“Pleasantville” re-contextualized

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Nov 202023

I recently re-watched the 1998 movie “Pleasantville.” For those unaware, this starred a pre-Spiderman Tobey McGuire as a kid who’s a fan of the fictional 1950’s black and white TV show “Pleasantville,” sort of a cliche of the bland, utopian family shows of the time. It turns into a fantasy when Don Knotts shows up as a TV repairman who gives Tobey’s character a magical remote that zaps Tobey and his sister, played by Reese Witherspoon, into an episode of “Pleasantville.” There everything is in black and white, the world is *extremely* limited, and the other people are devoid of curiosity or initiative, just fulfilling their roles. The two new people begin to add a note of chaos to things, and in the process the characters begin to have awakenings… and color seeps into the environment. A flower here, a tongue there, and soon signs, trees, cars and whole people are appearing in glorious technicolor as they realize that there’s more to life than their roles. It’s an amusing fantasy that I first saw in the late 90’s, and last saw probably more than 20 years ago.

But upon rewatching it… I’ve decided it’s not just some lighthearted fantasy. It’s a sequel to “Tron.”

The “TV show” is a simulation based on the old TV show. The characters are actual NPCs, nonsentient avatars just going through their programmed motions. The “magic remote” is a much more advanced version of the laser “scanner” from “Tron,” and it uploads the two new users into the Pleasantville grid. The simulation is capable of learning and growth, and the non-sentient NPC slowly, and sometimes quickly, come to awareness. And when characters or objects get a resolution increase, they go from black and white to color. At the end, the simulation expands: previously, when you went to the end of Main Street, you found yourself at the beginning of Main Street: the simulated universe was at best a few miles across. but now there is a college in the town of Springfield, 12 miles away. The simulation is growing.

I assume Don Knotts is a former employee of Encom, likely a friend and co-worker of Kevin Flynn. In “Tron: Legacy” Flynn is stated to have disappeared in 1989, and we find out that he’d been stuck in a simulation of his own ever since. In 1982’s “Tron,” the laser scanner was the size of a building; by 1989 it was portable enough to be installed in a basement. I guess Knotts, who was clearly enough of a fan of the old “Pleasantville” show to have created a simulation based on it, had continued development to the point where the scanner was now hand-held. Throughout the course of the movie it’s shown that he stays in a “TV Repair” van outside the real-world house of the two experimental subjects; perhaps the scanner is connected to the actual simulation hardware contained within the van through a wifi system.

At the end of the movie, Tobey returns to the real world, while his mean-girl, vapid and slutty sister stays behind: she does so because she, too has come to an awakening, and is now going to the college that appears at the end of the movie. Since several days had passed within the simulation while less than and hour had passed in the real world, the sister should be able to get a fair education in relatively short real-world time; of course, the education will be uncredentialed. But it’s better to be educated than not, regardless of whether you can prove it with paperwork. On the other hand… at the end Knotts drives away, presumably taking the simulation with him. How will Tobey get back into it? How will his sister get out? How will they communicate? These are left unanswered

Sci Fi elements

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Nov 182023

A common trope in science fiction is the discovery of “an element that does not appear on the periodic table.” This is of course nonsense… if the element has three protons, it’s lithium, full stop. And we’ve discovered – or invented – every element up to Element 118, Oganesson. These higher elements are quite unstable, generally having half lives of microseconds to minutes… but there is a suspected “island of stability” with some of these heavier elements if you can nail the isotopes correctly. Which nobody has.

But even if you can reliably manufacture the stable versions of these heavy elements on an industrial scale, the likelihood of them being useful to make spaceships or battle armor is low… and they’d still appear on the periodic table. Their physical properties probably won’t be that terribly interesting. Oganesson, for example, melts at a boring 52 C/125 F, and has a density of only 7.2 gm/cubic cm.

But Amazing Materials are terribly useful in science fiction. Witness Star Trek’s “dilithium,” a crystal that somehow or other allows matter-antimatter reactions that are controllable and useful. In Babylon 5 there was Quantium 40, necessary for the construction of jumpgates. So what the hell are these?

