Monthly Archives: June 2006

Jun192006

Scene from the Urban Landscape

Walking along Salt Lake’s Main Street here in the heart of downtown, you pass a planter box about every twenty or thirty feet. These things are huge, roughly the size of the bed on a half-ton pickup truck; they each contain a mature tree and usually a nice arrangement of petunias or some other colorful but relatively low-maintenance flower. They’re also capped around their perimeters with a marble ledge about a foot wide, and those ledges are at just about the perfect height for the average-height person to rest their hindquarters. So, let’s review: you’ve got a nice, comfortable, flat surface under a shady tree in the middle of an urban area. What does that get you? That’s right, a perfect invitation for those members of society who are, shall we say, less obligated to be anyplace during the day to park their behinds and watch the world go by. My lunchtime constitutional is not complete unless I get hit up for pocket change at least three times between my office and the next block up. On the days when I’m feeling generous, I pass out whatever coins and small bills I may have; other days, it annoys the hell out of me to be seeing the same old grubby hands attached to the same old pleading faces. And then there are other days…

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Jun192006

Superhero for a Day

Although tear-jerking, heart-warming tales of sick little kids are all over the Internet and I suspect at least half of them are probably bull, this one raised a genuine lump in this old curmudgeon’s throat: last Friday, the Idaho chapter of the Make-a-Wish Foundation organized virtually the entire city of Boise to fulfill a young cancer victim’s desire to become a superhero. Yes, a superhero, complete with a costume, a super-villain to pursue, and super-sidekicks to help out. The kid girl even got a phone call from Adam West, which is kind of silly when you think about it; a six-year-old wouldn’t remember Michael Keaton’s Batman — or even Val Kilmer‘s or George Clooney‘s — let alone West‘s. (West was no doubt cheaper than the other fellows.) Still, what a great gesture of community compassion. And just about the time I was ready to give up on the whole human species as a bunch of selfish jerks…

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Jun192006

Welcome to the Game Grid

With rare exceptions, I’m not a big fan of modern architecture (or perhaps “post-modern” is the more appropriate term). Neither is Lileks, who I’ve quoted on this subject before. He and I are light-years apart politically speaking, but I think we share the same philosophy when it comes to buildings:

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Jun172006

Remember, We Survived

I’ve believed for some time now that we Americans are turning ourselves into a nation of infantilized wussies. Seriously. We worry constantly about achieving “closure” for every little childhood trauma, we dress ourselves in soft ‘n’ cuddly fleece outfits that resemble nothing so much as overgrown jammies (all they need are the sewn-in feet), and we’re downright obsessed with safety. Cops pulling you over for not wearing your seatbelt, those obnoxious seals that have to be removed from all of our food and medicine containers, warnings on the sides of our coffee cups that the contents may be hot (duh!)… it’s enough to make me want to run out and do something positively reckless, like run with the bulls in Pamplona or wave freshly baked cupcakes at the women coming out of Gold’s Gym.

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Jun162006

Interview with Dennis Muren

If you’re at all interested in special effects in the movies — the techniques that enable the Millenium Falcon to fly and Jurassic Park‘s T. Rex to run — then you probably know who Dennis Muren is. If you don’t, please allow me to introduce you: he was one of the founding members of Industrial Light & Magic, the company that grew out of the team George Lucas assembled to do the effects (FX) work on the original Star Wars, and he’s since gone to help pioneer just about every major advancement in the field over the last three decades. He’s worked on an astounding string of groundbreaking, FX-heavy movies. He’s the first visual effects artist to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And he also made a cameo appearance in Raiders of the Lost Ark — he’s the Nazi agent who glances out from behind the Life magazine when Indy boards the China Clipper to begin his quest for the Ark.

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Jun152006

Sci-Fi Armor Becoming Real

From the “We’re living in the Future!” department comes news of a wild new “liquid armor” that could supplement or even replace the conventional Kevlar vests used by soldiers, law-enforcement officers, and anti-government wackos. At the very least, it could protect the unarmored limbs that kids are currently losing in Iraq:

“We can make thin layers of material for use on the arms and legs that remain flexible under normal motion, but become rigid and absorb energy when impacted by a ballistic threat or a knife,” [researcher Norman] Wagner says.

Cool, cool stuff. Of course, science-fiction writers came up with this idea a long time ago, so this is really only a case of life imitating art… which brings me back to my usual question: where is my Skywalker-style speeder bike, anyhow?

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Jun142006

Explosion on the Moon!

This is pretty cool: astronomers have recorded a meteor impact on the surface of the moon. The resulting explosion appears as a white flash in the black-and-white video clip, looking to my eye like the dust speckles you frequently see in old movies. However, this particular dust speckle was about 10 inches wide, detonated with a force equal to four tons of dynamite, and left behind a crater 14 meters wide and three meters deep. Meteors hit the moon all the time, of course, but it’s pretty wild that this one was actually captured on film. (Or tape, or a chip, or whatever…) Go check it out!

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Jun132006

The View from My Window at Work

Continuing with this whole “view from the window” motif, here’s the awe-inspiring urban vista I can see from the Proofreaders’ Cave, located high atop one of the glorious metropolitan skyscrapers in fabulous downtown Salt Lake City:

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Jun132006

The View from Anne’s Window

You may recall that last week when I posted up the photo of what I can see from my home office, I invited others to share their views as well. The Girlfriend has decided she wants a piece of that action, so here’s what Anne can see from her apartment:

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