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Friday, January 30, 2004



Severe Dragon Storm Warning



This is a review of the movie Dragon Storm, which has a pitifully thin IMDB listing. I couldn't find anything more on Sci Fi either, but here's their page for the movie.

Because of this, character names will be approximate, or entirely made-up, and actor's names will be almost totally missing.

Naturally, the whole reason to pay attention to this is because a certain blogger worked on it and blogged about it.

Plot: Rock-like things fall from space onto 12th-century Carpathia. Upon landing they hatch into dragons, who immediately begin burning everything in sight (for no adequately explained reason), including a fortress belonging to King Fastrad (John Rhys Davies). Fastrad and a handful of retainers (including right-hand man Felgercarb---remember what I said about made-up character names?) flee into the snowy forest, headed for the neighboring kingdom ruled by King Wednesday (something like that). As they walk, Fastrad tells Felgercarb about his plan to claim aid from Wednesday, insinuate himself into Wednesday's confidence, then overthrow him and take his kingdom. It's a thin plan, considering they have an army of about four, but Felgercarb's down with it.

It's soon clear that the group is being stalked. When Felgercarb goes to investigate, he's captured by a big hairy man gadding about the forest in a moldy rabbit-fur cape. This turns out to be Silas (I guess), aka the Huntsman, who has really pretty eyes, so you know he's our hero. He's also kind of mouthy and annoying, and is not at all impressed with Fastrad's kingliness.

Fastrad offers him a gold ring if he will guide them to Wednesday's castle, but when they get there tries to reneg on the deal. After a simply brutal spat, with stinging rebukes flying and snits pitched by all, Silas carries away the ring. But he has made Fastrad his enemy. (Not that this is hard to do.)

Wednesday welcomes Fastrad and honors the mutual-defence treaty Fastrad's been putting off signing. As the two talk about how to deal with the Dragon Menace, Wednesday's daughter, Medina (possibly), shows up, dressed for pole dancing. I mean, hunting. She's going hunting, but she's dressed as if she just might decide to do a bit of tree-dancing while she's out. Seems that Medina is quite the tomboy. (Sadly, we never learn whether Wednesday has another daughter, named Mecca.)

Medina's hunting party comes across Silas, who as usual is unwisely mouthy. Medina's men try to arrest him, but he defeats them all (right), only to be captured by Medina herself. They drag him back to Wednesday's castle and clap him in irons. Fastrad visits him to reclaim his ring and gloat.

Meantime someone has brought in a part of a dead dragon, which is examined by Wednesday's physician / scientist / wizard-type guy, whose name I can't begin to remember. I'll call him Merlin. He gets a few ideas about how to kill the dragons. Wednesday and Fastrad agree that a dragonslaying team should be formed, including Merlin and Silas (who is a mighty, if mouthy, hunter and besides he's the hero), and whatever mercenaries they can recruit. This includes Ling, a Chinese fellow whose primary characteristic is offering tea at every opportunity. Medina also insists on going along, and Fastrad insists on Felgercarb going along, so he can kill Silas. See, Fastrad worries that Silas overheard them talking about overthrowing Wednesday while he was stalking them in the forest.

The team also meets up with Nissa (perhaps), a young woman whose father and brothers have been killed by the dragons. She wants revenge, using the family heirloom, a ballista. (Basically a giant crossbow on wheels.)

Our cast is now established, and they spend most of the rest of the movie traipsing around in the snowy woods, slaying dragons. The ballista works much better than one would expect, considering it takes forever to aim. (The secret is to let the dragon come to you.) There are only about five dragons, total, and they have killed two when Silas realizes that they are nesting in a nearby cave, so the best thing to do would be to wait for them there.

This doesn't go so well. They get two more dragons but lose Nissa and the ballista. While they're still engaged with the dragons, Merlin manages to get into the cave, and make off with a dragon egg. He's very pleased with this, and the others seem to think it's very important, but it's not clear why. Sadly, Merlin gets his head bit off in the struggle over the egg.

Meanwhile, back at Wednesday's castle, Fastrad has recruited some guy whose name starts with G (the G-Man) to take the castle. They do so and throw Wednesday and two or three of his men in a cell.

Our dragon slayers retreat to prepare their final assault on the dragon. Felgercarb has been getting missives from Fastrad exhorting him to just kill Silas already. By this time Silas has saved Felgercarb's bacon a time or two, and so he's weakening on the whole plot. Now, another message arrives, this one threatening his wife (a lock of hair is enclosed as proof that they have her). This spurs Felgercarb to finally do the deed, and kill the grievously-wounded Silas. They struggle until Felgercarb is nailed in the throat by a bolt from Medina's crossbow. He spills his guts about his orders and the coup, then dies. The iron Medina has a dumb girly breakdown, riddled with guilt.

The surviving slayers sneak back to Wednesday's castle, and surreptitiously release Wednesday and his men. They also send in the dragon egg to Fastrad with a note reading, "From your loyal subjects". Fastrad is touched, even though nobody knows what the egg is, and the G-Man proclaims that it stinks (literally). It also stinks figuratively. "The Trojan Egg!" my boyfriend said when it was brought in, and so it proves. The dragon scents the smelly egg, and is lured back to the castle so the entire surviving cast can be in on the big finish.

There seems to be no other reason to lure the dragon back to the castle, except for the off chance she'll roast old Fastrad---which, of course, she does. The dragon also kills the G-Man and sets more people afire before our heroes vanquish her. King Wednesday's men retake the castle and everyone who lives, lives more or less happily ever after.