I kinda recall that “Quantium 4o” was just bog-standard potassium-40 that had been close enough to a supernova to be *somethinged,* and changed at the quantum level *somehow,* resulting in a material that does Amazing Things. How about dilithium? Well, dilithium is a real substance…. just a molecule with two lithium atoms bonded together in the gas phase. It’s clearly not the same thing as Trek’s “dilithium crystals,” and certainly not the later “trilithium resin” which has the interesting property that a few grams of the stuff can cause all fusion to cease in a star moments after it’s dropped in.

So… what the hell are Trekkian “dilithium,” or “vibranium” or “adamantium” or “byzanium” or “naquadah?” A century or more ago, fabulous new elements like “cavorite” could be thrown in without issue, because the list of known elements was massively incomplete. We can’t do that today.

In general, unless it’s important to the story, there’s neither need nor benefit to explaining such details in a story… it just exists. But now we know that there are no slots in the periodic table for new elements, so introducing them raises questions. So how to create actual new elements?

Honestly… I don’t know. But I’ve got an ill-formed probably crappy idea.

Take “dilithium.” Clearly “lithium” has something to do with it. Presumably *two* lithiums, given the name. If you simply stick two lithium atoms together, you get the previously mentioned uninteresting real-world “dilithium.” If you mash the lithiums together hard enough that the nuclei bond together, you no linger have lithium, you have carbon. This is just the way it is.

But while we can’t really posit new elements, we *can* posit the discovery, creation, utilization of new particles. We’re not done discovering such things. So *perhaps* there is a particle that can, say, replace neutrons in a nuclei, fullfilling the same function of gluing the protons into place. But they have a different effect on the electron shells. Perhaps to the point where two lithium nuclei so modified will actually stick together, but not actually fuse into carbon. Sort of a contact binary nuclei. Or these mystery particles are simply added to the neutrons and protons; being the same mass as a proton, if you add six of these new particles to a lithium atom you double the mass… thus di-lithium. These modified atoms would undoubtedly have very different properties from the regular stuff… properties the writer can simply declare. Adamantium, for instance, is a modification of helium; this turns it into a metal that, apparently, melts at a low temperature *once*, but when it solidifies it becomes not only insanely hard and tough, its melting temperature shoots way up.

In recent years one of the more popular fictional elements is “unobtanium” from “Avatar,” a room temperature superconductor. This *has* to be a new pseudo-element, rather than an alloy or compound. Because if it was the latter, a technological species with the ability to create antimatter-powered relativistic starships could simply synthesize the stuff. There’d be no need to mine it light years away. But if it was a material made from exotic particles… shrug.

A law that’s illegal to follow

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Nov 122023

Due to a law rushed through last year, if Illinoisans don’t register their perfectly legal and common firearm (referred to inaccurately as “assault weapons”) by January 1 2024 they could get in trouble. But there’s a little wrinkle… the “Firearm Owners Protection Act” of 1986. The FOPA has a lot of problems, but it also has a fun little provision:

No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established. Nothing in this section expands or restricts the Secretary’s [1] authority to inquire into the disposition of any firearm in the course of a criminal investigation.

Huh. No system of registration is to be established by the US, any state or political subdivision. A gun registry is *illegal* under Federal law.

So, tell me where I’m wrong: if you know a firearm registry is illegal, you knowingly violate the law if you register your gun. So if its a choice between obeying the Illinois state law or the US Federal law… isn’t it legally safer to not violate US law? Doesn’t registering your firearm make you an accessory to breaking a Federal law?

A good question to ask is why would a government pass a law they know to be not only illegal under federal law but downright unConstitutional. Well, it’s always worth considering that the people who do these sort of things tend to have an amazing mix of arrogance and stupidity, leading to monumental incompetence. But it’s also worth considering that the idea may well be to set up the system of laws so that not only is virtually everyone in violation of *something,* they all know it. This will necessarily have the effect of reducing respect for rule of law. It seems counter-intuitive that the government would want to bake a lack of respect for the rule of law into the population… but it makes sense once you realize that a lot of government types are in it for *power.* A population that no longer expects or even wants to obey the law will just naturally expect all manner of corruption from their “leaders.”

