Inter Mundos.

If you are here because you Googled "WHAT DOES INTER MUNDOS MEAN?", it means "BETWEEN WORLDS", and you're very welcome.

They say that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and I suspect that John Carter is the result of a similar process.

To someone who's not familiar with the original material, John Carter may not be a bad movie, although box office results to date would seem to indicate that Disney's interpretation may not be able to stand on its own merits. However, from the perspective of a long term fan, it was almost puzzling in its broad departures from the story as written by Edgar Rice Burroughs a hundred years ago.

But I can see what happened - again, good intentions. Burroughs' original story suffers from some very fundamental problems, the first of which is exactly how it is that Captain Carter gets to Mars in the first place. In the text, it's an unarticulated, mystical process, seemingly based on the connection between a fighting man and "the god of his vocation", as Burroughs puts it.

In his defense, this sort of mystical/magical transition is fairly common in the fantastic literature of the time - it's a literary tool, like falling down a rabbit hole or going through a looking glass. E. R. Eddison does it ten years later in The Worm Ouroborous, H. P. Lovecraft uses the same approach, Lord Dunsany does it on innumerable occasions, as does Clark Ashton Smith, and so on. I attribute it quite simply to the lack of any popular concept of space travel: after all, Burroughs is writing in 1912.

The people behind John Carter are hampered by a knowledge of space programs and a century of speculative fiction. As a result, they obviously felt that the audience would require some kind of hardware, something based in science rather than fantasy. So Carter's transition becomes the result of a sort of transporter beam.

But where would such a thing come from? The writers decided that it would be an alien mechanism - but would the Martians have such a thing? So the writers create a more advanced alien race to be the creators of the transporter.

But why would there be a hidden conduit between the two planets? Aha, the more advanced aliens are plotting to take over Earth! No, wait, Earth AND Mars! No, wait, they're already taking over Mars!

And so on, and so on, and so on. The result of all this is a confusing, poorly explained mess of a plot that uses all of the names from the books, but that leaves out too many of the things that made the original story so entertaining. The sad thing is that they didn't need to do any of that. If handled properly and with some appreciation of the original material, John Carter could have been a fantastic steampunk adventure, a charming historical/futuristic adventure with a quaint lack of scientific accuracy.

The glimpses of that potential make the movie all the more disappointing. The artistic direction makes a good attempt at evoking an alien culture, the four-armed green Martians aren't too bad, and I give full marks to Lynn Collins as the incomparable Dejah Thoris - she comes very close to being the Princess of Mars that I had imagined, the woman whose love inspires a castaway from another planet to fight his way across an entire world in order to rescue her.

However, for the most part I was too distracted by all the lost opportunities.  Disney, if you wanted to make this movie, that's fine - but why couldn't you see that everything you needed was right there in the original book?

- Sid

First thoughts on Sunday morning II

We've all seen it in movies and on television: ghosts who are cursed by their inability to interact with the world around them, spirits forced to observe their loved ones but never touch them again, phantoms that wander through a world without barriers.

The exception, of course, is their feet. These ghostly remnants are always able to climb stairs, stand on floors, and walk down streets without any difficulty whatsoever.

But what if ghost feet lacked this peculiar covenant with physics?  What if these wraiths were completely unable to interact with the corporeal world?  If gravity retained even a fragment of its influence over these disembodied souls, they would find that its inexorable pull would slowly drag them down, down, down, to finally abandon them in the flaming chaos of molten rock and crushing pressure that lies at the core of the earth.

And they wouldn't be alone - if even a fraction of the total inhabitants of Earth had failed to completely depart from the physical realm after death, there would be millions of ghosts held eternal captive at the centre of the planet, trapped in lightless burning confinement, aware but unable to escape, screaming, desperate, suffering...

Goodness - I seem to have just invented Hell.

- Sid

Under the Moons of Mars.

I opened my eyes upon a strange and weird landscape. I knew that I was on Mars; not once did I question either my sanity or my wakefulness. I was not asleep, no need for pinching here; my inner consciousness told me as plainly that I was upon Mars as your conscious mind tells you that you are upon Earth. You do not question the fact; neither did I.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars

As I was making my way home through Gastown on Friday night, I passed a poster promoting the new Walt Disney film John Carter, which will apparently descend upon an unwitting public on March 9th. Early previews have not given me huge confidence in this swashbuckling adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs books, but they do make me wonder if the general populace has the least idea of what it's all about.