In an epilogue, Silas (looking better groomed) has returned the forest, where Medina tracks him down, and they begin smooching. Awwwww. In the very last scene, we see a new dragon egg headed through space. What could it mean??

Comment: The movie suffered from the predictable disease of fiscal anemia. Or perhaps more accurately, the money wasn't spent where it should have been. The dragons were terrific (although a nitpicker would note that the dragons' wings did not fill with air on the downstroke, as they should have, but remained slack----tsk, tsk). But a movie about medieval warriors really calls for a cast of thousands. I realize that's expensive, but are cgi warriors really more expensive than cgi dragons? Or than a few more human extras? Fastrad's assault on Wednesday's castle looked kind of pathetic, given that they crept through broad daylight with twenty men.

There were entirely too many shots of men being catapulted around, and too many shots of people burning. (Apparently no one ever thought of beating out flames with snow, dirt, or clothing until the Industrial Revolution, and "Stop, Drop, and Roll" was not invented until the 1950s. Also, apparently everyone wore clothing soaked in gasoline in those days, despite the fact that it was not discovered for centuries.)

Time wasted on stunts was especially frustrating because the movie had a bad case of the dreaded Are You in This Movie, Too? syndrome. For example, when the team of dragonslayers first goes into the forest, they have a leader named Oafeus (yeah, it may be Orpheus, but I like this better). Oafeus gets himself killed right away in a very stupid manner, and we're supposed to feel sad, even though we really have no idea who he is (well, I sure didn't). Later, when the slayer team regroups after a battle, our principals have a little pow-wow, but lurking far in the background are about four or five other people. Who are they? Catering? Grips? I assume they're supposed to be part of the slayer team, but they don't actually get lines or their faces on camera. Couldn't they have just stood a little behind the principals? Do you get more money if you can be recognized on camera?

Then again, when the ballista is destroyed we know that Nissa is dead only because Ling tells us. That was a prime opportunity for a poignant death scene, of someone we actually could care about. But, no, we had more catapulting to do.

I never figured out who the heck the G-Man was supposed to be, either, so we were neither able to fear him or cheer when the dragon bit off his head and blood squirted from his neck (er, assuming that was him). (Nice touch, that.)

There is a tiresome Taming of the Shrewish quality to the relationship between Silas and Medina. She's bossy and imperious, and he's mouthy and insolent. They spend most of the movie bitching at each other until she has her totally uncharacteristic breakdown. And, of course, at the end they are in love, to absolutely no one's surprise.

I don't point this out to denigrate Dragon Storm (though I might as well since I'm here), but simply to note how very much worse this would have been in the past. In a movie from the Forties or Fifties she would have gone out of her way to be cold and demanding, since she was subconsciously aware of her natural subordinate role. He would've taunted and mocked her, to let her know that he knew he was really the boss. Then some crisis would occur, and she'd have gone all gooey in his arms. (In the Seventies and Eighties, she would've been a silly, spoiled, scantily-clad princess, but otherwise it would've been the same). In this movie, the princess is just being the princess (that is, in the sense of a female prince) and Silas is a cynical jerk to everyone---he's not singling her out.

So this movie's version of this threadbare device isn't nearly as bad as it could've been, but it is a little surprising that it's survived into the present. Medina's breakdown occurs very close to the end of the movie, and so there really isn't much time to become all gooey and helpless.

Dragon Storm is riddled with humor. Some of the dialog is very snappy indeed, and most of the comic bits come off well, but they are oddly embedded in the movie. Even in a very dramatic movie you may want to have some comic relief, but instead of comic relief, we have a movie that can't seem to make up its mind whether it wants to be serious, or a spoof. For example, in places Rhys Davies seemed to be playing King Dr. Zachary Smith. This would've been great, but then it was hard to take him seriously as the evil, treacherous Fastrad. Remember, you can have the evil King Dr. Smith, or you can have the ridiculous King Dr. Smith, but you can't have both.

My favorite scene is when Fastrad receives the egg and is just tickled pink that his loyal subjects (whom he has royally screwed over) love him so as to offer him mysterious, ugly, smelly things. This is a really very funny scene; Rhys Davies seems to be having a good time. The whole movie should've been like this.

"Fastrad" is either pronounced Fastrad, Fostered, or Fastard (rhymes with bastard), depending on who's doing the pronouncing.

As always, these movies offer a version of Where's Waldo, called Spot the Rankest Actor. There's the big dark-haired guard in the beginning, who laughs at the idea of dragons. Is that him? How about the really cute dark-haired guy who's sitting with Fastrad before the dragons attack? When the dark-haired Medina appeared, my boyfriend asked, "Is that him?" Hmmmm....naawww...too short.

UPDATE: See here.

Grades:
Dragons A-
Mention of Hedgehogs A++++++
Heads bitten off B+ (if you like that sort of thing)
Showing restraint in the sexy scene A
Showing no restraint in use of catapults D+
Pyroporno D
Overall grade C

After I wrote most of this I went over Jeff's posts about the movie. Merlin looked awfully familiar, and I thought he might have been Michael Gross of Family Ties and Tremors, so I looked to see if Jeff had mentioned Gross being in the movie (no). In this way I found some of the character names. Felgercarb is actually named Theldag, and Merlin is actually Remmegar, and is played by Richard Wharton. Also, Nissa is Nessa. I could've gone back and corrected them, of course, but I liked mine better.

