting to that). The “Walk” starts at the Maine/Canada border and proceeds south for as long as it takes. Walkers must maintain a pace of four miles per hour, monitored by trained soldiers accompanying them on half-tracks. If their pace drops below that, they receive a warning. If they walk for an hour with no subsequent warning, the warning is removed. They get three warnings, and on the fourth warning they “buy their ticket.” The meaning of this becomes clear several hours into the walk when someone on his third warning gets a Charley horse and drops back. Despite his pleas, his ticket is called, and a soldier approaches him, pulls out his carbine, and shoots the man in the head. This being Stephen King, the carbine fires with sufficient power to eviscerate the man’s skull. Of course, all of this is televised. The remainder of the book is a psychological study of (a) the effect of nonstop walking under penalty of messy death, and (b) the factors that would possibly compel people to volunteer for this event.
  • “The Lottery:” A 1948 short story by Shirley Jackson, this may be the most disturbing of all, because it offers no hints at all that it is going somewhere creepy. Early on in the story, it might as well just be a standard small-town America story. Everyone is preparing for a big event, “the lottery,” held every year. The heads of the town’s families draw slips of paper from a box, and the family that draws the slip with the black spot is “chosen.” The members of that family draw slips of paper again, and the person who gets the one with the black spot wins, so to speak. The rest of the town then stones that person to death. It is fair to say that, based on the tone of the rest of the story, the reader does not see this coming.

I’m heading to the “Hunger Games” movie in a few hours. I’ll let you know how it is.

Photo credit: Running Man Theatrical Poster [Fair use claimed] via Wikipedia.

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A watered-down “Battle Royale” with hints of the “Handmaid’s Tale,” all wrapped up in “Twilight”

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(WARNING: Might contain spoilers) It’s not really fair to compare The Hunger Games to Twilight, especially since I’ve never actually read Twilight (and, FSM willing, I never will.) I watched the first “Twilight” movie with a vaguely annoyed expression over a three- or four-day period, since I couldn’t sit through more than about thirty minutes at a time. I only mention it because of a gnawing fear that the forthcoming “Hunger Games” movie will drop the threadbare scraps of its dystopian themes of oppression and alienation and throw itself at a tween-swoon-inducing love triangle that only barely rears its sparkly head towards the end of the book.

Actually, I know that’s going to happen, because this review says so.

I actually quite enjoyed the book (I haven’t read the second or third books yet), even if I’m not the main target demographic. It was pretty derivative of quite a few things, but I like the way it took some disparate scifi elements and put them together in an innovative, if not altogether immersive, universe.

Here are a few things I liked about the book, in terms of its homage material:

  • “Battle Royale:” I’m referring to the profoundly-disturbing Japanese movie, not the Manga series. If The Hunger Games is not at least partly inspired by this, then it is a truly remarkable coincidence. The Hunger Games takes the children-fighting-to-the-death premise and improves on it by making the rationale for the event actually make sense. In “Battle Royale,” if I recall correctly, society has decided that children (defined as anyone under 20 years of age) constitute a grave threat to the safety and stability of society. As a disincentive to misbehaving, every year a ninth-grade class is selected to participate in the Battle Royale, in which they are deposited on an island and given a set period of time to fight to the death. It’s more disturbing than Hunger Games in the sense that these are classmates, who have known each other their whole lives, suddenly compelled to kill each other. Each child is fitted with an explosive collar to give them an extra incentive–if they refuse to fight, then the game master (whatever they’re called) will kill them anyway. The problem is that the premise makes no dang sense. The children are chosen at random, meaning that there is no value as a deterrent to crime or other misbehavior, because even model children could find themselves picked for the Battle. At least the Hunger Games are acknowledged to be random, as a demonstration of the Capitol’s complete dominance over society.
  • “The Handmaid’s Tale:” This is actually another one where I’ve only seen the movie (1990, starring Natasha Richardson, Robert Duvall, and Aidan Quinn), and I’m pretty sure it leaves a lot of the book’s elements out. It posits a near-future dystopian America, the Republic of Gilead, with an uber-conservative religious leadership. Women who have managed to retain their fertility are literally treated like cattle. The main parallel I can see is in the portrayal of an all-powerful state that dominates all features of life, although it occurs to me that just about everyone, from hardcore liberals to hard core libertarians, could see some relatable material here
  • A Storm of Swords: This would be Book 3 of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series (the one that starts with A Game of Thrones). Specifically, the effete, peacock-y people in the Capitol remind me of the people in the cities of Slavers’ Bay in Storm of Swords. Daenerys Targaryen and her entourage go there early in the book and are generally horrified by what they find. The three cities, Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, were once part of a great empire, but they are now in a strange state of denial about their own decline. The warriors and merchants dress ostentatiously, fashioning their hair into horns and other strange shapes and dyeing it bright colors. The warriors in particular do not make for a very effective fighting force because of their ornamentation, and they prefer to rely on their slave armies. As fans of the book know, things do not go well for the slavers. The capital of Panem rests on a fragile foundation, depending on the Districts to maintain their lives of luxury while needing to keep the Districts brutally suppressed.