In other words, who is John Carter?

Old school fans like myself recognize the name immediately, although I suspect that we all append "Of Mars" at the end. John Carter - Virginian gentleman, Civil War veteran, Indian fighter, apparently immortal warrior, and eventual Warlord of Mars* - was the creation of Edgar Rice Burroughs, who is far better known for his ape-man hero Tarzan of the Apes. John Carter's core story is laid out in the three-book series A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, and The Warlord of Mars, but his Martian adventures ended up spanning 11 books (the last of which was finished by Burroughs' son and published posthumously) dealing with every possible form of derring-do on the surface of Mars, or Barsoom as its inhabitants call it.

Although John Carter is initially introduced as an immortal who has no knowledge of his long-forgotten origins, the first book places him in post-Civil War Virginia, from whence a penniless ex-Captain Carter of the Confederate Army heads West to make his fortune. After his mining partner has a fatal encounter with Apaches, Carter takes a wrong turn while trying to escape the same fate, and ends up in a mysterious cave at the top of a mountain. From there, he is transported to Mars by a means which is never fully explained, and which, frankly, is completely irrelevant once Burroughs has gotten his character to where he really wants him to be: the arid sands of Barsoom, a dying planet where every man - or Martian - is in a perpetual state of warfare for the dwindling resources that remain.

Burroughs' Barsoom is an astonishingly rich creation, if not necessarily a plausible one. Starting with the six-limbed tusked green Martians who initially discover Carter upon his arrival, Burroughs fills Barsoom with multi-legged riding thoats, the lion-like banthas, savage fanged calots that serve as watchdogs, giant white apes, flying warships, ruined cities, vast wastelands, deadly swamps, and a veritable rainbow of Martian races:  green, red, white, black and yellow. However, all of this is merely background for the romance between John Carter and the incomparable Dejah Thoris, the titular princess of the first book, daughter of the Jed (or king) of the city-state of Helium.**

There's no claim of novelistic brilliance to be made for the Mars books in terms of plot and depth. The stories are unambiguous to the point of cliché: the heroes are uniformly brave, noble, and honourable, and the villains are unreservedly evil and cowardly. That being said, Burroughs wasn't trying to write War and Peace, he wanted to write tales of thrilling adventure, and his success is complete.

That complete success in defining a Mars of excitement, adventure and romance influenced an entire generation of writers, including Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury, and gave birth to a genre of interplanetary adventure fiction that was best represented by the pulp magazine Planet Stories, published from 1939 to 1955. Burroughs' work has continued to be an inspiration to innumerable authors and filmmakers over the years. George Lucas acknowledges his debt to Burroughs for Star Wars, as does James Cameron in the creation of Avatar, and the list of science fiction authors who pay tribute to Barsoom in one form or another is endless.

However, the task of visual adaptation has always evaded complete success in spite of frequent attempts. The six-limbed green Martians are described as ranging from ten to fifteen feet in height, and as such there are practical issues involved in having a six foot tall human interact with characters almost three times his height, and interpretations of the characters, architecture, weaponry and clothing have met with mixed responses.

A Princess of Mars first saw publication in 1912 as a six-part series in All Story Magazine, starting in the February issue, so in a way you could consider the current Disney attempt to be a celebration of the character's centennial - a point which has gone completely unremarked upon in promo for the movie. In fact, I'm a bit worried about the manner in which this historic landmark in the genre of science fiction is being marketed. Why has the Walt Disney company removed the movie so far from its iconic origins? Logic would suggest that if you've got the rights to a series with a massive historical geek following, you'd want to chase that leverage as much as possible.

Instead, it's as if Walt Disney has made a deliberate effort to divorce the movie from its origins by choosing to just use John Carter as the title, and I have to wonder if it indicates lack of confidence in their treatment of the source material.  Would you rush out to see Heathcliff Earnshaw?  Perhaps not - but if I told you that Wuthering Heights was coming to the big screen, I'd probably have a better chance of getting your attention, purely and simply due to the reputation attached to that title. It has to be a bad sign if Disney isn't willing to use the same approach with John Carter and A Princess of Mars.

