The Man From Mars

Never have I wanted so badly to not finish a book. And Sandworms of Dune doesn’t count. That I don’t want to finish because it’s garbage. I don’t want to finish Stranger In a Strange Land (by Robert A. Heinlein) because I don’t want it to be over. It’s my new favorite book. I’ve been saying that a lot lately. First it was Neuromancer, and I don’t know what it will be next. But right now it’s Stranger.

Before I get started, a word of caution. If you are a Republican, or any other breed of evangelical Christian, don’t read this book. It will seem like an attack on your religion and you people respond with claws to anything you mis-represent as threatening. In short, your religion will not allow you to enjoy this book. That makes me sad (because I want everybody to enjoy this book), but it is nonetheless true. Prove me wrong. I will happily recant (that’s an invitation, not a challenge. No claws, please). If you happen to be that rare case of Human who has both religion and an open mind, read this book. You will like it.

I was reading on the toilet just now when what it is that I love about this book hit me. The theme is interesting, the philosophies discussed are intriguing. But that’s true of any good science fiction. What I love about Stranger In a Strange Land is that it’s charming. It’s full of little human moments (or, at least, there are enough of them for me to find it remarkable). Like Firefly (“you’re nice too, Captain.” “No I’m not. I’m a mean, old man.”). From Jubal’s “secretaries” throwing him into the pool, to Michael’s inevitable initial fascination with and mis-understanding of religion (and Jubal’s natural discomfort at discussing/explaining it), the characters are real, and act like it.

Heinlein (who somehow seems to avoid the common pitfall of modern literature: imbuing each of his characters with the same voice) introduces you to his characters the same way a good movie director does. He doesn’t present you with a dossier and say “This is Michael Bluth.” He throws you into their lives in media res and lets you figure out for yourself what kind of people they are. And you fall in love with them. When you discover something about them that doesn’t quite make sense with your picture of “who they are,” you don’t feel confounded. You feel rewarded, just like you do when you discover something about a real person that deepens your understanding of them.

For me, this was true even of the characters I didn’t like (Ben Caxton and Duke), and the ones you’re not supposed to like (Secretary General Douglas and his wife). I found myself sympathizing with them, because they are all whole persons, with real motivations and shortcomings.

This isn’t like Dune, and it isn’t like Ender’s Game. You’ll think it’s like Brave New World or Fahrenheit 451, but I promise it’s not. While it certainly has themes in common with all of those (mostly) great books, Stranger In a Strange Land is a unique work of classic science fiction. It plays with your mind, and if you can escape your preconceptions of righteousness, you will enjoy it.

Tron Legacy

 

Image via Wikipedia

 

Watch the video. Punch it up to 720p and full-screen it. You will thank me.

Now watch this one. Crank this sum-bitch all the way up to 1080p. Do it.

Chills. I really want to go to bed right now, but I can’t. If you’re not pissing your pants after watching those videos, turn in your wings: you are grounded. Towards the end (of the first one) I actually forgot I was watching a trailer and died a little bit when it ended. Whether you’ve seen Tron or not (and you better have), you need to be excited about this movie. This is going to make Avatar look like Clerks. I wanna know why I’m not playing the video game already. Will the movie tie-in with Tron 2.0? Cause that game had thirty-two flavors of ass-kicking (most of them were chocolate). This is something that someone undoubtedly already knows and I will now promise to find out. And I will find out. I just probably won’t re-blog about it.

*sigh* Do I really have to wait until December? Well… I suppose I don’t HAVE to… But I will. And Mom, under no circumstances are you allowed to see this one in a regular theater. I forgive you for Avatar, but seeing Tron Legacy in anything less than a 3D actual IMAX would be like watching Lawrence of Arabia in standard definition in 4:3.

Here’s another video from Comic Con 2009. You don’t have to watch this one. It’s concept footage. Fun stuff, but not as exciting as the trailers. It’s part one. I didn’t watch part two.

iPad. *sigh*

 

First this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4

and this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuA_OUL91og&NR=1

Then this:

http://mashable.com/2010/01/30/amazon-macmillan/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Mashable+(Mashable)

Now this:

Two words: Battery life. The iPad has the battery life of a laptop, but is less useful than an iPhone. It can do everything the iPhone can do, but it can't make phone calls. So far as I have discovered, the only improvement in software is that the iPad will read ebooks.

