Bio Willie

I just found out listening to archives videos of Bill Maher's HBO show that Willie Nelson is involved with biodiesel. His tour truck runs on it. Got to look into it more, but it seems he even owns some pumps.


Say whatever you want about him, I have respect for him for doing this. This is another person who is doing something concrete and immediate to get us off foreign oil dependence and for using an alternative fuel that (as far as I know) is much easier on the environment.

Bluem

This trio of images struck me in its vivid color, appealing composition, and wonderful surprise.

I didn't know what it was till I got to the later two images. The first one is so abstract. Initially, it looked like an illustration of two figures looking out into the cosmos from within a magical place.


Then there was the pleasing reveal.

Due Credits

While listening to C2C, I looked up some other information. This is how it is for me. As the Booseman said so long ago, when you learn one thing, it leads to learning about something else, and that to another. And it just goes on and on. I can't help myself. I just want to know. I want to know the origins of things. I want to know the history. I want to know about the things that I don't know about. So when that journalist on Charlie Rose mentioned the term "Rust Belt," I wanted to know what he was talking about.

When C2C had a guest that talked about the science of Star Wars, I wanted to revisit what I had come across a while back: That a lot of what's in Star Wars isn't original. The host and the guest were giving too much credit to Lucas. He did a great job making that first movie, even the second. It was downhill after the third. The recent ones are like underwear: unmentionable. He did a great job putting together all these disparate influences, but he did not come up with these ideas.


I remembered something about The Lensmen, and a science-fiction writer named Smith. I looked it up and found him easily. E.E. "Doc" Smith.

Edward Elmer Smith

That earlier time I came upon him there were many examples given of elements taken from his stories that were straight rip-offs (as that person put it) by Lucas in his Star Wars movies. If the examples are true, then it's obvious there was serious creative borrowing or theft depending on how you want to look at it.


I know for sure there was much taken from Kurosawa. So that leads me to believe he took also from Doc Smith. I am no fan of Smith. I hear that his work is very sexist and racist. (I confirmed this in part when I read the first chapter of this book "The Skylark of Space." He writes of the chemist's "dusky assistant." I have nothing against the words. I kind of like the adjective 'dusky.' It is the fact that this is all that is used to describe the assistant. That, and that he calls his boss "Doctah." The ole, make all the non-westerners foreign.

Truth is, foreign is a relative term. To the Japanese.... To the Koreans, the Chinese, the Brazilians, the Peruvians, the French, the German, and even the Canadians, Americans are foreigners. That's another subject I could go on and on about. But, no, I'm on fan of this author, and I'm a big fan of the first Star Wars and most of the sequel, but I do believe in giving credit where it is due. And this guy seems to deserve much when looking at the creativity in Star Wars. And on C2C they made not even a mention of him. I feel they were riding on the popularity of Lucas. They didn't wanted to kill the energy of the show by talking about some unknown guy from the early part of the last century.

I was very amused to read that EE Smith is credited for being the father of the "space opera." This is the exact term Lucas used to describe Star Wars. He said that it isn't a science-fiction movie, but a space opera. Actually, the space opera is a genre of science-fiction, so his movie is both. I think he was shooting some propaganda to give the movie some false clout.

More proof of who came first is someone's matter-of-fact comment that science-fiction writers are fifty years ahead of science-fiction filmmakers. That's pretty easy to see just considering Asimov and Clarke. During this string where searching for one bit of info lead to another, I found out that the three giants of science-ficiton are considered to be Asimov, Clarke, and a guy named Robert Heinlein.


Heinlein was friends with EE Smith as well as Asimov. When I looked at some titles of Heinlein, I noticed one in particular. It was a book that was given to me that I read a several years back: A Stranger In A Strange Land. I didn't love it, but it was engaging enough for me to want to finish reading it. The thing I remember most was this made up term, 'grok.' I thought it was corny sounding, but found it interesting that a new word was coined in a work of fiction. I later found out that it is well-known in some circles. It was used in Star Trek, if I remember what I read correctly. I've come across a few people who used it while speaking. They took pride in knowing it when others in the group weren't familiar with the word. I knew it, but I would never use it. Like I said: Too corny sounding.

So that's the guy who wrote that book. It was a surprise to make that discovery. And he was buddies with Doc Smith, father of the space opera.

On C2C, they kept hyping in wonder at how Lucas came up with these things. Well, here's just some info on what's out there. It's hard to believe that Noory isn't aware of this. He brags on the show how the audience is a well-informed bunch and they provide a wealth of information that fills in the gaps for the hosts and the guests. More surprising is that the guest for this show, a scientist who wrote a book called the Science of Star Wars made no mention of the many influences Lucas took from. They made it seem like Lucas must be communicating with aliens or time-travelers from the future to come up with this stuff out of thin air. I like the uniqueness of this show, but that's nonsense. It treats the audience like they're wide-eyed gullible little kids.

Here's a page that's cleverly titled "Star Wars Crib Notes" that gives a quick list of "uncanny resemblances" to diverse influences. Some of them are undeniable.

This article compares Star Wars a little too much with Lord of the Rings, but it makes some very good points. It ends by saying:

This is not to criticise Lucas. Star Wars is one of the finest motion pictures ever made. But it was brilliant precisely because it was utterly unoriginal.