For more hot behind-the-scenes dragon action, scroll through the February and March archives of Sofia Sideshow. Dates are approximately Feb. 6th to Mar. 7th.

Monday, January 19, 2004



The Retro Christmas



Other than the filthy lucre of toppled totalitarian regimes, it was a very retro Christmas around here. Niles loaded me down with retro picture books. For example, Lileks suggested All-American Ads of the 30s. I'll get around to that one day, no doubt, but for now I got All-American Ads of the 60s and 50s. On page 397 of the 60s book there's an ad for RCA TVs featuring Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock. That's a prime reason I wanted this book.

The ads in general are gorgeous. They were from an age when illustration (rather than photography) was still widely used, and many of them are in glorious color (or, giving decorating styles of the era, not-so-glorious color). Some of the clothing and interior decorating, which were so cutting edge then, seem charmingly old-fashioned to modern eyes. My favorites are the ads, usually for televisions, showing futuristic houses. In the future, we will all have enormous living rooms with walls of glass (apparently we won't worry about the neighbors looking in), almost no furniture or decorations, and little tiny TVs. Well, they seem tiny today.

In an earlier Bleat (see the bottom of the page), Lileks grumbles about the snotty tone of the introductions. I haven't read those yet.

Taschen publishes a bunch o' books which are nothing more than accumulations of old ads organized around some theme, like the Kitchen Kitsch book I got
and wrote about last year. There's usually an introduction, and that's it for added text. Another of the books is Future Perfect, which I got for my birthday. The graphics for it generally weren't taken from ads, but from old pulp magazines. I was disappointed in Future Perfect, since most of the pictures were of a common, primitive style that isn't very interesting to me.

I also got their book See the World, a collection of old travel ads, and Mexicana, a collection of advertising graphics with Mexican themes. See the World was OK; had an ad for the Andrea Doria. I've only glanced at Mexicana---looks gorgeous though.

Also under the tree was a non-Taschen book, Southern California in the '50s. I've only glanced through it, but it promises to be a rich vein of tailfinned cars, Googie architecture, and rich, Kodachrome colors. I was born after the '50s were over, 2000 miles from Southern California, and somehow that culture spread to the Midwest and spoke to me. I've always considered those pointy, swoopy buildings to be the promise of the future we were supposed to have, dammit, and never did. Well, I suppose it's never too late to begin THE FUTURE!

Speaking of Googie and THE FUTURE!, it's surprising how much "tiki", a (faux?) Polynesian style of architecture / decor echoed (or influenced) the space-age style. (In fact, the main graphic at the Googie link above includes a giant tiki!) If you don't know what I'm talking about (don't let it bother you; I never do), go look in The Book of Tiki, another Taschen book. It's a guide to all things Tiki, from architecture to food and (especially) drink. For a quick overview of Tiki (focusing primarily on drinks), see this website, the Tiki News. I'm halfway through The Book of Tiki; it's informative, but a bit annoying. For one thing, it approaches the subject from the perspective of an anthropologist exploring the influence of Tiki over American civilization in (at its peak) the '50s and '60s. This conceit can be patronizing and annoying unless the author can convey the fact that he's part of the culture too. This one's not doing it that well, and besides, I can sense that he's tiring of the role, if not of the subject.

Finally, there's Exotiquarium, which is subtitled Album Art from the Space Age. This book is nothing like I expected.

It's not about space-themed album covers from the '50s and '60s, although there are some of those. It's not about album covers whose graphics reflect a Googie sensibility, although there are some of those. And it's not about past album covers that provoke modern viewer to wonder what they were putting in the drinks in the '50s---in short, it's not an album cover version of The Gallery of Regrettable Food. There are some pretty ghastly covers, but the book doesn't spend a lot of time noting their ghastliness. Instead...

(What's that? You want to see some of the goofy covers? Well the book's not really...oh, all right. You realize some of the goofier ones won't be found on the web.

Here's the cover of Blast Off! by Ferrante and Teicher. I always thought F&T were dull "easy listening" types, but the book says they did a lot of "experimental" music in their early days.

Then there's the racially and sexually-risque (for the times) Tabu from Ralph Font and his Orchestra, whoever they were.

Then there's Melachrino's Music for Daydreaming, which could also be titled "What the cops found." Creepy. Melachrino had a ton of "Music for ..." titles, including Music for Dining, Music for Reading, and Music to Work or Study By, the last not in Exotiquarium.

As for Port Said and East of Suez, all I can say is, "Not Safe for Work" (especially the former).

And then there's From Another World by Sid Bass, aka Lucy in Space, and Strings for a Space Age. Note the importance of the woman in this composition. (Hint: We gotta have a dame!)

For other outer space offerings see here. This site has a ton of goofy album covers, amusing comments, and reviews of almost everyone of these albums the author has dug up from thrift stores and flea markets.

Now can we please get back to the book? Thank you.)

Instead, what the book is about is the musical scene at the dawn of the Space Age, although space itself is only involved peripherally. The history of the record is recapped (piecemeal), especially the advent of the LP. Why you could get 20, 30 minutes of music on one side of an LP. You didn't have to keep getting up to change the music. There's also the invention of stereo. Liberty Records claimed that on Sandi, by Sandi Sonsai, "And if you are listening to this record in stereo, you will actually see Sandi dancing across the floor in front of you." (By which I suppose they mean they unnecessarily jiggered with the voice so as to have it dart from speaker to speaker. I wonder how many people were disappointed that they couldn't "actually see" Sandi.)