This will not be "a long, drawn-out war." There will be no war of any kind. The Kindle is the best at what it does, and the iPad is just a big iPod Touch. The first time you take your iPad on an airplane and the battery dies, and you can't change it, you’ll remember how you could take your Kindle to the beach for a week and leave the charger at home. The war against the Kindle is over. The first time you load a webpage that is less than three years old on your iPad and you can't view flash content, the war against the netbook is over.

To be fair, the iPad will be successful, because Americans don’t care about functionality when something looks as cool as the iPhone. It’s a status symbol. Apple is cool. I own an iThing. I feel cool.

And Apple didn’t “change music” (referring to the above article). They didn’t create the MP3 player market. They didn’t catalyze an industry shift. When the iPod came on the scene, the digital music market was exactly where the e-book market is now. It was doing just fine until Apple decided people shouldn’t have quality portable music players. To quote PaulC, Apple doesn’t create markets. They destroy markets in their infancy. They did it to digital music players, and they did it to smart phones. Now they’re trying to do it to e-book readers. The difference with this market is that there is already a clearly-established champion opposing the iThing (and selling for about half the price).

I was excited about the iPad (just like my homeboy Adolf), but it's just the next in a decade-long line of disappointing Apple products. I really want to like Apple, because their devices are just so damn sexy. But they all fall far short of their competitors. I want an iPad. And I'll get one as soon as it's got a full web browser and a decent battery. iPod/Phone has outlived its coolness to me. The music player on my phone is more flexible. And I can use any headphones I want.

I’m just so disappointed with Apple. They could easily have the entire market, but they settle for half of it. If they took their cool devices and imbued them with the added quality of being good devices, Android, Kindle, netbooks and Blackberry would go out of business. Also, Windows would have legitimate competition again (I hate that I love Windows). The iPad is just like the iPhone. It scores “mediocre” in everything it does (other than visually). I love that Apple is trying to put out an all-in-one device. But why must they water it down? I want so badly for iThings to be good as well as cool. I want to be cool enough to own an iThing. But until iThings are good enough to warrant my eye drifting beyond the death star-ish Apple logo, I guess I’m just not.

Bottom line: If the iPad was everything it could (easily) be, it would dominate two markets (e-book & netbook). If it was as good as it’s competitors in either of those markets, it would take ninety percent of that market instead of fifty (numbers manufactured based on my impressions of what people own), based on my observation that most people would rather have something that looks nicer but has the same functionality.

Everybody loves their iPod. Imagine how much they’d love them if they were as awesome as people think they are.

Google Olympics Calendar

It’s been a while since I’ve been excited about the Olympics, (totally missed Torino, barely aware of Beijing) but I am now. Particularly for the Canada vs. Norway hockey game on the 16th. Also looking forward to seeing a Canada-Czech final. We’ll see.

So Kerry and I sat down with the schedule to decide what we wanted to watch. We came up with hockey, skating (both fast and gay), ski-jump and curling (curling? Yep.). Well, this year there will be coverage on every flavor of NBC, as well as some overflow onto USA (they better not bump Burn Notice). So, while Kerry read me the TV listings, I drew up a rough chart on paper, from which I planned to later make a spreadsheet.

Turns out, the games go one for seventeen days. After about ten, my hand started to hurt. So I said “gimme that laptop,” and started making a spreadsheet. After messing around a bit with that, Kerry went to bed. So I started over. Now the first week of the schedule is on a new Google Calendar. That was easy. Tiny bit time consuming (just data entry), but super easy.

Anyway. Tomorrow (and Tuesday) I’ll be cleaning off my DVR to make room for all the games I don’t want to stay up late to watch. Everybody watch Martin Brodeur kick Norway’s ass on Tuesday. Then watch it again on Thursday.