- Sid

* Well, not all of Mars, to be really honest about it, mostly the city-state of Helium and its allies, plus the Thark tribe of the green Martians - for example, I'm pretty sure that the guys in Dusar never get on board - but let's not pick nits.  After all, a hero is a bit lost without some villains to fight.

** One feels a bit for Dejah Thoris after a while - she seems to spend the entire series being kidnapped, held captive, menaced, threatened, imprisoned, chained, and otherwise abused.  It's surprising that she and John Carter find the time to raise a family.

With no offense to any of the Canadian ladies in my life.

The Doctor: Amy, this is - well - she's my TARDIS - except she's a woman. She's a woman, and she's my TARDIS.
Amy: She's the TARDIS?
The Doctor: And she's a woman. She's a woman and she's the TARDIS.
Amy: Did you wish really hard?
The Doctor: Shut up - not like that.
Idris/TARDIS: Hello…I'm…Sexy.
The Doctor: Ooooo - still shut up.

The Doctor's Wife, Doctor Who

(For those of you who don't know what a TARDIS is - yes, hello, Laurie, how are things -  please visit Wikipedia.   Actually, if you don't already know what a TARDIS is, just skip this post.)
 
Well, I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that I've found the perfect woman. The bad news is that she lives in Germany, and I have no faith in long distance relationships.

If you'd like a more complete explanation as to why I fell in love with this chicken-loving German schoolteacher, please visit the following YouTube link:

I built a TARDIS

- Sid

"My father's car was science fiction."

Yesterday I attended an entertaining and illuminating evening with science fiction author William Gibson, arranged by the Vancouver Public Library as part of Gibson's promotional tour for his new collection of non-fiction work, Distrust That Particular Flavor.  Gibson's articles and commentaries are a fascinating present-day application of the same brilliant methodology and unique style that he more often uses to create the future.

The event was standing room only, or would have been if the organizers hadn't started setting up more chairs.  I had the good fortune to be Number 24 through the door*, which continues to support my philosophy that if you show up early, you get good seats.

The demographic was an interesting mix that ranged from twenty-year-olds to people who looked to have a decade or two over and above my fifty, suggesting that Gibson's popularity as a writer has maintained itself well over the intervening years since the 1984 publication of his landmark cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. 

Gibson is a little more lined, a little more lean, and what used to be almost trademark unruly mid-length hair has changed to a receding crewcut, but the round wire-framed glasses remain the same as in the pictures of Gibson from the 80s.  He retains a kind of laconic southern drawl from his youth in Virginia which combines well with his flat delivery, although that deadpan sense of humour can make it hard to realize that he's made a joke.

Over the course of the evening, Gibson covered a wide range of topics.  He discussed his early interest in science fiction as almost a given for someone growing up in the United States in the 50s, when everything had a sort of post-war futurism in its design. To illustrate, he pointed out that:

My father's car was science fiction. It was far-out science fiction, it had rocket fins and chrome plates on it.

He went on to discuss the question of science fiction as a predictive medium as he approaches it in his work:

People can and do attempt to predict the future in works of science fiction. Someone like Arthur C. Clarke does today look rather prescient - unusually so by the standards of science fiction. When I began to write science fiction, I convinced myself through my own reading of science fiction and whatever cursory study of comparative  literary critical methodology I was able to apply, it seemed to me that the science fiction fiction of the past could most meaningfully be read as a product of the moment in which it was created. 

When I was a kid, there was a lot of 1940s science fiction around, which I was reading in the late 50's and early 60's, and I actually had to reverse engineer the history of the world as i read it in order to figure out why some things were so wrong.  Because when you finish writing a piece of fiction imagining the future, when you dot the last "i" and put the last period on it, it begins to obsolesce - it begins to acquire a patina of quaintness which ultimately will probably be its greatest charm for readers of the future, in the way that when we read 19th century science fiction today, what we find charming is what they got wrong.  So that always happens.  Nothing dates more quickly than an imagined future.

I tried...knowing that I did my best, when I was starting to write, to try to produce work that would resist that and have some longevity, simply because that was more of a challenge. So I was careful never to have year dates in my early work. 

In fact what happens is that even though people do read it, it's all still in print, people do read that stuff, when they read it now, they think, okay, I know that the central mystery of this book is going to be what happened to all the cell phones.  You may be able to anticipate or at least name cyberspace, but it doesn't mean you can anticipate the advent of ubiquitous cellular telephony, and indeed if anyone had been able to anticipate that in a SF novel of the early 1980s,  what a weird book that would have been!  Imagine a world in which no one is ever truly alone. 