By the way, enjoy Living Stereo, a 1958 film short from the Prelinger Archive, describing how stereo records actually work. I didn't know, and thought it was very interesting. (You whippersnappers who have never owned a vinyl record, or anything that wasn't in stereo, may be less interested.) Or, instead, you can look at A Revolutionary New Triumph in Tape, which includes Living Stereo, plus a presentation of the four-track tape cartridge. The four-track was a giant audio cassette tape, bigger, I think, than a video tape today. These are extremely pink movies.

The book also discusses the rise of "Easy Listening" music, which was intended to be used as sonic wallpaper---background music. Hence all the Music for ... titles. (Hey, and some people think Brian Eno invented that concept.)

Plus, there are sections on the foreign music trends of the time (Polynesian, Latin, and Middle Eastern), pioneers of electronic music, and music to furnish your space-age bachelor pad by.

But don't take my word for it, go visit Space Age Pop Music Page, which will tell you all about it. As far as I can tell, it has no connection to Exotiquarium, but covers much of the same ground. After reading the book, I had a great hankering to get hold of some of this music. It turns out many of them are still (or again) in print. If you go to the individual artists' biography pages, you find Amazon links for many of them (like this page for Les Baxter). And don't despair if you there aren't any, because some of them are still available; you just have to type the name in Amazon's search field.

In other words, we had a cool space-age cocktail Christmas, baby.
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Saturday, January 17, 2004



The HELL???



What is THIS SHIT?:

The Hubble Space Telescope will be allowed to degrade and eventually become useless, as NASA changes focus to President Bush's plans to send humans to the moon, Mars and beyond, officials said Friday.

NASA canceled all space shuttle servicing missions to the Hubble, which has revolutionized the study of astronomy with its striking images of the universe.

I wondered about this the other day, when the blogosphere was gushing about Bush's Mars plan. (Frankly I was surprised that all you conservatives had that attitude. Conservatives, as we all know, want to keep their money in the bank, whereas liberals don't like space exploration because "there are so many problems down here on Earth".) Manned planetary exploration is swell. I'm all for it. The problem is, it often takes money away from unmanned missions which yield much more scientific payoff. I don't see that there's any reason this should happen, but in practice that's how it turns out.

Ah, but that's not exactly what's going on:

John Grunsfeld, NASA's chief scientist, said NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe made the decision to cancel the fifth space shuttle service mission to the Hubble when it became clear there was not enough time to conduct it before the shuttle is retired.

...

The president's plan also called for the space shuttle to be retired by 2010. Virtually all of the shuttle's remaining flights would be used to complete construction of the International Space Station.

There we go! They can't spare a shuttle mission for Hubble because the shuttle's going to be busy building the Space Station before we abandon it (another mistake, but that's another story).

This is despite the fact that the next servicing mission was due to take place in the middle of next year, not after 2010 when the shuttle will be retired. So why can't they spare one lousy shuttle?:


One reason for the cancellation of repairs, Grunsfeld said, was the requirement that a backup space shuttle would have to be primed for launch when a space shuttle was sent to service the Hubble, a requirement set after the Columbia accident. NASA officials decided then that a backup would have to be ready to help any shuttle going anywhere but the International Space Station.

In other words, if the shuttle goes to the ISS, we don't have to have a rescue shuttle ready; but if it goes anywhere else, we do. The Houston Chronicle points out that:

...the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which probed last February's shuttle disaster that killed seven astronauts, said NASA should not fly the remaining shuttles until it figures out how to inspect and repair the spacecraft in orbit.

NASA is working on plans to do that on missions where the shuttle docks at the international space station.

This is the "nail clipper" approach to space flight: we can't let so much as a nail clipper get through. This kind of thinking---only go when it's absolutely safe---is not going to Mars, people. Bank on that.

My sources within the shadowy and secretive gamma ray community are not surprised, as the same sort of thing happened to the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. My source says that NASA just didn't want to spend the money to keep GRO going, but it's kind of hard to imagine that the small, by NASA standards, amount of money required to keep GRO going was the cause. You'll note that the nail clipper effect was the stated reason there, too.

There are those who say that NASA is an engineering organization, not a science organization, and occasionally the engineers forget about the science which is the raison d'etre of their engineering. This is hard for me to believe, but perhaps it's in play here. A while back there was a proposal to put all of space sciences under NASA---many are currently funded by the National Science Foundation. (I thought it should have been the other way around.) This plan was dropped, but we dodged a bullet there.

It's especially hard to believe since we're admittedly gushing money on the Space Station, which we're going to abandon once it's completed. We have to do this because of our international agreements. Hey, I thought Bush was a unilateral cowboy! What gives?

Here's a fun quote which is unintentionally supportive of my thesis:

"This is a sad day," said Grunsfeld, but he said the decision "is the best thing for the space community."

The space community and the science community are different entities, with occasional overlaps. It might be the best thing for the space community, but the astronomical community has just taken a big hit.

It's possible that this decision could be reversed, if enough people were outraged. But that didn't work for the GRO (of course, the GRO was hardly a household name).

In any case, those of you hoping for "My Granddaughter Went to Mars and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt" shirts in your dotage better count on getting airbags for your wheelchairs instead.

More rantage as I think of it.

