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Pat

Here's Dr. Fauci in 2020 talking about COVID-19. He said more than 20,000 cases per day was unacceptable.

Now we're having about 200,000 cases per day in the US...

Crickets.

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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Week…

Metropolis (1927)

This film fell into the public domain in the US in 1953 when its copyright lapsed. More than 50 years later the US Supreme Court declared that it was back under copyright (retroactive to 1996), which of course is illegal to do in the US. Notwithstanding the court’s impotent proclamations, the film will indisputably be in the public domain at the end of this year. You will likely be hearing more about it at that time. It may remain under copyright in other parts of the world because Fritz Lang lived so long.

A decade after this film came out, Hitler exploited the sentiments expressed by the workers depicted in this film to implement socialism in Germany and take away the freedom of those very workers (and nearly everybody else’s freedom too).

A while ago I did a that referenced this film but I don’t think anybody understood it at that time (or only partial understood).

(Socialism and Nazism are just about the worst ideas ever and inevitably lead to the loss of liberty and justice.)

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Pat

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The truth is…

The Van Allen Belt is a of radiation (actually two or more bands) that hold charged particles within Earth’s magnetosphere in space.

Other bands may be created from time to time.

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= A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

(image from: www.flickr.com/photos/anirudhkoul/1960120621; by Anirudh Koul; cropped; CC-BY-NA_2.0)

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Pat


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If you don’t like high gasoline prices, then you actually want more people driving electric cars, even if you don’t drive one yourself.

Every driver who drives an electric car is someone who is not competing with you to buy gasoline, and not creating more demand which drives up the price of fuel.

So please encourage more people to drive electric cars, so the price of fuel will go down.

(image: wikimedia commons; CC-BY-SA-4.0; attribution Adrian Grycuk)

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Pat

3D chess is actually 4D chess (unless all of the moves in a game are made simultaniously).

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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Week…

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Released during the height of MacCarthyism when many in Hollywood and government had lost their jobs and half the country was in a furor trying to find “subversives” under every rock, this film reflected the popular mood during that time. However, the other half of the country was appalled at the witch hunters for trampling on civil rights.

It’s uncertain whether the film was advocating for the witch hunt or mocking it. The filmmakers continued to deny that it was anything more than a thriller science fiction flim.

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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Week…

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

“I’ll be damned if I can find anything wrong with it, HAL.”

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Pat

Biden said US would get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if China attacks.

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Pat

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Congratulation to Karine Jean-Pierre on her promotion to White House Press Secretary.

Jean-Pierre is the first black woman and the first openly gay person to serve as White House Press Secretary.

Image: Karine Jean-Pierre at her first press briefing as White House Press Secretary; public domain image

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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Week…

The Atomic Submarine (1954)

Released in the same year that the first nuclear submarine was commissioned, this film has many of the classic features of 50’s science fiction – theremin music, corny dialogue, miniature model FX – but it’s also original within the genre with its unique subject matter and plot.

The film predicted underwater ICBM launches and submerged transit of the North Pole years before they would actually be achieved, and lots of other technical tidbits. It also predicted widespread use of merchant nuclear subs for trans-arctic commerce, which never happened.

It took less than two years for the US to construct the first nuclear sub, the USS Nautilus, which occurred just ten years after the first sustained nuclear chain reaction had been achieved. Ten years after the USS Nautilus was commissioned the US had a fleet of 26 nuclear subs. Today, with 70 years of experience building nuclear submarines, it takes the US more than 10 years to build a single nuclear sub.

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Pat

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Pat

I've run across a weird anomaly on qoto. In the thread (qoto.org/@Pat/1082682733928554), user @sturgman posted a couple toots but those toots don’t show up in that user’s profile page when I click “toots and replies”.

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Pat

#2022 Zealand

I just asked an acquaintance of mine who lives in New Zealand to go up a nearby hill during the sunrise and hold his hands up and make shadow puppets to see if I could see them on the moon from the US as the eclipse waned.

Didn’t work.

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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Week…

Contact (1997)

Why can’t more science fiction be like this? There are no goofy monsters or extra-terrestrials that evolved to look like English-speaking humans. No space battles modeled after 20th century warfare. No space aliens that want to colonized Earth.

Contact is a realistic portrayal of what a first contact might look like. It’s very well written and produced, and the acting is world class. The film took a hit from some reviewers when it debuted because of who the filmmakers were (the writer, Carl Sagan was an atheist (or agnostic) and the lead actor, Jodie Foster is lesbian), so keep that in mind if you look up ratings/reviews of the film.

One of the questions asked by this film is whether an extra-terrestrial species could provide us with information that would cause us to destroy ourselves. You don’t want miss this one.

(image commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arecibo_Observatory_Aerial_View.jpg, CC-BY-4.0)

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Pat

Lexa Doig played the titular role in the TV series Andromeda (2000-2005).

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Pat

.gov


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The truth is…

In the US in March 2022, there were 2450 people who had died from COVID-19 and came back to life again.
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Cumulative deaths from COVID-19:
2022/3/12 11:15 p.m. - 967,552
2022/3/14 11:35 p.m. - 965,102
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Source: Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center; coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
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= A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

(Image CC-by-nc-nd-3.0; by Sylvenne, www.deviantart.com)

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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Week…

The Time Machine (1960)

This is the first film adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel. Although the story isn’t the first time-travel story ever written, it’s the first one to include a device that allows one to travel forward or backward to arbitrarily selected points in time.

After six decades, the film has held up well and is still entertaining in it’s own right. The special effects are pretty good even by today’s standards. They won an Academy Award when the film debuted.

Other film adaptations were made in 1978 and 2002, but they deviated more substantially from the book.

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Pat

We began using fire about 1.7 million years ago…
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Some people still use fire to power their putt-putt cars.
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Everybody else drives an electric car.
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(Actually, Fred Flintstone’s car used the flywheel effect to run his car. The energy came from brontosaurus burgers. Primitive.)
Fair use image.

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Pat



Everyone remember to wear your respirator…

Clip from Andromeda: Dance of the Mayflies (2001)
(Content Warning: strobe effects)

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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Month…

12 to the Moon (1960)

This film is one of the very few 20th century science fiction films to include a black character. And it’s one of the few of any genre to include a black character before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It also includes an Asian character. As the title suggests, it’s an ensemble cast of twelve who fly to the moon.

The film was produced shortly after the founders of Columbia Pictures had died and a bean-counter had taken over the studio. The company was in flux, as was its produciton quality. So although it was from a major studio, it suffered from a reduced budget. It’s only slightly better in quality than the typical giant-insect scifi films of the era, but it’s kind of quirky and much different in feel from the usual 50’s science fiction films.

It looks like the filmmakers were trying to make a serious and technically accurate film, but of course there were many blunders. It’s a stupid film but fun to watch nonetheless.

Here's a clip from the film showing the astronuats first entering the rocket ship before liftoff.

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