Gibson is resigned to the inevitability of piracy in the digital age.  When asked about his position regarding this problem during the question and answer period, he replied with the following philosophical position:

Everything I've ever written is available as a single BitTorrent download that you can find on hundreds of sites around the world...if that weren't true, you'd have to consider me a failure.

All in all, a good evening.  And it was free, which is an awfully good recommendation for something like this.  

I declined the opportunity to stand in line and obtain Gibson's signature on a newly purchased copy of Distrust That Particular Flavor, although, when you think about it, that's going to be one of the most difficult things to adapt to e-books - and a pretty good justification for not downloading the pirate version of Gibson's collected works. 

- Sid

*  No, my OCD hasn't reached the point where I've started counting people in front of me in event lineups, the organizers were good enough to provide me with a non-winning door prize ticket.

Form Follows Function.

"No flames, no fins, no rockets."

Instructions from Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry
to U.S.S. Enterprise designer Matt Jefferies

It's funny how fast a science fiction movie can lose me.  The Space Channel is showing Pandorum right now (a movie which lost a lot of people) which opens with a travelling shot down the length of a spaceship.  My first thought upon seeing this majestic craft travelling through the void was "What the hell are those three spikes for?  And why wouldn't those rings be continuous?  What possible reason would they have for not finishing the arc?  What is all this crap on the outside of the hull?"

Science fiction television and cinema is full of interesting and intriguing spaceships designed to fit into a specific milieu, such as the dictatorial wedges of Imperial Star Destroyers, the blunt military practicality of the battlestar Galactica, or the sensuous curves of Farscape's sentient organic starship Moya.

But out of all the spaceships and starships out there, I have a particular affection for the various iterations of the U.S.S. Enterprise from the Star Trek franchise, simply because of the logic behind the unique perspective that Matt Jefferies, the original designer, brought to the question of starship design.

Jefferies' Enterprise was based on his long experience as a designer and flight test engineer:

I decided that whatever we came up with had to be instantly recognisable, and to sell the speed it would probably have to start in the distance as a tiny speck of light, and enlarge and come right by your head or go the other way. In that couple of seconds you had to be able to recognise it.

The habitat part I felt ideally should be a ball, but it got too awkward to play with. It just didn’t look like it would get out of first gear, much less the speeds he (Roddenberry) was talking about. So it gradually got flattened. I was trying to stay away from a saucer because the UFOs or flying saucer were old hat but it did gradually turn it into a saucer.

I felt that if he was going to get this sort of fantastic performance out of the thing, there would have to be very powerful engines of some kind or other, even to the point they might be dangerous to be around. I said, "Well, we better get ’em away from the main hull." The other thing is what we called during war a Quick Change Unit. By having the engines out there, if anything is wrong, you can just quickly unhook it and put another in its place.

Similarly, the smooth outside finish of the ship was also based on logic and experience:

Basically I wanted to keep it as plain as I could. To be able to play light on it. I didn’t want to load the exterior up with what looked like equipment of some kind. We used to talk about Murphy’s Law, that whatever man makes will break at the most inopportune time. So why have equipment on the outside in the worst possible environment to put a crewman out to work on it, if you can keep it on the inside?

For myself, I've always assumed that the designs of the various Starfleet ships represented a response to the physics behind faster-than-light travel, as with the distinctive hulls of sailing ships and the carefully crafted curves of airplane wings.  I can't make any sort of similar connection for Pandorum's Elysium, which to my experienced eye just looks like a long stack of what the Star Wars set designers used to call "greebly dressing" rather than a reasoned design for a NAFAL* colony ship.  In fact, I have to wonder if the script said:  CAMERA PANS DOWN SHIP FOR 30 SECONDS, and they just kept adding bits to the model until it was long enough to fill that half-minute of the movie.

- Sid

* Not As Fast As Light - this useful but underused acronym comes to us courtesy of science fiction author Ursula K. LeGuin.

Actually not the kind of apogee manager that my spaceship needs.

