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I’m Going Down, Down, Down

This morning, Jaquandor points us toward a fascinating graphic illustrating the contrast between the highest and lowest points of our globe — and where British Petroleum’s busted oil well lies in relation to those extremes.

As you scroll downward, you’ll see lots of fascinating trivia, such as the fact that Mount Everest and its companion peak K2 stand well above those wispy, feathery cirrus clouds you see on dry summer afternoons… that Tibet is higher than the puffy cumulus clouds that roll across the sky like bolls of cotton, and that the Saturn V rocket that sent men to the Moon is about the same height as the Statue of Liberty. But notice in particular Mount McKinley, the tallest mountain in North America at a height of 20,320 feet, and the city of Denver at an elevation of 5,280 feet. Keep those figures in mind as we plunge below the waves and follow the “riser,” the pipe that connected the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to the well on the ocean floor before the accident.

The riser quickly descends past the limits of human divers (the “atmospheric diving suit,” or ADS, is essentially a wearable submarine that lets a person descend safely to about 2,000 feet). At 3,000 feet, there is no longer any sunlight penetrating from the surface, but the riser keeps going down. It passes the level of the deepest-diving combat submarines, which is roughly 3,500 feet, and keeps going… down to the failed blowout preventer at 5,000 feet below the surface. The leaking wellhead is as far down as the city of Denver is high. The pressure at those depths is 150 times greater than the atmosphere at sea level. Not that I feel the slightest amount of sympathy for BP — I am heartsick and outraged by what we stupid humans have done to the Gulf of Mexico, and if there’s any justice in the world, BP will go bankrupt cleaning it up — but this graphic provides some invaluable perspective on why they’ve had such a difficult time stopping the leak. Imagine trying to do anything by remote control, in the endless dark and unimaginable pressure. I almost think building a space station is an easier task.

But the amazing thing is that the well itself, the hole drilled by the Deepwater Horizon, goes much, much deeper yet. Deeper than the Grand Canyon, deeper than the range of the deepest-diving whale, deeper than the wreck of RMS Titanic, almost as deep into the crust of the planet as Mount McKinley rises above it. I don’t know about you, but my mind completely boggles at the thought. And there is a part of me — the same part that marvels at the Moon shots and Hoover Dam, the machine-loving part of my DNA — that finds it really unbelievably cool that we silly apes can do something like this, something so gobsmackingly big. If only the risks weren’t so equally gobsmacking, as we’ve now learned…

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Simply Because It’s So Awesome…

Here’s a pic of Kurt Russell and John Carpenter taken while they were filming Big Trouble in Little China:
Kurt and John on the set of Big Trouble

I must confess that I didn’t get Big Trouble when it first came out back in 1986. I’m not sure anyone at the time really did. I remember thinking it was weird and stupid and I couldn’t decide what the hell kind of movie it was supposed to be. I don’t think I understood the plot, as hard as that is to admit.

But then about ten years later, I was introduced to the work of Jackie Chan and suddenly I figured it out. Big Trouble wasn’t stupid at all, at least not in the way I’d believed it was. It was merely ahead of its time. Carpenter had made a Hong Kong martial-arts action-comedy before we folks in flyover country had ever seen one. No, that’s not entirely correct… what he’d done was melded the sensibilities of those HK flicks with his own, specifically by dropping an American action hero and tropes of the American Western, along with a tongue-in-cheek irreverence toward both, into a martial-arts action-comedy to create something wholly unique, a synthesis of two very different — and yet both supremely entertaining — filmmaking cultures. In short, I re-evaluated the movie and realized it was pretty damn cool.

Russell and Carpenter… two of my favorites Hollywood artists. Sadly, both have been in decline for years. But during the ’80s, man, what a combination they made… no less than a latter-day John Ford and John Wayne, in my humble opinion. It’d be awesome if they managed to make one final good movie together; hey, I can dream, can’t I?

The picture came from here, incidentally, a really awesome photoblog that manages to dig up lots of stuff along these lines. Check it out!

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Insidiously Clever

So, I just took a phone call from someone who identified himself as a freshman in the College of Humanities at my alma mater, the University of Utah. I knew instantly that it was a plea for money; I’ve fended off quite a few of them over the years, and I can recognize the signs before the caller even finishes identifying themselves. Yes, I’m one of those bad alumni who don’t give back. I rarely have any spare cubits to give, and, depending on what kind of mood I’m in at the moment they call, I tend to have a somewhat jaundiced opinion of my college education, and of the expectation that I ought to provide the place with any more funding than I already gave during my five years as a student there.

