Earthrise, December 24, 1968

This is NASA image AS8-14-2383HR, dubbed earthrise. Taken on December 24, 1968.

Let the semester begin!

It's the night before the second to last semester of my Clarkson schooling, and Professor Bill Vitek gave a great speech at this year's Freshman Convocation. Unfortunately, I do not have the speech or quotes from it now, but I was assured that it will be available in some form and when it is, I will include portions of it here.

He spoke mainly of this generation's need to change our mindset and find new ways to survive on a planet that does not have infinite resources and that will not cradle our civilization indefinitely. To keep my thought's organized, I am going to list axioms in the reality that I believe in right now:

1. Our planet is finite. Need I say more that the photo of the earth from the moon?

2. Our civilization is putting a large amount of stress on the planet.

3. It is very likely that our civilization is putting too much stress on the planet.

4. At some point, the planet will be unable to sustain our civilizations, and natural and predictable feedback mechanisms are going to resist our civilization's growth and continued stresses.

5. Right now, we are at the apex of several unprecedented patterns. (eg. population, fossil fuel consumption, unnatural extinction)

6. The patterns are clear (yet still debatable) and there are right choices and wrong choices to make.

7. These choices are controlled by politics, as much as (or more so than) science.

8. The political arena is harsh, tricky, unforgiving, and corruptible.

9. This is the time to think, make decisions, and act upon them.

10. I am studying to be an environmental engineer, and therefore I have a vested interest (emotionally, morally, spiritually, economically, and physically) in making the right decisions, and acting upon the right axioms.

"If we are unable to steer the Juggernaut of our own prosperity, then surely there is an impotence in our vaunted Americanism that augurs ill for our future. The self-directed evolution of rational beings does not apply to us until we become collectively, and well as individually, rational and self-directing."

- Aldo Leopold, Wilderness as a Form of Land Use (1925)

ST. Louis Arch

 

Champlain Ferry

 

Lake Champlain sure is pretty

 

How I spent my summer vacation

I had a rather productive summer vacation this year. Probably because they have been so non-productive for the past three summers, I felt that I had to be productive.

First of all, I found this book:

The Rough Guide to sci-fi Movies

which contained, among other things, a list of top 50 movies that defined the Science Fiction genre during the past century. Combine that with many hours at a slow, privately owned, 50,000 video Video store, and I think it qualifies as fate. I shall list the movies, and which ones I watched (48 of them), and which ones are good. Ready?

I had watched it before this summer.
I watched it this summer.
I haven't watched it at all.

A Clockwork Orange **
the Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension!
Akira
Alien *
Aliens *
Alphaville
Back to the Future
Blade Runner **
Brazil ***
Bride of Frankenstein
the Brother from Another Planet *
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Contactt
Damned (aka These are the Damned)
the Day the Earth Stood Still **
Delicatessen **
Destination Moon
Escape from New York
E.T. : The Extraterrestrial
Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers
the Fly (1986) **
Forbidden Planet
Ghost in the Shell
Gojira (Godzilla) (1954)
the Incredibles
the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Jurassic Park
Mad Max 2 (aka the Road Warrior) *
the Matrix ***
Metropolis (1927) **
On the Beach **
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Robocop
Sleeper *
Solyaris (Solaris) (1972) ***
Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan
Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Stepford Wives (1975) **
Superman (1978)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
the Thing form Another World
Things to Come
Tron
12 Monkeys **
28 Days Later...
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
2001: A Space Odyssey ***
Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la lune)
War of the Worlds (1953)


* = Good
** = Great!
*** = Holy shit, that was awesome!

Then, during my family's two week summer vacation (yeah, a vacation from a vacation is tough), I read a plethora of books as well:

Neuromancer, by Willian Gibson
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
Ethics for a New Millennium by the Dalai Lama
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert
Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit by Al Gore

And ALL OF THESE were amazing. Two fantastic Science Fiction novels and five spiritual / ethical / ecological books + 47 Science Fiction movies = one very happy Ben.

Navigating without a keyboard and the human body.

I am still unpacking from my Sophomore year at Clarkson, and seem to have misplaced my mouse, and my touchpad on my laptop is acting all weird-like, so I am trying to navigate the Interweb with only a keyboard. Sometimes it is easy, like getting to blogger. Other times it is really hard, like WinAmp or Quicktime.