Enterprise found

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Nov 042023

Several models of the Starship Enterprise were built for the original “Star Trek” series. The most famous is the 11-foot model which was used for most of the effects shots, and *amazingly* managed to survive long enough to end up in the hands of the National Air and Space Museum. But before the 11-footer was a 3-footer. This was made early on, and was solid wood with no lighting; still, it was used in a number of shots. This model stayed in the hands of Gene Roddenberry, modified to rest on a mike stand bolted to a wooden base. This model was lent to the first special effects house during the production of the aborted “Star Trek Phase II” series in the mid-70’s… and then it vanished. Whether it was stolen, misplaced or lost has not been clear, but Roddenberry considered it to be stolen. Stuff like this that disappears stands a good chance of never being seen again. Witness many of the models made for “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

But then, the “Aries Ib” model for “2001” was found a few years ago. And as it turns out, that 3-foot Enterprise was recently found. It was in a storage unit, purchased by someone who buys such things at auction. The new owner then put it on ebay with a starting price of a mere $1000. And then Star Trek fandom found out about it and has been going nuts. The Roddenberry estate contacted the seller and the auction has been pulled.

News was revealed here:

https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/red-alert-lost-3-ft-tos-enterprise-found.354596/

The current seller has broken no laws… it seems he just bought an abandoned storage unit. But the Enterprise remains stolen property and should be returned to the Roddenberry estate. Still… it sure seems like the seller aught to be compensated for finding this thing, even if he didn’t really know quite what he had. It’s in pretty rough shape, as can be expected. With luck it’ll receive some sort of restoration, though arguments can be made for exactly how far that should go. It should definitely be cleaned up. It’s drooping and cracked; that should be fixed. But fixing the paint and decals? I don’t know about that. Perhaps it, unlike the NASM Enterprise, should retain the appearance of years. There are some “errors” that were there from the beginning, those should stay.

It is very unlikely that this will ever see an auction. But if it does, it’ll doubtless go for Lotto-levels of cash.

The photos from the ebay listing:

Here’s a biological horror of interest…

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Oct 302023

A barnacle that attaches itself to female crabs and convinces said crab that it is her eggs so that the crab will take care of it, and help it distribute its own eggs. But it sometimes attaches itself to male crabs.In that case, it releases hormones that convince the male crab that it is female, sometimes to the point that the gonads actually flip sex.

Well, that’s horrifying.

But it’s also… well, huh. Hormones being fed into an organism without the organisms knowledge or consent, causing it confusion about its gender. one wonders if there might be some sort of analogies that can be drawn. Such as to chemicals in the water and food supply… birth control pills flushed down the toilet, entering the sewage treatment systems, *not* getting processed out and then dumped into the water supply. “Forever chemicals” added to plastic drinking bottles that mimic gendered human sex hormones, and which are now detectable in *rain.*

Digital clothes

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Oct 242023

I guess this is kinda cool, a dress – at least the front side of one – composed of “scales” that can change from mirror-chrome to dull metallic on command. But even though it’s made of individual scales, it does not appear to be terribly flexible, and seems likely to be uncomfortable.

Still, if it could do more than just “shiny/matte,” but actually change colors, it seems like it might have a future. Specifically… plate *actual* steel scales with this material and make practical lamellar armor that can change color. That seems like it might be an interesting fashion for the future as society continues to get “enriched.” Shiny, perhaps even golden, armor when you’re out and about, and at the flick of a switch it turns matte black when the time comes to throw down.

Sure, here it seems to be pitched at the female market. But I suggest culturally appropriating the tech and making it the Must Have Man Product of the 2030’s.

Forced deflection nozzles for ICBMs

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Oct 192023

There are several ways to accomplish the goal of extracting maximum performance from a solid rocket motor via the nozzle. The most common way – a convergent-divergent nozzle – is the standard for a reason: it’s the simplest, lightest most reliable way to do it. But there are alternatives that provide specific advantages. One of them is the “forced deflection nozzle.” Instead of a single circular throat, the nozzle has several; instead of directing the exhaust gas due aft, it forces it “sideways” to smack into the broader, shallower nozzle.

The advantages here:

1: The nozzle is sort of a hemispherical bowl, rather than a long, slim cone or paraboloid.

2: It provides some altitude compensation, similar to an aerospike.