Tuesday, January 13, 2004



Myst Music



Another thing about the Myst games is that they have beautiful atmospheric music. You can buy the soundtrack on CD. Here is the lousy Myst soundtrack page, and here is the better Riven soundtrack page. Both sets of music were created by Robyn Miller, one of the brothers who created the games. (I think brother Rand played Atrus in the video portions of the games.)

I'm into the atmospheric music of Robert Rich and Steve Roach, and the Myst and Riven soundtracks contain much the same sort of music. I like to listen to Rich and Roach while I'm working; the harmony-less music keeps part of my brain from getting bored, so the other part can get some work done. If there's a tune, or singing, it distracts me.

The problem is, while Rich and Roach can fill an entire CD with about 6 pieces (or with one), the Myst and Riven pieces are very short. They're meant to cycle while you're in a particular spot in the game. They're played only once on each track of the CD, which means there are about 20 or 30 tracks per CD, and the constant starting and stopping is a little annoying. That means that they're not useful for working, so they don't get listened to very much.

Now the soundtrack to Exile (some downloads, including one track, there---download the trailer if your bandwidth allows; here's the Amazon page) is a little different. That was not composed by Robyn Miller, and the music is a little more traditional. The opening theme is breathtaking, but unfortunately very short (as are the others on the CD).

Several weeks ago Niles and I were at the movies, watching the trailer for this movie, when my hair began to stand on end. I gripped Niles's arm. That music! It was the opening bars of the Exile theme. (In the Peter Pan trailer the Exile theme plays from the beginning to the point where Peter tells Wendy she can never go home again.) At first I thought maybe they were making a Myst movie; when I found it was only dumb old Peter Pan---didn't they do that not too long ago?---I was very irritated. Get your stupid movie away from my beautiful music!

We don't have the Uru music yet. I don't remember its being particularly compelling.

For Rabid Myst Fans:

I meant to mention this at the bottom of the previous post, but it's long, so I'll put it here so it won't get lost. Go to this page, which discusses the all-important topic of what really happened to Sirrus and Achenar. Scroll down to the second post by asa160, to the end of the second paragraph: "...makes duplication possible." Look at the little animated emoticon. Kewl.

Usually I hate those things with a passion---worse than the text only ones. I'll pardon this one.

Monday, January 12, 2004



The Rubber Glove Treatment



Well, time to get out the flashlight and the rubber gloves, and fact-check CBS's nether regions.

Both LGF and InstaPundit point to this Power Line post about "revelations" that author Ron Suskind made on 60 Minutes, about a document given to him by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts". (Note that Power Line gets the title slightly wrong, calling it "Iraq Oilfield" instead of "Iraqi Oilfield"; this matters when you're trying to do a Google search.)

The teaser story for this 60 Minutes report says clearly that this is a Pentagon document, dated March of 2001. The implication is that the Administration was at that time already plotting to overthrow Saddam. Power Line points out that Judicial Watch obtained these documents months ago from Cheney's energy task force, and not from the Pentagon. (I gather that this is the "hoax" part of their title).

But CBS knew that, because they had a story on it in July (in the "other developments" section, fourth item down):

Documents from Vice President Dick Cheney's 2001 energy task force include a map of Iraq's oilfields and a list of international oil companies labeled "foreign suitors for Iraqi oilfield contracts." The panel also had similar maps and lists for other oil-producing states. Their purpose to the task force was unclear. The documents were obtained by Judicial Watch, a nonprofit group suing to force the release of task force documents.

So CBS not only knew these were not Pentagon documents, but knew they contained information about other countries besides Iraq. Power Line points out that the presence of the information about other countries casts doubt on the idea that the documents were intended as precursors to an invasion of Iraq.

I stopped watching 60 Minutes, formerly one of my favorite programs, about a decade ago, when I no longer could stomach Leslie Stahl's obviously carefully-rehearsed outrage. So I didn't see the show; maybe they called Suskind on this point. If not, I want to know whether CBS ever checks its own database for relevant information. Remember, this is why we need Big Media: quality control.

(Daniel Drezner has part of the 60 Minutes transcript for this episode, and there's no mention of it in the portion he reproduces.)

I posted a similar comment over at LGF (the comment has a roundabout link to the July CBS story; I've got the direct link above), but apparently no one thought it was interesting. I also emailed Glenn, and while he was kind enough to note another question I had, he didn't think the CBS part was interesting either. So I figured I'd post it here.

I still don't understand what the big deal is. If you believe that Bush was slavering for a reason to invade Iraq and grab all that juicy oil, then it hardly matters whether the document belonged to Hell's Cadre at the Pentagon, or was the property of Halliburton's own Saruman. Similar information on Saudi Arabia and the UAE only means that they better watch out, or the Bushitler will get them, too!

Saturday, January 10, 2004



Do You Uru?



This is a [long and boring, as it turns out] review of the game Uru, which is one of the sequels to Myst, launched ten years (!) ago. We just finished playing it last night.

First, a recap for the innocent.

Myst was the first game in the series, revolutionary in its day for its beautiful, realistically-rendered graphics. It was also unusual in that it did not involve either killing or dying, and in fact you were never sure, until the very end, exactly what you were doing there. This was my favorite thing about Myst: the object of the game is to discover the object of the game. In that respect, it was more like a novel than a game---a novel in which you had to solve a puzzle in order to get to the next chapter. This was brilliant, but it did have the flaw that, once past the first part, it was more puzzle than novel.