But it's nighttime, and I don't want to go to bed, so I'll tell a story as to how amazingly coordinated the human body can be. Maybe it's becasue I've spent so much time around Mechanical Engineers, who try to make a machine do everything, but I was bring food back from a dining hall one time and had to use a door. Let me detail the situation:

In my left hand, I had one of those styrofoam lunch containers. In it was a wrap, french fries, and bountiful ketchup. Balanced on top of this closed container was a banana, and a bowl of chocolate ice cream, with chocolate sprinkles.

In my right hand I was holding one of those cheap pepsi cups, made of the waxy - cardboard stuff, filled with Dr. Pepper.

My left hand was uterlly unable to use the door handle, and my thumb, index, and middle finger of my right hand were holding the cup in my right hand. Too much pressure and I'd squeeze the Dr. Pepper right out of the cup, and to little and it would fall to the ground, wasting the precious Dr. all over the floor.

So I had to use my ring and pinkie finger to open this heavy door without altering the pressure my other fingers were pressing on the cup. I managed to do that, and swung the door open and caught it with my right foot (which means I was balancing on my left, with my food balancing in my left hand). I then pushed the door open enough for me to scramble into the building, without spilling or dropping anything.

Now just imagine the programing and designing that would have to go into a machine (or robot) to do the same task. The balancing, and the delicate pressure on the Dr. Pepper cup, and the precision use of the right ring and pinkie fingers...it would be crazy...and expensive.

Skroderiders vs. Ents

It is not often in literature that you get such a clear comparison between science fiction and fantasy as you get between Vernor Vinge’s Skroderiders and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Ents, and I often get asked why I only read science fiction and no fantasy (with the exception of Tolkien). Here is an attempt to combine the two above topics into a hopefully coherent and entertaining blog.

These two entities are basically the same creature. The only difference is that one is based on rules of pure fantasy and the other on rules of clearly defined and traceable science. They both are conscious trees. The both are rather large. They both talk their time in conversation and thought because they live for thousands of years and have no need to hurry. They both act as guardians of some world (or universe) and may be considered to be a tree-of-all-trades. That’s where comparison ends.

I’ll start with the Ents because they are the more easily identified and the more popular of the two. Ents are, of course, from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy. They are the guardians of the forest and of Middle Earth. They are very old (for you LOTR geeks out there, they originated shortly after the awakening of Elves) and seem to live forever, although they can be killed. Oh yeah, and they are trees. Big giant trees with hands and feet and eyes and mouths who walk around keeping the other trees in line during the dark times of the Third Age.

That’s the general description and explanation for the entities known as Ents.

Now it’s time for the Skroderiders. They came from a Hugo Award Winning Novel by Vernor Vinge called A Fire Upon the Deep. They are indeed riders of skrodes. Skrodes are, according to Vinge, six-wheeled computers that are fully able to navigate through corridors in zero-gravity. They are a computerized buffer that serves as a short-term memory for the Riders. The Riders themselves are trees that have evolved long-term memory in their branches. They also have evolved to have a complete range of motion with their branches, as well as eyes to observe the world around them. For some of you, this may seem as big of a stretch as the magical Ents, but Vernor Vinge explains their development in detail so that even the most skeptic individual can acknowledge that they are possible.

The history of the Skroderiders are as follows. Billions of years ago...well, I’m going to take my first break there. In Vinge’s book, there are thousands of civilizations spread across the universe. These civilizations have been around for billions of years, and therefore have had ample time for the variety of evolutionary tracts that appear in the novel. Alright, billions of years ago, the Riders had evolved their eyes and long term memory and their full range of motion, but had no short term memory (because why do trees that live hundreds of years need a ‘short-term’ memory?). Then a conscious, artificial entity, which they call Whoever, (for it was so long ago that they can’t really remember who) designed and built the Skrodes and integrated them into the Riders. Again, it took millions of years before the Riders became true Skroderiders, but this entity had the time and the resources (I cannot really explain the origin of this entity without giving away the entire story) to make the Skroderiders.

So during the novel, the Skroderiders are respected space travelers, with their long lives and slow thought ideal for long missions in space, but thanks to the Skrodes and Whoever, they have the ability to communicate with every form of life they encounter (after learning their language or finding an accurate translation program).