There are also disadvantages, not least of which is that the throat is now under substantially greater thermal and dynamic forces. Few materials known to Man will be able to long withstand the high heat load and erosive forces. But in 1986, Aerojet proposed to develop such a nozzle for a singular purpose: to integrate into future ICBMs. The reasoning was… the bowl-like nozzle fits the bowl-like forward dome of the lower stage. Instead of a long interstage structure being required, the stages fit together neatly. in principle this would allow ballistic missiles to be more compact, shorter by useful distances. This is not very important for space launchers, but for missiles that need to fit into silos, submarines, bomb bays or Shuttle cargo bays, extra space means extra capacity.

Diagram showing a conventional 3-stage solid rocket ICBM against three concepts making use of the forced deflection nozzle. You could have a much shorter vehicle with equivalent weight and payload, or same-length boosters with 28.4% greater range for the same payload, or 33% greater payload for the same range.

The other Snow White

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Oct 172023

All evidence points to the forthcoming “Snow White” live action movie from Disney being something of a train wreck. It is a remake of the 19430’s animated classic, but it’s getting rid of pretty much everything… Snow White was originally prettier than the Evil Queen, now she’s objectively “meh;” Snow White was originally a love story, now Prince Charming is wholly absent and the Snow White character seems to be devoid of any motive but personal ambition for power; Snow White had seven dwarves, now a Bennetton Ad of “magical creatures;” and originally the actress for Snow White wasn’t an insufferable doofus, now it’s Rachel Zegler. *Lots* of people have a serious problem with almost every decision Disney has made here.

But here’s the thing: “Snow White” is public domain. Anyone can make a Snow White movie.

So the conservative “Daily Wire” new outlet is doing just that. Is it going to be any good? I dunno. Honestly I’m dubious… “really high quality movies” is not something I normally associate with “politically driven media company.” And it is in a way something of a “mockbuster,” a movie made specifically to ride the coat tails of a much more expensive studio production. But it is the right way to counter Disney’s crap: do it yourself. Make an effort to show how it *should* be done.

The “Bent Key” production company seems to be going all-out on content creation:

I have hopes that this will work out. Not because I have any particular interest in Bent Key (first I heard of ’em was when I saw the Snow White trailer), but because if they succeed, *maybe* there’s a very slim chance of some stories getting told correctly. If they can get the rights, imagine a *proper* telling of, say, “Have Spacesuit Will Travel” or “Red Planet” or “Rocketship Galileo,” or – and this would be spectacular – “Tom Swift Jr.” I have no idea if they *want* to tell these classic SF yarns, but I do know that I don’t want legacy Hollywood to tackle them. Because they *would* (and have) screw them up to the point of mutilating them.

A Proposal to solve the Israel/Arab problem

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Oct 122023

NOTE: The post below was originally from 2008. But for some reason, it seems like it might be worth a second look.

The basic issue comes down to this… the Israelies had the poor manners to occupy Muslim territory. Granted, it was Christian territory before the Muslims conquered it, and Roman Pagan territory before the Chistians conquered it, and Jewish territory before the Romans conquered it… but apparently Muslims are real twitchy about Muslim territory being made “not Muslim territory anymore.” The consequence of this is that the Israelies are forever going to be in a state of siege. It doesn’t help that both sides see that little scrap of land as their Rightful Gift From God. When people are convinced that their God wants them to be someplace, they’ll often enough make some effort to actually be there.

So, what to do? I have a suggestion. It would work. It only has one serious flaw.

It boils down to this: give up on the scrap of land currently known as “Israel.” Pull the Israeli people out, put them somewhere else. However, the entirety of land area on Earth, except for Antarctica, is owned by somebody. So, whereever New Israel might be, is currently already somebody else’s. At first blush, that means the problem has not been solved… same issue as with Israel/Palestine. But here’s the thing: most people on Earth are sane enough that they can be bought. This was not the case in the Middle East…. they’s crazy. But there are lots of scraps of land that can be had, if you just know how to bargain. And I have just the scrap of land: northern Mexico. Specifically, a strip along the US/Mexico border, 50 miles wide, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific.

A few questions:

1) How much would this cost? I have no friggen’ clue. Probably a trillion dollars or more.

2) Who would pay for this? I’d suggest a split between the US and Israel, both governmental and private donors. I’d suggest that the bulk of it come from the US, and be paid to Mexico over a period of, say, thirty years. Israel would be on the hook to repay the US over the following thirty years or so.