In Myst, you encounter the dysfunctional family of Atrus. Atrus is (almost) the last of the D'ni, a race of people who have learned the art of creating worlds (which they call Ages, confusingly) by writing books called "linking books". You find several of these as you wander around the island of Myst, and use them to travel to the other Ages. Atrus has two sons, Sirrus and Achenar, whom he mistrusts.

At the end of the game (assuming you do it right), you meet Atrus himself. In the second game, Riven, Atrus sends you on an explicit mission: to trick and entrap Atrus's mad father, Gehn, and rescue Atrus's wife, Catherine, whom Gehn has imprisoned. In the third game, Exile, you are visiting Atrus and Catherine when a man appears through a linking book, steals the new book Atrus is working on (creating a new Age for the D'ni to live in) and escapes through another book. You go after him, discovering that he's Saavedro, a man who thinks his world was destroyed by Atrus's sons. He's quite, quite mad, and violent, and he's had 20 years alone to plot revenge. You have to get the book back from him and then do something with him.

Myst had three endings that I remember, two of them losing endings. Riven had several losing endings. Exile has two winning endings and several losing ones, but only one of the winning endings is the "right" one. One of the losing endings has you whacked with a hammer, which was the only real violence in the games. As far as I know,

Now, for Uru. Uru is a vast improvement on the other games as far as looks go. Myst was "just" a slide show, and Riven a more beautiful slide show, in Exile you got to pan from side to side or up and down, as if you were standing in one spot and moving your head. All of these games are in "first person", that is, you see the environment as you would if you were really walking through it.

In Uru, you can create a character for yourself, choosing from a number of different skin and hair colors, hair and clothing styles, and facial features. You then are able to see this character walking around and interacting with the environment via a "third person" view, very much like a movie camera. There's also a first person mode you can switch to if you want to see something up close.

This has good and bad aspects. Firstly, of course, you get a sense of a real three-dimensional environment (in the other games you're trying to look at a 3-D place through a 2-D screen); this adds greatly to the feeling of reality of the world, but of course in reality you don't watch yourself do things, so that detracts from the immersive experience. There's a lot more physical action in this game than in previous ones. You have to navigate narrow walkways and jump from place to place, and it's almost impossible to do that through the first person view, the way they have set it up (you can't see your feet).

But another annoyance of this mode is the way the view changes. Sometimes, when your character turns around, the viewpoint shifts with it; sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, you have to go stomping all over the room to see if you can get a glimpse of what you're looking for. But even worse is the fact that sometimes the camera viewpoint shifts rapidly from the back of your character to the front. This can be dizzying, especially if it happens in a spot where you have to fiddle to get your guy in a position to jump (it was bad enough in the other games, fiddling to get the exact pixel you need to click to manipulate something). Then the point of view swirls back and forth, and can be very annoying, especially when your boyfriend is controlling the character and insists on doing it several times in a row.

Another annoyance is the inconsistency in what your character can do. Sometimes he can leap off short cliffs in a single bound, and sometimes he can't even get past a flimsy waist-high barrier. Very annoying.

There is one logical improvement in the game: in the previous games, using a linking book meant it dropped to the floor once you had vanished to the linked Age. This meant that whenever you went somewhere, you'd better carry a linking book back to the Age you came from, if you wanted to return, and then that book of course would be dropped and remain in the other Age when you did. In Uru, you have a "refuge" Age to return to, and the linking book to that Age is always permanently attached to your belt. When you link, you take the book with you. This is what you use when you've stupidly slipped into boiling lava or fallen off a cliff. You avoid dying that way, although getting back to where you were can be kind of tedious, due to loading time (the computer we used is barely adequate to the game; Niles was slightly disappointed he didn't have to buy a new computer to play the game).

The puzzles were also disappointing. When playing Myst, I think we had to consult a "cheat" guide once, and that turned out to be because we couldn't see something in the dark (these games can be very dark). I think we did it once or twice in Riven. But we had to constantly look up solutions in Uru. I'm not sure if this is because the puzzles were harder in Myst, if we're just older and more impatient, or because the puzzles were not very rational.

Puzzles in the Myst series are generally one of two types: those requiring a certain minimum level of mechanical intuition (machines driven by water or steam power are very common in the games), and those whose solution is suggested by something else in the game---a journal entry or a painting or inscription. The latter type of puzzle suggests that the D'ni universe is filled both with elaborate locks, and owners who cannot remember the combination and need to write down cryptic reminders. However, since anyone who comes across the reminders can figure out the combination, it also suggests that the average D'ni wasn't very smart.

Anyway, it's the latter type of puzzle that was most frustrating, since their solutions in Uru were often not at all intuitive. In one puzzle we solved most of it, but the final piece involved doing something we would never have thought of in a million years. We finally had to look at a cheat guide. Another puzzle was nearly as bad in that respect, but was made worse by the fact that the form of the puzzle allowed for so many more fun and logical puzzles!

But the really disappointing thing about Uru is the story. There really isn't one. There is no goal at all to the game. In Myst the object was to figure out the object---in Uru there doesn't seem to be an object. You merely solve a given number of puzzles and you're done. Oh, there's a bit of stage business at the end to suggest that you've actually achieved something, but you haven't.

Part of this is because Uru is only the first part of what is supposed to be an on-line game. Several aspects of the game---some of the Ages you link to, the journals you read, etc---are only really useful (potentially) in the on-line version. But, of course, you don't know for sure which those are, so you have to poke through everything.