Did anyone else notice recently that Google™ is willing to install Google Apps™ on your spaceship?  Intrigued by the idea of watching someone fire up Gmail™ on the main viewscreen of the Enterprise, I obtained the following information from a Google™ representative:

Provided your spaceship has Internet access and a current browser, we can install and configure Google Apps for you.  Most new craft are equipped with space broadband wireless access (SiFi).  Please make sure your salesperson knows that you want 4G and not "4g", as the latter will make it more difficult to reach orbit.

As you represent a new market segment for us, we will also be launching (pun intended) Google Apps for Space Travelers (GAST).  GAST is a bundled package, centered on Google Apps, that includes additional services and features important to space travelers.  GAST includes: Message Archive & Discovery services so that you can maintain an auditable copy of your email communications; Backupify to ensure that documents are protected should sun spots interfere with your link; and Appogee Domain Managment Studio for sharing contacts and managing security.    We will also include OffiSync and Syncdocs, so that you have offline access to all of your Google Docs.

And, of course, we offer a full range of deployment and support services.  Our support is available by email, web, sat phone, and HAM radio (coming soon).

Please let me know if you are interested in pricing and financing options.

Regards,
Allen

Well, as much as I'd like to consider this a forward-looking initiative on the part of Google™, frankly I'm willing to bet that if my refrigerator had a current browser and Internet access, they would be just as eager to slap Google Apps™ onto it.

- Sid

Sic itur ad astra.

Our goal is to provide you with the most incredible experience of your life.

-Virgin Galactic brochure.

"Now that's cool!"

Glen Williams

Recently one of my co-workers came up to me and said that although he didn't blog himself*, if he did blog, he'd want to write about being able to get into space for $200,000.

I don't normally take requests (although I'm happy to take submissions) but I was intrigued enough by Glen's obvious enthusiasm and interest that I decided to do a little research and find out about what we'll charitably call "affordable" space travel.

* * *

Imagine for a moment a hot summer day in New Mexico.  The only sound is that of sand being sifted onto baking hot tarmac by a dry desert wind.

Then ... a glint of sunlight on metal, far, far away in the azure sky ... a low droning hum that builds into a roar as a vee-winged bullet blasts down from the sky to scream along the runway before coming to a reluctant halt.

Welcome to space travel, Virgin Galactic style.

Or, at least, welcome to the idea of space travel.  So far millionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson hasn't announced a specific date for the first commercial flight out of his newly christened Spaceport America in New Mexico.  However, he's confident that he and his two children will be able to participate in the maiden voyage of VG's new SpaceShipTwo (appropriately named the VSS Enterprise) before the end of 2012.

Over 475 people are equally confident, to the point of having paid the required $20,000 deposit, or in many cases the full $200,000 ticket price, to experience three days of astronaut training, a two-and-a-half hour trip to the fringes of space, and five minutes of free fall. 

To be honest, my initial response to all of this was to be offended.  Being able to buy a ticket to space somehow trivialized the Holy Grail of space flight for me, like selling pieces of the True Cross.  But after some thought, I've decided that this is very likely the best thing that could have happened to our moribund** exploration of space.

After all, this post isn't really about being able to travel into space, it's about the fact that someone thought it was cool.  I think it's been a long time since the man on the street really felt that way about space travel, and it's gratifying to discover that almost 500 people think it's cool enough to drop close to a quarter of a million dollars for the opportunity to free themselves from gravity for five minutes.

Logic says that this is how it will start. We live in a society where people pay to travel, and stay in hotels, and eat meals, and so on, and other people compete to offer those things as services.  Right now two other companies are working on developing similar strategies for space tourism, and if interest and demand continues to grow, we'll start to see another space race developing, but this time the goal will be to offer people "the most incredible experience of their life".  Virgin Galactic is just offering a suborbital experience - next it will be orbital, then to the Moon, then Mars...

So, everyone, here's an idea.  There must be some way to set up a lottery legally, and right now I'm getting about the right number of hits a month for 2,000 tickets at a hundred dollars a shot.  Hey, Glen - interested in paying a hundred bucks for a one-in-two-thousand chance at space?  Get lucky, and you could find yourself sitting on a runway with five other people, ready to lift off from Planet Earth.

Now that would be cool.

- Sid

* You may wish to imagine this as somewhat in the style of the Most Interesting Man in the World commercials:  "I don't blog, but when I do, I get Sid to do it for me."

** http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/moribund - I'm sorry, but it's the right word to use!!

Is there anybody out there?