Now whom do you prefer more? Ents or Skroderiders? Who do you find more interesting? Do you have to like one over the other? I enjoy them both, although I find that there is more to think about and learn from the Skroderiders.

The detailed description of the Skroderiders and their development is exactly the reason why I enjoy science fiction so much. There are no real leaps-of-faith that must be made to accept them are real. No magic, just fact and extrapolation and traceable and arguable probability.

“.... the difference between fantasy and science fiction lies in the fact that fantast takes place in a world in which the rules of everyday experience do not apply, and science fiction in the world of everyday experience extended...”

-Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction

Movies That I Have Seen

About a Boy

Ace Ventura Pet Detective

Adaptation

Air Bud

Air Force One

Airplane

Aladdin

Alice in Wonderland

All Dogs Go to Heaven

Almost Famous

Amadeus

Ameile

Anchorman

Animatrix

Antz

Aristocats

Armageddon

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

As Good as it Gets

Austin Powers: Goldmember

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

Babe

Baby Geniuses

Back to the Future

Back to the Future II

Back to the Future III

Ballroom Dancing

Bambi

Barber Shop

Basketball

Batman and Robin

Beautiful Mind

Beauty and the Beast

Being John Malkovich

Benji

Best in Show

Bicentennial Man

Big Daddy

Big Fish

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

Billy Elliot

Blast from the Past

Blob, the

Boondock Saints

Bourne Identity

Bowling for Columbine

Braveheart

Bruce Almighty

Bruce Almighty

Bug's Life, A

Butterfly Effect

Caddyshack

Calendar Girls

Cast Away

Castaway

Cell

Charlie's Angels

Charlotte's Web

Cheaper by the Dozen

Chicago

Chicken Run

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Christmas Carol

Christmas Story

Cinderella

Clash of the Titans

Clerks

Clockwerk Orange

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Cold Creek Manor

Collateral

Collateral

Contact

Cool Hand Luke

Crocodile Dundee

Crow

Damien: Omen II

Dante's Peak

Dark City

Dark Crystal

Dawn of the Dead

Dawn of the Dead

Death Race 2000

Death to Smoochy

Deep Blue Sea

Deep Impact

De-Lovely

Die Another Day

Die Hard

Doctor Doolittle

Dodgeball

Dogma

Donnie Darko

Dr. Strangelove

Dudley Do Right

Dumb and Dumber

Dune

E.T.

Edward Scissorhands

Eegah

Elf

Elf

Ella Enchanted

Emperor's New Groove

Envy

Erin Brokivich

Ernest Scared Stupid

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Everafter

Excalibur

Exorcist

Faculty

Fantasia

Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 9/11

Fargo

Fargo

Fast and the Furious

Fiddler on the Roof

Fifth Element

Fifty First Dates

Fight Club

Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within

Finding Forrester

Finding Nemo

Finding Neverland

Forrest Gump

Fox and the Hound

Frequency

Galaxy Quest

Gangs of New York

George of the Jungle

Gandhi

Ghost

Ghostbusters

Gladiator

Godsend

Godzilla

Goldmember

Gone in 60 Seconds

Goonies

Great Race

Green Mile

Groundhog Day

Grudge

Hamlet

Hannibal

Happy Gilmore

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkiban

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Hidalgo

Holes

Hook

Hostage

Hours

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (00)

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (66)

Hulk

I Know What You Did Last Summer

I, Robot

Immortal Beloved

Incredibles, The

Independence Day

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark

Iron Giant

It

Italian Job (03)

Italian Job (69)

Jaws

Jerk

Jesus Christ Superstar

John Q

Jumanji

Jungle 2 Jungle

Jungle Book

Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park III

Jurassic Park: The Lost World

KPax

Kindergarten Cop

King Kong

Labyrinth

Lady and the Tramp

Land Before Time

Last Samurai

Last Starfighter

League of Extraordinary Gentleman

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

Lethal Weapon

Liar, Liar

Life Aquatic

Lion King

Lion King 1 1/2

Little Big League

Little Mermaid

Little Shop of Horrors

Lord of the Flies (63)

Lord of the Flies (90)

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Lost in Space

Lost in Translation

Love Actually

Mad Max

Man in the Iron Mask

Man Who Knew Too Little, The

Mars Attacks

Matilda

Matrix Reloaded, The

Matrix Revolutions, The

Matrix, The

Meet Joe Black

Meet the Fockers

Meet the Parents

Memento

Men in Black

Men in Black II

Mercury Rising

Mighty Wind, A

Minority Report

Miracle

Miracle on 34th Street

Mission Impossible II

Monsters, Inc.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Monty Python: The Life of Brian

Moulin Rouge

Mr. Deeds

Mrs. Doubtfire

My Fair Lady

Mystery Men

Napolean Dynamite

National Treasure

Neverending Story

Nightmare Before Christmas

Nutty Professor

O Brother Where Art Thou?