Comes the Übervac

So Kerry has been wanting a new vacuum cleaner for a long time, and she’s had her eye on a Dyson. “Cool,” says I. We need a vacuum, and that one’s nifty. Go ahead. Get it. So she’s been waiting for one to go on sale, which it did, last week at Best Buy. I am now the proud owner of a Dyson DC25 Blueprint Limited Edition (that means it silver and white instead of grey and purple).

At first, I thought “we need a vacuum, and that’s the one you want, so go ahead and get it.” Whatever. It’s a vacuum cleaner. Yes, there’s some wicked cool science behind it, but I get as excited about vacuum cleaners (suck + trash can = vacuum cleaner) as I do about hammers (rock + handle = hammer). At least that’s how excited I used to get.

We got home from grocery shopping/Best Buy and, while Kerry put away the groceries, I assembled the new toy. From the moment I saw all the pieces and how they fit together (using the Über-intuitive lego-esque instruction sheet), I was excited. It’s been said before, and now by me: this is not a vacuum cleaner. This is the home cleaning machine.

Just to briefly sum up: It cleans both carpet and hard floors, has all the functionality of our old cleaner’s several attachments all rolled up into it’s two, is bagless, user-serviceable, and nice to look at. Putting this thing together made me feel like a Starfleet engineer. Everything locks right into place where it’s supposed to, no tools required. Every single piece can be (to a point) disassembled to check for blockages/clean. Later I’m gonna run it through the dishwasher. No reason, I just can.This machine is Optimus Prime disguised as the Enterprise.

I don’t want to get into particulars, but this thing is awesome. I’ve taken it apart and put it back together twice since taking it out of the box yesterday. I’ve been walking around the apartment looking for things to clean. I cleaned my f*#@ing stove with this thing!

Best of all, the machine is idiot-proof (as idiot-proof as anything can be). The only way to break it is intentionally. As cool as they still are, I don’t even want a Roomba anymore. It would take all the fun out of vacuuming. I can’t believe I’ve gone on this long about a vacuum, but it is just that cool.

Was I excited about paying 350 dollars for a vacuum cleaner? No. Was I excited about getting it for a little more than half of retail? Hells yeah. And now that I’ve made friends with the thing, I consider it a good investment. We’ll see how long it lasts. If it goes five years, I’ll call it adequate. If it goes ten, I’m not even shopping. I’ll buy another one.

Tauntauns, Lightsabers and Pop Tents

This is a response to this article, which PaulC shared in Google Reader, as did I.

Regarding lightsabers: Whoever wrote the Star Wars database article is a fluff writer and knows nothing of the "actual" science behind the weapon. A lightsaber requires enormous amounts of power, which is why Jedi in the era of the first Sith War (five thousand years before the battle of Yavin) had to plug them into their belts.

A lightsaber is not an LED. An LED, while it emits both light and heat, has almost zero electrical resistance. A lightsaber is a free-formed beam of light. Anything that generates light generates heat. An LED generates heat because it basically sets fire to the electrons (is that the right word?). An LCD television or computer monitor generates heat as well, and all it does is display colored light.

How can a weapon (or device of any sort, for that matter) that generates a length-controlled beam of coherent (tangible, physical, visible, etc) light not generate heat? Light is hot. If I shine my LED flashlight on my wooden desk long enough, the area on which the light falls will heat up.

A lightsaber is essentially a very powerful laser. It absolutely generates heat whenever it is turned on. Saying that it only generates heat when it comes in contact with an object is utterly ridiculous. An electric knife blade only generates heat when it contacts an object, because that's the only time it produces friction (the motor generates heat all the time, but I mean the blade itself).

Anything that is as small as a lightsaber, and has the power output of a lightsaber, generates heat whenever it is turned on. Running wires from one end of a battery, through resistors and then back into the battery generates heat, and that's not producing anything but electrical resistance.

The databank article mis-represents the lightsaber to avoid answering this question: "How can you fight, for any extended period of time, with a giant heat-producing, coherent laser beam two inches from your hand and not smell burnt meat?"