"I don't know," he said, "it's practice, partly. I don't know. We're each of us alone, to be sure. What else can you do other than hold your hand out in the dark?"

Ursula K. LeGuin, Nine Lives

I don't do anything to promote this blog, and yet for whatever reason over the last year I've seen a steady rise in page views every month.

I used to think that all those hits were Eastern European bots looking for places to promote performance-related products for males, but evidence indicates that this isn't the case. First, there's a definite bias toward specific postings.  Second, I checked with my friend Laurie, who posts about three times as frequently on her blog as I do on mine, and she only gets about a quarter of the hits, so there's got to be something else going on.

There are four people that I know socially who follow this blog. People at my workplace sometimes mention that they've had a look at my blog (and I solemnly inform them that I'm not one of the people there that they need to suck up to), but only about 14 of the people I work with know about The Infinite Revolution.  None of this is adding up to the 2,470 page views that the stats show for December.

So I have a favour to ask of you, whoever you are.  If you didn't check in just to find out about Wonder Woman's bondage roots (the most popular post) and you happen to read this, I'd appreciate it if you'd say hello in the Comments, either here or in the posting that brought you here. You don't need to say anything else if you don't want to - just hello.  Don't be shy - if it helps, imagine it as being like making first contact with an alien life form. 

And if you are a Russian spambot, just give up. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Blogger automatically diverts all those penis enlargement comments into a holdfile.

- Sid

But wouldn't Stacy and Clinton just LOVE this?

 "I have a very bad feeling about this."

Luke Skywalker*, Star Wars IV:  A New Hope

I've recently been informed that a close acquaintance is planning to dress as a Jedi master throughout 2012.  Even more unfortunate, a little research reveals that right now TLC's What Not To Wear is only accepting applications for the show from San Juan, Houston, Memphis, and New York.

- Sid

* Actually, everybody says some version of this line:  Luke says it, Obi-Wan says it, Han says it, Leia says it, C-3PO says it, Anakin says it - it's the Star Wars equivalent of "I'll be back."

With apologies to my Secret Santa.

You know, it's comforting to discover that if you talk about your interests enough, people will eventually get the idea and apply that knowledge where appropriate.*  As an example, although I expected some sort of generic gift-card style present from my Secret Santa in our workplace holiday gift exchange, to my complete surprise I received two robot-themed Christmas ornaments and a collection of Dilbert cartoons. (Living on the edge with the last one, but they got lucky and bought one of the Dilbert collections that I don't already own.**)

However, I failed to grasp the fact that the ornaments were made out of glass, and as such didn't use sufficient care when unwrapping them at home.  The result, one broken robot. Fortunately, the ornaments came packed in a box from the Vancouver Art Gallery gift shop, so I decided to pay them a visit on my way home on Friday and purchase a replacement.

Once there, I was intrigued to see that there was a selection of other science-fiction themed decorations, and on the spur of the moment decided to add a couple of the others to my collection:

I'm particularly amused by the vaguely apprehensive expression on the flying saucer snowman's face as he looks toward the skies as if into the future.  Let's hope that there's nothing more intimidating than sunshine and warm weather in that future for all of us.

Happy holidays and merry Christmas, everyone - here we are again, half way out of the dark...

- Sid

* With certain exceptions - I won't name names here, but someone in my life has come to the erroneous conclusion that I have enough books, which is of course dead wrong.  I don't have enough shelves, either, darlin'...

** Wait - was owning Dilbert collections on the geek test?

Heroes R Us.

 So what do you need to do before zombies…or hurricanes or pandemics for example, actually happen? First of all, you should have an emergency kit in your house. This includes things like water, food, and other supplies to get you through the first couple of days before you can locate a zombie-free refugee camp (or in the event of a natural disaster, it will buy you some time until you are able to make your way to an evacuation shelter or utility lines are restored).  

- CDC Public Health Matters Blog

Damn it, I can't find my axe.

Very nice little axe, not a full 36 inch splitting axe but a smaller utility axe, 24 or 28 inches, very handy size.  I'm sure I brought it with me when I moved to Vancouver, it must just be buried somewhere in my little storage closet in the basement.

Don't worry, I haven't decided to buy a hockey mask and start butchering teenagers*, I'm looking for the axe so that I can add it to my disaster kit.