An on-line version of the game does not appeal to me at all. When Myst came out, it was criticized for having too little interaction with other characters. I hate that in a game; I don't much like interacting with people in real life. In real life there are things you should not do (like taking something from someone, or wandering around their home uninvited), and yet in some games that's exactly what you're supposed to do. Phooey.

In Uru you come across the detritus of the "D'ni Research Corporation", who have left research notes (scrawled in grade school notebooks, just like I do my scientific work, sure) and orange traffic cones and sawhorses scattered about. I feel like they're trespassing on my turf. I prefer to think of myself wandering through the games as a lone Indiana Jones-type explorer, not as part of a huge corporation with reports to write and budget items to justify (I get enough of that when I'm working).

Then there's Atrus's daughter, Yeesha. Her brothers were crazy, her grandpa was crazy, and she doesn't seem too stable either. Poor Atrus. You get to hear recorded messages from her, wittering on about the big bad D'ni, and how they were very very mean to the non-D'ni, the people living in the Ages they created/found, the "least", as Yeesha calls them. Yeesha also brags vaguely about how she was such a good writer of linking books, a lot better than those stupid old D'ni Guildmasters. At the end of the game, Yeesha says that "now the least will become great". And then they'll find some different "least", and start oppressing them, thus continuing the cycle of life. The design of the game includes a lot of faux-Native American iconography, just to make sure you get it. Sheesh, Yeesha.

We never got our Relto tree to grow, despite the rain. Don't know what we were supposed to do.

In short, Uru was not a very satisfying installment in the (I presume) series, and I don't think much of the idea of the on-line, communal game (for which there will be a monthly fee, natch).

But I already miss playing it.


My favorite game in the series is Riven. I worship Riven. I want to live in Riven (except it was destroyed at the end of the game). The non-mechanical puzzles in Riven seemed organic to the created world. Those puzzles usually involved the religion or culture of the natives, and so did not seem as artificial and contrived as many of the puzzles in the other games.

More than that, the world was beautifully realized. The Riven Age was a series of five sunny desert islands. One island contained a sacred grove with astonishing plants, including some peaceful, glowing mushrooms. It was nice, after wandering around the hot, barren island, to come into that grove. I wanted to stay there forever, and even after completing the game I used to go in sometimes and wander around.

And the more artificial objects---Gehn's workshop things, for example---still have a rough-hewn, primitive look to them, which matches the look of the native areas of the island. I like this look so well that I now judge potential decorative items and furniture by it. "That's Riven," I'll say when looking at furniture. "Well, it's pretty, but I wouldn't want it. Not Riven." If I had a tremendous amount of dough, I'd do a whole house in Riven. For right now, I can't even afford furniture, Riven or not. The best I can do is buy doodads. Recently, I found some Rivenish pottery. Turns out it's a whole style, called raku pottery. Here's an example. Now that's Riven. (Actually, this is Riven, in a slideshow. Don't read the captions! There are spoilers.)

Maybe it's time to go back.

Friday, January 09, 2004



Silly Lefty Knnnnniggits



Former Python Terry Jones has a book and TV series out, called Medieval Lives. Niles and I are big Monty Python fans, and so he taped the shows for later viewing.

I was much less eager to see them, knowing that Jones is a lefty moron. Take for instance this childishly insulting take on the then-impending Iraq war. I feared his views would taint the TV show. Jones did not fail to disappoint.

So, the first installment we see is on knights. You may have heard that knights had to abide by a code of chivalry---defending the weak, widders n orphinks and damsels and such like. This was society's way of soaking up the extra testosterone sloshing around in knightdom, which is what forced them to be all warlike.

[It would be cruel of me, at this point, to note that Jones's delivery suggests he does not have this problem.]

But mostly knights ignored all that chivalry crap, in favor of head-choppin'.

The Crusades---on which Jones has a previous book / series---are described thusly (paraphrased): The Pope decreed that henceforth killing was not a sin if the victims were non-Christians. So thousands of young knights poured eastward to the Holy Land to chop some heads. Before, killing required that a knight do penance; now, the killing was the penance."

And that, my friends, was the entire motivation for the Crusades: head-choppin'. And an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.

But it wasn't just the simplisme that grated, it was the judging of 11th century people by 21st century standards. Oh, they were so warlike, those brutes! And all this religious nonsense! Didn't they know that God is dead? What's all the fuss about? Switch to decaf!

Aside from that, the show was filled with Gilliam-type animations and weird visual and sound effects, which got old real fast. As I told Niles, I actually felt less well-informed after I'd seen it, as if the show had sucked knowledge from my brain.

This review says that Jones has a degree in medieval studies, though this bio says his degree is in English. The review notes the same failings I did, but ends up recommending it. Right now, Niles is in the living room watching the next installment by himself.

In short, if you want an entertaining and informative look at the Middle Ages, you're better off watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Thursday, January 08, 2004



Super Star



Today, Steven Den Beste notes a story about the possible role of supernovae in the Ordovician extinction, 440 million years ago. It's suggested that the supernova exploded within 10,000 light years from Earth, zapping the Earth with gamma rays and destroying the ozone layer. He then points out that the massive, dying star Eta Carinae is 9,000 light years from Earth.