3) Why would the Israelies want this? They’d have their own spot of land for Nuevo Israel, with an ally on one side, and on the other… someone who at the very least doesn’t really give a rats ass.

4) Why would the US want this? Several reasons. For starters, we could finally tell the Middle East to go piss up a rope. The ME’s troubles are hardly going to go away if the Israelies bug out; the local Arab governments are simply going to have to scramble to find some other bullshit strawgoblin to rattle their populace with. Second, having Israel on the southern border would mean nothing but goodness for the US. Illegal immigration would slow to a crawl; the drug trade would be similarly stymied. Cross-border crime from Mexican drug gangs would be a thing of the past. Any drug gangs on the Mexico/Nuevo Israel border who to tried to cause a ruckus would find out that the IDF is not as hand-tied as the US border patrol. The costs involved in this land purchase would, in the long run, be a pittance compared to the savings to the American penal and health care systems, never mind the economy in general.

5) Why would the Mexican government want this? Buckets of money.

6) Why would the Mexican people want this? Many probably wouldn’t… but again, there’s that “buckets of money” thing. The deal could ladle out large sums to Mexican families currently living in the strip to move south. Mexicans who don’t want to leave could be incorporated into Nuevo Israel, much as many Arabs were integrated into Israel. Those who stay would find that their surroundings would get vastly better. Instead of corrupt Mexican cops and government, there’d be the NIDF forces. Criminals would very quickly find themselves deported to Old Mexico.

OK, here’s the big, HUGE stumbling block: God. Getting God’s Chosen People to clear off of God’s Chosen Real Estate could be trouble. Still, the majority of the Israelies seem like reasonably reasonable folk… just as reasonable religious folk see Genesis not as literal fact but as allegorical, so could the idea of “Israel is wherever the Israelies are” be spun.

Also, there are a whole lot of Christian and Jewish “holy sites” in the current land of Israel. Well… presumably they’ll still be there, even after the Palestinians sweep in and loot whatever the Israelies leave behind. And once the Israelies are gone, the Arab world (along with the rest of the world) will stop giving a damn about Palestine; after the famine and general pestilence passes through and burns out the whackadoodle element, the tourism trade will be all that’s left, and should do brisk business with Nuevo Israelies visiting the ancient homeland once or twice in their lives. Practically, this should be doable… after all, all Muslims with the means of doing so are supposed to visit Mecca at least once in their lives, but they seem to be fine with going back home to Indonesia or Canada or wherever once the visit’s over.

And hey… if as the Israelies are packing up and leaving they dig up the Temple Mount and ship it across the sea… who’d notice?

Below is a map showing the rough geometry of Nuevo Israel as a 50-mile-wide strip. There’d be some good seashore for ports, both east and west. Off in the Pacific is the current state of Israel for scale. Clearly, Nuevo Israel would be vastly larger. Lots of room to grow… and seeing what the Israelies did with the Negev desert, it would not be shocking if, a century or three down the line, the US/Mexico border is easily seen from the Moon as a verdant belt fifty miles wide.

Woo! We’re Number One!

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Oct 122023

Humanity, that is. In terms of our ability to scare the crap out of African wildlife.

Fear of the human “super predator” pervades the South African savanna

In short: cameras and speakers were set up near watering holes and a wide range of sounds, including lions and other predators, were played. Animals got the hell out of Dodge when the heard humans at a much greater rate than any other sound.

As a whole (n = 4,238 independent trials), wildlife were twice as likely to run (p < 0.001) and abandoned waterholes in 40% faster time (p < 0.001) in response to humans than to lions (or hunting sounds). Fully 95% of species ran more from humans than lions (significantly in giraffes, leopards, hyenas, zebras, kudu, warthog, and impala) or abandoned waterholes faster (significantly in rhinoceroses and elephants). Our results greatly strengthen the growing experimental evidence that wildlife worldwide fear the human “super predator” far more than other predators

Yay, I guess?

The “sounds of humans” turn out to be simple recorded conversations, male and female, in several languages. Not shouting, not angry, just “hey, how ya doin'” level chitchat. Rhinos and elephant just “nope” on out of there; other animals freak and dash. In contrast, lion sounds caused elephants to *attack* the speakers.

Yeah, I’m not sure I feel all that great about being the most terrifying thing on the planet.

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