Popular opinion in the scientific community seems to be that it's not a question of if Vancouver is going to experience an earthquake, only a question of when and how big - there's a one in ten chance that the next fifty years will see a 6.5 to 8.9 magnitude earthquake somewhere in coastal British Columbia. 

As such, disaster planning has become a hot topic, and my workplace is making every effort to help its staff prepare for the worst.  We've had disaster planning seminars, emergency lockers with supplies are being set up in the building, and all of the staff members have received three-day two-person emergency supply packs.

I've actually gotten quite interested in the idea, and I've been gathering together a variety of useful items (or trying to gather - still can't find my axe) to supplement the commercial kit.  In addition to extra clothing and water, I've also set aside a short spade, work gloves, hard hat and goggles - and hopefully my axe - in order to be able to assist with rescue work.  I'm also thinking about adding a box of emergency meals to my cache.

But I have to admit that my interest is a bit suspect.  To be honest, it's sort of a science fiction game for me - in my head, I'm not really planning for an earthquake, I'm planning for an asteroid strike, or the zombie apocalypse, or maybe an alien invasion - some exotic end-of-the-world scenario that in reality would certainly demand a lot more for survival than some warm clothing and a one-week supply of food and water.

Oddly enough, I'm not unique in my approach to this.  Zombies were a popular promotional point for disaster planning groups and agencies in 2011. The US Centers for Disease Control discussed planning for the zombie apocalypse in their blog, emergency response agencies in Ohio conducted a zombie emergency exercise, and the city of Leicester in England was forced to admit that they didn't have plans in place for an attack by the undead.

Obviously no one is really worried about the walking dead (well, at least not Leicester), but the sort of chaos that we see in zombie movies is a telling example of what might actually happen in case of a disaster.  I'm confident that people see themselves as the hero in those movies, rather than a victim, but you know, I don't think that's a bad thing. If there is a disaster, I hope that we'll all be heroes.

And come to think of it, I really should find that axe, because that would be a damn handy thing to have around if zombies do become a problem.

- Sid

P.S.  A brief unpaid promo:  the emergency kits that we received through the company were purchased from a Canadian company called FAST -  First Aid and Survival Technologies Limited.  To avoid false expectations, FAST offers a variety of emergency kits, none of which come with shotguns, machetes, crossbows, or any of the other staples of zombie management.

* At least not yet.

Gimme shelter.

While working on my posting about how we as a planet would deal with a major catastrophe like an asteroid impact, it occurred to me that some attention should be focused on preserving a portion of the ecosystem as well. After all, it would be short-sighted to only preserve human life, as Noah - or more accurately Jehovah - was fully aware.

A search for images of Noah's Ark revealed images of another ark. Developed by 51-year-old Russian architect Alexander Remizov of Remistudio, in co-operation with Russian and German scientific groups, the new Ark was designed as part of the International Union of Architects’ Architecture for Disaster Relief initiative.

Everything would seem to indicate that it's a brilliant design. It can be built as a floating structure as well as a land-based refuge, and is made up of a combination of wooden arches and cable supports that allow for a flexible response to earthquake stresses. The Ark is constructed to create a vortex that helps propel a wind powered generator located in the cupola that tops the building, and the outside of the building is designed to optimize solar panel usage and rain water collection. The rounded shape allows for easy circulation of air, greenhouse effect adds another source of energy to be collected and stored, and all wastes are recycled.

Remizov's Ark doesn't use glass - the outside surface is covered with a special transparent self-cleaning foil which is cheaper, lighter and more flexible. The transparent shell contributes to the existence of an interior microclimate, with plants and trees providing oxygen and possibly food. 

Prefabricated building sections would allow construction of an Ark in three to four months, with each new Ark providing 150,000 square feet of living space.

It's an elegant and possibly even feasible solution to housing people in a disaster situation, but I'm sorry to say that after looking at the design, I found myself wondering how it would stand up to deliberate attempts at damage rather than aftershocks. Maybe I'm too cynical, or maybe I've read the wrong books, but it's far too easy to imagine desperate refugees trying to force their way into an already full structure, and the spacious green lawns packed with tents and sleeping bags.