Now, 10,000 light years is a hell of a long way for gamma rays to travel and still screw up the Earth's atmosphere. Steven has overlooked a subtle but important point. From the story:

[Adrian Melott, of U. Kansas] said a gamma ray beam striking the Earth would break up molecules in the stratosphere, causing the formation of nitrous oxide and other chemicals that would destroy the ozone layer and shroud the planet in a brown smog.

The operative word here is beam. The strength of radiation emitted in a uniform sphere decreases as the inverse of the square of the distance travelled. In other words, the strength of the radiation at any point 10,000 light years away from the source is one hundred millionth its strength at a point 1 light year away.

So an explosion would have to be pretty impressive to affect us 10,000 light years away. (This depends on your standard for "effect", so I don't know exactly how likely it is.) However, there's a way to get around this, and that's by "beaming". That is, instead of blowing its energy promiscuously in all directions, the supernova releases it in (relatively tight) beams. That way, the same amount of energy is released in a much smaller area, so the energy density arriving at Earth would be much higher, and deadlier.

The thing is, since the beams cover a smaller area, the chances of being right in the beam's path are very small. In the case of Eta Carinae, an explosion would almost certainly be channeled along the axis of the current outflow (that is, the axis of the two clouds in the picture Steven reproduces), rather than directed toward us (not that we might not see some of it, if the beam opening angle is big enough).

Also, not all supernovae beam their energy (that we know of: if the beam is at right angles to us, we probably won't see it).

Worry about Osama under your bed if you must, but don't worry too much about Eta Carinae.

Monday, January 05, 2004



I HAVE SADDAM'S MONEY!!



It's time to come clean: I have Saddam's money.

At least 350 dinars of it.

That was part of my Christmas present. Money. Saddam's money. Nazi money. Commie money. Tojo's money.

I collect foreign coins, and to a smaller extent, paper money. When I was a kid I started with some that my father and uncles had given to me, acquired during their time in the military. (Yes, by LOOTING the world, ten cents at a time.) Later I bought some from the Littleton Coin and Stamp Company (still running). They had some sort of coin club, where each month or so you'd get some coins to look at before you bought them. It was a big thrill to get the little envelopes of shiny coins---Qatar! Saudi Arabia! El Salvador! Chile! Australia!---all those exotic places I would never go.

And during the past decade or so, when I finally did visit foreign lands, I'd kept samples of the currency, intending to add it to my collection. I just never got around it it, so the money ended up in old film holders and Crystal Light containers and cardboard boxes. Until a couple months ago, when I uncovered my childhood coin collection in an archaeological dig.

Once I'd organized those coins, I turned my attention to acquiring new ones, and asked Niles for some dinero for Christmas. Prompted, I think, by the fall of Saddam, I asked for (mostly) war money: Saddam's money, like this 250 dinar note with the old buzzard's mug on it, looking only mildly scary. Of his own initiative, Niles also bought some new, post-Saddam notes, like this 250 dinar note which shows a nice tasteful astrolabe and ziggurat, and this 50 dinar note, which shows a grain silo. Da, comrade, even our money reflects glorious people's revolution in new Iraq!

I swear, there's a PhD thesis to be done---if one hasn't already---on iconography in paper currency. I've just spent quite a while sifting through the offerings on this site, and noting the various tropes used. Your Latin American nations, at least until recently, seem to go in for the same look US currency has, with grim colors and late Victorian scrollwork. Former French colonies in Africa prefer notes of great beauty, while other African nations go the socialist realism route, and stick tractors on their currency, as in this example from Ethiopia. Nothing says "Third World" like tractors, dams, or factories (or grain silos, Iraqis) on your money. No, not even a portrait of the beloved dictator for life. (You know, I couldn't find a note with a portrait of Ghadaffi, Kim Il Jong, or Castro on it, although Cuban notes sometimes have pictures of good old Che. Are some dictators for life more shy than others?)

But a lot of your more modern money is going toward the generic European look, as in this French 200 franc note: bright colors, abstract designs, random pictures of stuff, and a famous dead guy (in this case, Gustave Eiffel). Of course France is using euros now, as in this note, which is even more generic, if possible.

Back to Iraq, though...I read the other day that 6000 dinars is currently worth $3.00, so the new notes Niles bought will buy you about 15 cents American. I'm pretty sure he paid somewhere between $5 and $10 for them, say 50 times their face value. Nice racket, currency dealing.

I really wanted this beauty from 1986, which has an image of the Martyrs' Monument (a monument to the Iran-Iraq war), one of Baghdad's finer examples of fascist architecture. (I like it.) But the dealer was out of that one.

And speaking of fascists, I got some Nazi coins. The top of this page shows the motif of Nazi coins, particularly the 1939 5 reichsmark at the right. It astonishes me that the swastika, a party symbol, usurped national symbols like flags and insignia on coins, and so quickly too. Same thing with the hammer & sickle in the USSR (got the last coins issued by the USSR; no h&s). Not to mention that it's shocking to come across a swastika on a coin. You almost think it will burn you if you touch it, so powerful is the association with evil.

Scroll down that page for the interesting Japanese invasion money. These are very pretty notes with printing in English or Dutch (and Japanese). This was money printed to be used (as the caption says) in SE Asian nations the Japanese conquered in WWII. (I say "printed to be used" rather than "used" because the notes are very crisp, and may well never have been used). The $10 bill pictured was meant for use in the Philippines.

(Among the money my relatives gave me long ago, with which I started my collection, were some military scrip notes like these, used by the military in occupied Japan, thus completing the circle and allowing me to end this post.)