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Maybe the Future Will Look Like This…

A few hours ago, the familiar roar of a rocket motor boomed through the humid air of Florida’s Cape Canaveral, but it wasn’t a space shuttle or a military Atlas launch. It was instead a privately owned rocket called the Falcon 9. After an aborted launch attempt earlier this morning, this gleaming debutante lifted off from its pad and streaked skyward without any obvious problems, carrying at its nose a mock-up spacecraft that may shortly replace the retiring shuttles. Behold:
(Stay with it until the end — the stage separation seen from the onboard camera is really neat!)

The Falcon 9 and its Apollo-style counterpart, the Dragon capsule, are designed, built, and operated by a company called SpaceX, which was founded by Elon Musk. You may not know his name, but you’ve likely heard of his other businesses: PayPal and Tesla Motors, the electric sports-car builder. Musk’s vision for the Falcon/Dragon combination is essentially to fulfill the promise made by the shuttle development team 30 years ago: a “space taxi” that will offer reliable, relatively cheap access to Earth orbit. Unlike NASA’s various spacecraft that are pieced together from contributions made by many subcontractors, SpaceX keeps everything in-house. The launch vehicle, the spacecraft, and the rocket motors are built by SpaceX itself. And the company is striving for design simplicity by using the same rocket motor — the Merlin, it’s called — on all its launch vehicles, including the Falcon 1, the Falcon 9, and a future heavy-lift vehicle. In the same spirit of keeping things simple, SpaceX plans for the Dragon to carry either cargo or passengers, depending on the craft’s internal configuration, rather than designing separate vehicles for different jobs. Moreover, the boosters and the Dragons are all intended to be reusable.

It all sounds good on paper, at least. And even though I’m sorry to see the shuttle program winding down, I have to admit I am excited about SpaceX’s plans. Musk’s vision sounds workable to me, and I like that someone in the private enterprise sector is thinking about practical spaceflight applications. By contrast, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, as nifty as the SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnight technology is, really strikes me as more of a rich man’s playground that won’t lead to much. I hope I’m wrong about that — I’d love to see a sky filled with many different kinds of spacecraft doing all sorts of activities, including recreational ones — but it’s just my hunch at the moment. And anyway, the SpaceShipTwo vehicles Branson has commissioned are only suborbital cruise ships. To truly replace the shuttle, we need something that will aim a bit higher.

SpaceX already has a contract with NASA to send cargo to the International Space Station in 2011; several more test flights are planned through the rest of this year. And there are other private entities looking to fill the gap left by the shuttles, as well, including a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed-Martin called the United Launch Alliance and a supersecret venture funded by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com. We’re not living in the space-faring 21st century I used to imagine, but maybe there’s a chance we’ll get some version of it after all…

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It’s Funny Because…

Only a few days ago, I had a spat with my mother because she thinks I don’t get outdoors enough anymore, that I spend all my time — or at least too much of my time — sitting at the computer. She may or may not be correct about that — and yes, I know how ridiculous it is that my mommy is still telling me to go outside and play at the age of 40 — but either way, I can relate to this cartoon by Dave Coverly:

Speed Bump cartoon by Dave Coverly

See more of Coverly’s work here, if this sort of thing pushes your snicker-button. My thanks to Sullivan for posting this first.

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Memo to James Dyson

You know James Dyson, the British guy who was so concerned about standard vacuums “losing suction” that he invented his own super-high-tech model with no bags or filters, which creates a hurricane-force vortex inside a stylish yellow chassis by tapping the hellish power of a tiny black hole? Well, okay, his vacuums aren’t really powered by black holes — damn it all, that would be cool! — but you know the guy, right? It seems that Jaquandor isn’t impressed with his latest venture, a bladeless room fan that costs $300:

Seriously, if he’s that big a techno genius, he needs to use his abilities for stuff that’s actually, you know, important. … This guy is like a supergenius with OCD who has decided to use his abilities to rid the world of all of his personal little pet peeves rather than advancing our world toward its ultimate goal of unlimited energy, flying cars and jetpacks, spaceships coming and going all over the place to our colonies throughout the solar system, and a Super Mario game that doesn’t make me feel stupid. We don’t need bladeless fans! Ye Gods, man! Let go of your anal retention and use your powers for good!

I myself have no ill will toward Mr. Dyson, even though I think anyone who’s willing to lay out 300 clams for a fan obviously makes too much money, but I can’t help but admire any rant that builds toward the expression “Ye Gods.” Oh, and the stuff about flying cars and spaceships to the colony worlds is good, too…

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Must You Perpetuate the Stereotype?

Scene from the park-and-ride lot at the train station this morning: a pretty but heavyset early-twenty-something woman, whose obvious black dye-job and purple eye shadow fairly screams “I shop at Hot Topic,” is sitting in her car. Her door is open, and one leg is extended outside, her shiny-black, patent-leather, stiletto-heeled shoe resting flat on the asphalt. It looks like she’s wearing lavender tights under her black jeans. She is seemingly spellbound by whatever she’s listening to on the stereo. It’s not music; it’s a male voice speaking. I’m thinking she doesn’t seem to be the NPR type, so an audiobook, perhaps. As I get closer, I pick up the speaker’s rhythm and enough individual words to confirm my theory. Definitely a story being told, definitely an audiobook.