Of course, there are a few things I don’t like so far:

  • Backstory: The Hunger Games does not appear to have any. At all. All we know is that something very bad happened, possibly a nuclear war and/or severe climate change, and that the oceans have risen. After some amount of time, the Capitol united all the remaining areas of North America. The Districts, which had apparently already been established, rebelled against the Capitol, but lost in a major way. The Capitol destroyed District 13 entirely, and started the Hunger Games as a reminder to the Districts that it was in charge. That’s literally all we know. It makes sense that Katniss wouldn’t know any more than that, since it would be in the Capitol’s interest to keep the District populace in the dark. The audience does not need to be that much in the dark. Try Googling a map of Panem–it’s remarkable how many different interpretations you’ll find. One person thought District 13 was in the DC area, while someone else thought it was in Quebec (apparently the Quebec theory makes the most sense, but I forget why.) At least one fan has put a remarkable amount of work into developing a map and history of Panem.
  • Economics: Matt Yglesias has a review of economic theories that make a society like Panem plausible at Slate. I did not finish reading his article because it has Book 2 & 3 spoilers, so I’ll just summarize my thoughts on the matter. The Capitol uses some very scifi technology. “Hovercraft” that either use cloaking devices or can do some sort of teleportation. Ointments that can heal second-degree burns in a matter of hours. Genetically-engineered animals with rudimentary intelligence. And so on. The Districts supply all of the raw materials used by the Capitol, it would seem, and they seem to enjoy few of these technological advances. District 12 could be part of the 1930’s or the 95th century, but it seems odd that they wouldn’t have any of the technology enjoyed elsewhere, or that they could meet the needs of the Capitol without such technology. Which leads me to my next point…
  • Geography of the Capitol: District 12 is in Appalachia. The Capitol is somewhere in the Rockies. If climate change has caused ocean levels to rise and flood low-lying areas of North America, then those areas would probably have a warmer climate than they do today. Which would be good, because it is difficult to imagine building an imperial capital city in the middle of the mountains, around 8,000 feet above sea level. Just about any city that has ruled over a large area with any degree of control (think Rome, Constantinople, Baghdad, Tenochtitlan, and so forth) had ready access to some amount of natural resources. The middle of the Rocky Mountains does not offer that, at least not in today’s ecosystem. So how did they get to be the biggest kid on the block? Perhaps their geographic isolation worked to their advantage in a nuclear war, with mountains shielding them from the worst of the fallout. Or maybe they rode out a climatic or geological upheaval by being so far away from sea level, and were then able to roam the continent, picking up the scraps. All we know for sure from the first book is that the mountains protected the Capitol from the rebellious districts. The problem is that geography is a two-way street. If it’s hard to get into an area, it might also be hard to get out.
  • Geography of the Districts: District 12 produces coal for the Capitol. District 11 handles agriculture. District 1 makes luxury goods. There is a problem with monocultures like this. Does District 11 produce good for all of Panem, or just the Capitol? Panem would need a highly sophisticated distribution system if it had to get food and other supplies from one District to all the others with little to no contact between the Districts. The mind boggles at the logistics.
  • The word “Capitol:” the book keeps referring to the capital city of Panem as the “Capitol.” One small, grammar-nerd problem with that. “Capitol” refers exclusively to a building. Anything else, i.e. a city, is referred to with “capital.” That’s been bugging me for a while.