Oceans 11

Old School

Omen

Once Upon a Time in Mexico

One Hour Photo

One Hundred and One Dalmatians

Open Water

Others

Panic Room

Passion of the Christ

Pay it Forward

Paycheck

Perfect Storm

Peter Pan (03)

Peter Pan (53)

Phonebooth

Pianist

Pirates of the Caribbean

Planet of the Apes

Pleasentville

Pocahontas

Postman

Princess Bride

Pulp Fiction

Rat Race

Red Dragon

Reign of Fire

Remember the Titans

Reservoir Dogs

Ring, The

Road to Perdition

Robocop

Rock, The

Rocky

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo in Love

Rookie

Royal Tenenbaums

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Rush Hour

Rush Hour 2

Rushmore

Sandlot

Saving Private Ryan

Scary Movie

School of Rock

Scrooge

Second Hand Lions

Secret Window

Shawn of the Dead

Shawshank Redemption

Shine

Shipping News

Shrek 1

Shrek 2

Signs

Silence of the Lambs

Simon Birch

Sin City

Sixth Sense

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Sleepy Hollow

Small Soldiers

Something's Got to Give

Sound of Music

Soylent Green

Space Cowboys

Space Jam

Stand by Me

Star Trek: First Contact

Star Trek: Generations

Star Trek: Insurrection

Star Trek: Nemesis

Star Trek: Search for Spock

Star Trek: Undiscovered Country

Star Trek: Wrath of Khan

Star Wars: A New Hope

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back

Star Wars: Phantom Menace

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

Starship Troopers

Starship Troopers 2

Starsky and Hutch

Steward Little

Stripes

Super Troopers

Tarzan

Team America

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Terminal, The

Terminator

Thirteen Ghosts

This is Spinal Tap

Time Machine

Titan A.E.

Titanic

To Kill a Mockingbird

Tomb Raider

Tommy Boy

Top Gun

Total Recall

Toy Story

Toy Story 2

Triple X

Truman Show

Twelve Monkeys

Twister

Unbreakable

Under the Tuscan Sun

Village, The

Waiting for Guffman

Wallace and Grommit

War Games

War of the Worlds (05)

Waterboy

Waterworld

West Side Story

What About Bob?

What the Bleep Do We Know?

What Women Want

When Harry Met Sally

White Noise

Willow

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Winged Migration

Witches

Wizard of Oz

X Men

Young Frankenstein

Zoolander

Zorro

I don't know if this is something that I should be proud or ashamed of...

Buck 65

At the Moby concert in Montreal this year, the opening act was done by a man who goes by the alias Buck 65. I didn't really care for him at the time because I really wanted to Moby, but one song of his stuck in my head called Wicked and Weird.

"...Hole in the muffler; ghosts on the shoulder; cough drops, loose change in the beverage holder; to roll down the window, you gotta us a wrench; been thinking about brushing up on my French; Right there in the glove box, if you should look; you'll find forty parking tickets and a copy of the good book..."

Yes it's hip-hop style, but it truly is more like poetry :

"... here on the water no harm could come to me; but a revolver was left on my table by somebody; just in case they said nonchalantly; which was fine at the time but now the words haunt me; sitting there loaded the air is electric; distracting, my thoughts are destructive and hectic; it reminds me of crimes i haven't committed; i feel guilty of having done something i didn't; i'm terrified but for some reason am smiling..."

"...The mask comes off, and your face fades away;You radiate eighty-eight full shades of gray..."

"...unfortunately for me my private part is enormous..." (from a song about a porn star centaur)

"...craftmanship is a quality that some lack..."

Try him out, all of you two readers who read this, and let me know what you think.