Then I hear two words in particular: “Bella” and “Edward.”

Of course. I can’t help but snicker.

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Adele Blanc-Sec: I Need to See This Movie!

I already posted this trailer on Facebook, so I apologize to anyone who may be following me over there who’s already seen it, but I’m very enthused about this movie and want to spread the word as far as I can. Hopefully, a groundswell of attention will inspire someone to actually distribute it here in the U.S.

Les Aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec (i.e., The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Dry-White) is apparently based on a French comic book. I first heard about the film a few months ago over on Michael May’s Adventureblog, and I thought it looked kind of cool, but I don’t speak French so it didn’t really grab my attention until I found a trailer with English subtitles. Once I could tell what was going on… wow. I wanted to see the movie right away. Like now. Have a look and see if it doesn’t have the same effect on you…

(Be warned that there is a brief glimpse of bare boobies at about the 2:00 mark, if that sort of thing bothers you; for what it’s worth, they’re seen in a bathtub setting as opposed to a sexual context, if that makes any difference. Hey, what do you expect, this is a French movie, after all!)

Victorian-era Paris, a pretty heroine, a pterodactyl, and a reanimated mummy who politely asks for tea, plus 1980s-style gratuitous nudity, and all of it directed by Luc Besson, the man behind one of my all-time favorites, The Fifth Element. How can this be anything less than a perfect afternoon at the movies?

From what I’ve been able to learn, it opened in France over a month ago and there are international release dates in various countries through October, but no word whatsoever of a release in this country. My friend Dave suspects there won’t be, because of the well-known American aversion to reading subtitles. I must grudgingly admit that he may be right; foreign films simply don’t do well in the U.S. But surely something dripping with this much pure awesome would transcend that silly bit of provincialism? At least enough to allow for a straight-to-video release? I’m keeping my fingers crossed…

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Friday Evening Videos: “Do You Believe in Love?”

I’m posting our weekly music feature a little early this time; I’ll be on the road by this afternoon, heading west to Wendover, Nevada, a.k.a. Salt Lake’s moral exhaust port. I’m going out for a concert, and no, it’s not Rick Springfield for a change. It’s these guys, actually, another favorite band of mine from the Awesome ’80s:

Ah, the ’80s, when images of six guys standing around watching a woman sleep weren’t considered creepy at all. It really was a different time… a better, more innocent time in a lot of ways. Sorry about the dodgy picture; The Man has disabled embedding on all the decent-quality Huey Lewis videos, at least the ones I could find in two minutes of Googling.
“Do You Believe in Love,” from the album Picture This, was the first charting single from Huey Lewis and the News. I remember hearing it quite a lot back in the day and I always liked it, but the band wouldn’t really break through into “household name” status until the next album, Sports. Sports was a monster hit, with four of its nine tracks hitting the top 10 singles charts, and a fifth breaking into the top 20. The album itself was the second bestseller of the year, right behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

The Arbiters of Cool never thought much of Huey and the boys, and I suppose I can understand why. Their image was more cuddly than cutting-edge; Huey himself was a bit older than the usual pop star, with rugged yet average features that appealed to the housewives; and a lot of their lyrics admittedly tended toward the cutesy and/or sappy. But then, so did the early rock ‘n’ roll and 1950s doo-wop that so obviously influenced their sound. And anyway, you can’t listen to Lou Reed and The Ramones all the time. Well, I suppose you can, but if you do, I don’t want to hang around with you.

We have time for one more, my personal favorite by Huey Lewis and the News, the one that drove the strait-laced, finger-wagging set into hissy fits because they didn’t understand what the song was really about:

Yeah, good stuff. Any band that can come up with that opening wail is rock-and-roll in my book. Incidentally, that dunking-your-face-in-a-sink-full-of-ice-cubes gag was done by Paul Newman in at least two movies that I know of: Harper, from 1966, and 1973’s The Sting. And one final thought: I always admired that red suit with the black t-shirt that Huey’s wearing. I still like the look, actually; if I ever find myself in the position of having to wear a suit, that might not be a bad way to do it…

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You Just Earned an Extra Life!

Bummed because Google’s 48-hour tribute to the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man — a fully playable version of the game standing in for Google’s homepage banner — is over? Maybe you missed the whole thing and you’re feeling really lame and out of the online fad-loop that all the cool kids seem to be plugged into? Well, have no fear, because Google has apparently decided to keep the game page up indefinitely, if not permanently. Just go here and drop virtual quarters ’til your heart’s content.

My thanks to Evanier for cluing me in about this. And now I think I’m going to go play a quick round…

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