Getting back on topic: Yes, the lightsaber could have made a viable heat source. But what was Han to have done with it? Stick in in the snow? It would melt a hole through snow, ice and bedrock all the way to the planet's core, or at least until it hit something hard enough to stop it, or hot enough to fry it's electronics. Hang it from the ceiling of "the shelter?" Better hope the wind doesn't blow too hard.

I think that the amount of heat the lightsaber passed to the tauntaun corpse, while perhaps measurable, is negligible. It certainly wouldn't have had any notable effect on how long Luke could have survived.
This debate is entirely academic, at any rate, because Luke DID survive, so really the question becomes: how long did it take Han to build the shelter?

I have to go with "several seconds, perhaps an entire minute." To re-iterate a previous comment: I can go to Wal-Mart and buy a tent that unfolds itself in just a few seconds. Then all I have to do is nail it down.

That argument does beg the question: If it only took Han a few seconds to setup the shelter, why bother cutting open the tauntaun? Answer: "Shit happens." Yes, under ideal conditions, it only takes a minute to setup the shelter. But Luke is delirious, probably dehydrated, and all-in-all, in bad shape. If something goes wrong, and it takes longer than planned to build the shelter, Luke will be okay for the few extra minutes Han needs to fix it. If everything does go according to plan, no harm done. Luke is no worse off than he would have been had Han not stuck him in the tauntaun.

"Plan for the worst, hope for the best," my dad always said.

So: How long could Luke survive in a Tauntaun? Who cares? At most, it should have taken Han five or ten minutes to pitch a tent and setup a space heater, even in the middle of a blizzard. If he was doing anything more than pitching a heated tent, he needs to be shot for unnecessarily endangering his friend's life.

If anyone has, in fact, pitched a tent during a blizzard, I will of course defer to their experience, but you can be damn sure I'll be trying it during the next convenient blizzard. Watch this blog for debriefing.

Elementary, my dear Cthulhu

Image via Wikipedia

The title of this post is intentionally mis-leading. The recently-released Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law is not a faptastic romp down miskatonic lane. That’s what I was worried about when I saw the trailers. That, and that they were going to turn our beloved Holmes into a worldly, playful, man-about-town, bereft of any sense of dignity, who just happens to be the world’s only consulting detective.

All of my fears were needless. Holmes is brilliantly portrayed by the increasingly-impressive Robert Downey Jr, who must have spent many hours watching countless episodes of Jeremy Brett’s portrayal of the same character. That being said, this is not simply Robert Downey Jr channeling Jeremy Brett. While he certainly took some cues from the old man (dry wit, an air of detached amusement concerning the human race in general), he also brought his own unique touch to the role (indignant refusal to wipe away the wine thrown in his face).

The characterization of Holmes, both by writer and actor, are, in short, brilliant. In long: This particular adventure could easily have been written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It lacks none of his subtle attention to nuance and character, and the plot and themes are typical of his style. I don’t know what to say, other than “fear not. This is Sherlock Holmes.”

At the beginning of the film, everything felt so familiar that I kept trying to figure out what actual Holmes adventure the movie was based on. There are several elements pulled from different cases, and they kept gnawing at my brain. For example, upon the initial appearance of Irene Adler, I leaned over to Kerry and whispered “the woman.”

From Holmes’ dry (and mostly successful) attempts at wit, to Watson’s feigned unwillingness to participate in Holmes’ shenanigans, to the climactic end scene, in which Holmes reveals the few missing details of the case, this is a Sherlock Holmes tale like any other. In my humble opinion, it lacked only a visit from Mycroft, who could easily still have been played by the legendary Christopher Lee.

To those who have seen the trailers: Yes, there is dabblement in the occult, magic and the supernatural. No, these still are not real things in the world of Sherlock Holmes. Do not go into this movie with the assumption that this is anything other than an adventure of Sherlock Holmes, as recorded and reported (and embellished) by Dr. Watson.

I just can’t say enough how much this movie exceeded my expectations. After seeing the previews, I was setup for a huge disappointment. Had I done my homework, I would have known ahead of time that this is a Guy Ritchie film, and since it is not titled “Revolver” (don’t even bother with that one), I probably have nothing to worry about.