Anyway, I’m going to see the movie on Saturday. We’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime, I can finally start reading A Dance with Dragons.

Photo credit: aimmyarrowshigh at livejournal.

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Admit it, this does not contribute to the game itself in any way

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Sports viewers, by and large, tend to be male. Statistical support or no, that is the conventional wisdom.

Male television viewers, by and large, tend to like certain things. These things are also part of conventional wisdom, statistical support or no: violence, beer, boobs. (This is not an exhaustive list, by the way.)

So how do marketers get more people (i.e. guys) to watch the Olympics?

Violence: there’s only so much you can do to make Olympic sports more violent, and the potential cost in international relations probably outweighs any benefit to ratings.

Beer: even the most hardcore boozehound would probably agree that the middle of a mountain biking run or a swim meet is not the best time to down a few.

Boobs: Hmmmmm…tell me more……

(h/t to Ragen) Let’s face it, there is no athletic advantage to wearing skimpy outfits, unless the knowledge that lots of people are staring at your bum improves your game. As Aussie blogger Lauredhel said in preparation for the 2008 Olympics:

No. It’s not about faster, higher, stronger. Women in sports are promoted as sexualised bodies for ogling; men are promoted as performers.

She offered a side-by-side comparison of male and female athletic outfits for the Australian teams, such as:

Here are a few side-by-side comparisons of what Aussie contenders are put into

In case you can’t see the image, on the left is a male beach volleyball player in a comfortably-baggy jersey and shorts that reach at least halfway down his thighs. On the right are two female players with remarkable abs. We know this because we can see all of them, and can offer a clinic description of the muscle tone in their thighs.

Not quite a year ago, the Badminton World Federation, trying to combat the problem of no one ever watching badminton, tried to mandate that female players wear skirts. They quickly ditched that rule in the face of massive criticism. They need to either find a different way to drum up interest in the sport, or just admit that few people enjoy watching a sport with a game piece called a shuttlecock.

Now, it would not add anything to my experience of watching the Olympics to put male athletes into similarly-revealing uniforms, nor would it add anything to the actual performance of the Games themselves.

But neither would it take away from my experience of watching the Olympics (or their performance) to put female athletes into uniforms that make a bit more athletic sense. Plus, it’s not about me. There is some evidence that all this sexifying is turning girls away from getting involved in sports at all, and that’s bad in and of itself.

If I want to see beautiful ripped women in skimpy clothes in various states of sweatiness, Rule 34 dictates that it is available to me at any time on the internet. If I want to see world-class displays of athletic prowess, that only happens a few times a decade.

Consider this an example of my point and/or eye candy. Here’s Croatian high jumper Blanka Vlašić in Greece in 2009. She probably could have performed just as well with a bit more clothes on and still done a sexy dance:

All of this said, I am sure I will still watch beach volleyball this summer.

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Fox News does not need anyone’s help to look and sound stupid, so please stop this

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Fox News "Toolooz" Report

Click to embiggen

Please stop making up dumb things to attribute to Fox News. They do not need anyone’s help to sound dumb, and crap like this only makes their devotees even more devoted.

STOP. DOING. THIS. SHIT.

This is not a real screen capture from Fox News. It is a Photoshop job.

The Snopes community has already covered this. Another site has what appears to be the original screen capture–I don’t know French, so I’m kind of assuming.

All this accomplishes is giving Fox News fans an out when someone on Fox really does say some bullshit. “Well, you liberals made up that other crap, so how do we know you didn’t make this up too?”

(Cross-posted from I Can’t Believe It’s A Law Blog!)

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Behold the mighty Coffthulu!!!

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I got some new coffee mugs. They look like this:

New coffee mugs from Creature Cups

You, too, could have some from Creature Cups, if you think you are brave enough to stare at this in your coffee each morning…

Of course, my friend Jenn made the literary connection that I missed in my reverie of having my very own octopus cup, but at least now I know what to call it:

Coffthulu Twitter exchange

All hail the wondrous Coffthulu! We tremble in his shadow.

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