But my real objection to the design is its theoretical nature, which is in no way the architect's fault. It is an elegant solution, one that probably deserves a real trial - well then let's try it.  According to The New York Times, right now people in Haiti are moving back into damaged houses that may collapse on their heads at any moment, because they refuse to live in refugee tent cities any longer.  Let's build some Arks in Haiti - because if we don't start actually doing some of these things, rather than making pretty 3-D digital renderings, we might as well be planning to move displaced and homeless people to Mars.

- Sid

First thoughts on Sunday morning.

Okay, let's posit parallel evolution, and that there's only one way to string DNA together.*  Add in the fact that the species-ending asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs** and empowered small warm-blooded animals was a statistical fluke.  In that case, when we do reach other solar systems, they'll all be run by…big lizards that think we're edible vermin?

Ooo, that's going to be difficult for everyone.

- Sid

* Star Trek does this without even thinking, or else how would half-Vulcan and half-Klingon hybrids be possible?

** By the way, is everyone familiar with my theory as to why Fred Flintstone had to push his car around with his feet?  Ha, obviously The Flintstones must take place before the existence of fossil fuels.

宅男.

I was out for a beer with my friend Chris, the self-described language geek, and he mentioned that he'd looked up the periodic table in Chinese - try to convince me that doesn't belong on the Geek Test!

- Sid

Dragon's End.

(Contributed by Dorothy Hatto)

Anne McCaffrey ended a long and enormously successful life early Monday evening, November 21st, at her home in County Wicklow, Ireland. Surrounded by the reassuring presence of family and close friends, her passing was swift and without suffering. We, her children, are hugely comforted by the outpouring of sympathy flowing now from all over the world. Our mother’s talent was known to countless fans. Yet her greatest gift to us all has to have been her enormous heart. That she was able to touch so many with her tender and loving heart is the greatest source of pride we will forever enjoy. Words cannot express how grateful we are to the universe of her admirers, whose heartfelt condolences beguile us in our grief, which pales beside the joy we know Anne McCaffrey brought to so many people.

The family of Anne McCaffrey

Today, I found out that one of my idols has died:  Anne McCaffrey, author of the Dragonriders of Pern, the Pegasus series, Crystal Singers, Shellperson stories and many other series. 

I discovered my first McCaffrey book, The Ship Who Sang, about 30 years ago, and since then I have escaped to many different worlds of Anne McCaffrey. It really was an escape for me, because I could see myself living in those wonderful worlds.

At the time I discovered Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton was my favourite author. Anne slowly took over first place as I worked my way through all her various works. I believe I now have just about every book she wrote.  My favorite was the Pern series - I started in the middle with The White Dragon and worked my way out. Once I had all the Pern books and all the short stories, I finally read the series from P.E.R.N., the beginning story, to the last book, The Skies of Pern. 

I cried when Robinton and Zair died after moving the “Red Star.” They had become real people to me.  I have read the stories over and over, and find something new each time I read each story. 

I will miss looking for new books by Anne.  I dread the day that someone makes a Dragonriders of Pern movie, though I might buy the DVD just to pick it apart.  The reality will never come close to the world she created in my head.

- Dorothy 

"Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!"

In the wake of my last post, I was astonished to discover that later today an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier will pass within a mere 323,00 kilometers of Earth.  (For those of you without sense of scale for either one of those numbers, that's something about 400 meters in diameter coming closer to Earth than the Moon.)

Asteroid 2005 YU55 will do its fly-by at 6:28 EST, and during its run it will be 11,000 kilometers within the Moon's orbit. By the standards of cosmic distance, that's like having a bullet get closer to your face than the tip of your nose - and in this case, the bullet is moving at 46,000 kph.

The good news is that according to the good people at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, there is no chance that this object will hit the Earth either during this visit or any time in the next 100 years.  Nonetheless, the idea of a chunk of rock the size of a city block getting that close makes me more than a little nervous.

However, the adjacency of YU55 to Earth logically suggests that it might just as easily have hit the Moon. (After all, the Moon is a sort of orbital poster child for impact craters - just look at it.) Hmmm...I wonder what the effects of a really big asteroid hit on the Moon would be?  Presumably a large enough hit might shatter it, making us the recipient of a lot of collateral damage from fragments.  A slow breakup might give us an orbital ring à la Saturn.  But I think it's unlikely we'd get something that looked anything at all like the half-completed Death Star from Return of the Jedi, as much as I hate to disappoint you Star Wars fans.

- Sid