I agree. The universal elements applied to the movie is what made it appealing to say many. It also applied influences from many sources from around the world so that it had familiar elements to many more people. If there is genius in this, that is where it lies.

There are some good comments made at the bottom. One in particular (though rushed and scattered) made some strong statements:

What you say is true, but consider the darker side.

These are the tales of the education of kings — the superior man — which we'd all love to be.

The arthurian sagas, pose two questions. "How can you lead free men without enslaving them?" and "What limits are there to power, if any?"

Answers are round table and chivalry — neither of which would be given time of day in a fascist hierarchal society such as is the norm in most human "civilizations".

Nobility has a premise that only nobles carry weapons, which creates inequality and negates nobility. Peasants must be kept ignorant lest they discover they are ruled by men no better then themselves.

It is a given that those who desire and often attain power most are those whom deserve it least.

Such tales are needed because power may at first be an aphrodisiac, but evidence from inherited monarchies is that it also castrates (e.g. — the fisher king, the grail king).

Here's another article that gives good commentary on the universal elements in Star Wars. It goes beyond calling Lucas a rip-off artist. I have to agree. He did do a good job in blending all these elements into a single story. Just don't call him a genius creator of fantasy worlds or say that he had the vision to see what the future was going to be like. That credit goes to the science-fiction writers.

It was Robert Heinlein who wrote in a science-fiction novella about a "remote manipulator." The creator of it was a character named Waldo who was such a weakling that he couldn't lift his own head up. He compensated by making a mechanical device that was many times a human's strength all by moving his hand and fingers. In the story this "remote manipulator" came to known as a waldo. When they were invented in reality, these devices also came to be known as Waldoes.


The most well-known is the one used in shuttle missions: the Canadarm. Canada's major contribution to the space program.

Astronaut F. Story Musgrave, anchored on the end of
the Remote Manipulator System arm, prepares to be elevated
to the top of the Hubble Space Telescope
to install protective covers on the magnetometers.

Controlling the Space Station Remote Manipulator System

This is just one of the many instances where life imitated what science-fiction writers dreamed up. They are the creative ones.

From Rust Belt to Megalopolis

I discovered that Charlie Rose has a site that shows archives videos of many, if not all, of his shows. Wow. What a gift. The video is a good size and pretty good quality without dogging the system. More important, the audio is good in most of the shows that I sampled.

I was looking for info on the Dalai Lama, so that was the first guest I saw. It was a good interview, something I want to check out again. I also took a peak at an episode with a woman named Natalie Angier. She's a science journalist and I found her segment interesting (she expressed the nobility of cockroaches), but what I found more interesting was the first segment where journalist Ed Klein gave some background info on the Bronfman Dynasty.

This is news to me. I think I heard folk address this domination by one family in the entertainment business, but I never caught the name. I'm sure that Robin Williams made some passing jokes addressing this during one of his rapid-fire shower of jokes.

The journalist referred to the Rust Belt. I wasn't sure what he said. I thought , initially that he said "Russ," but after doing a search, I found out that he was referring to a part of the Midwest that is known for manufacturing.


I find the term amusing. More formally, it is called the Manufacturing Belt, but I like the term "Rust Belt." The connection is obvious and very descriptive. I always wonder who are the people that come up with these terms. When I saw that the Rust Belt includes Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Detroit, I thought, "But of course!" Not in those words, but with that feeling.


Here's a more detailed map of this region of the Midwest. Steel Town and the Motor City. That covers a big part of the area, but it covers more than that. Basically, it's a "heavily industrial" manufacturing center of the U.S.

I remember visiting my brother when he lived in Buffalo. And while on a road trip, I stopped by a small industrial town in southern Indiana along the Ohio River (Tell City). Yikes. I would not want to live in either of these places, or anywhere in this region for that matter. Too industrial for me.

In that Indiana town the people looked odd, as if they were dull-headed and even inbred. This is no insult; just an observation. I was not comfortable there. I felt for these folk. There was a huge industrial plant of some sort that was the lifeblood of this town. It was along the river, so you know there was dumping going on. It looked like everyone was poisoned by it. It was depressing to be there. There was an underlying feeling of terror while I was there. I felt for these people. I felt like everyone there was a victim to industry and the socio-economic conditions of this nation. Spooky stuff.

So that was in the Rust Belt.

While looking up info on the Rust Belt, the term Boswash came up. The Rust Belt was described as being west of Boswash. What's this? Hokey sounding term. It is the more common name for the northeast megalopolis that includes Boston, New York City, and Washington D.C. and other neighboring cities.


So that's what they're referring to when they say megalopolis. I always thought of it as some mythic city that was unfathomably immense, but a French geographer (Jean Gottmann) wrote a book describing this area. He titled the book and the area "Megalopolis." So the term was coined specifically for this part of the U.S.

Much better than Boswash or any of its derivatives.

While reading about the Megalopolis, I came across a link to Levittown. Here's another very interesting bit of United States history that I knew little about.

I was vaguely aware of the postwar housing boom mainly because of its connection to baby boomers, which is why I didn't look into it much further; they get enough attention as it is. What I didn't know was that one family pretty much single-handedly put up all those houses in the northeast: the Levitts.

It's a very curious read. I'd like to read the book by Herbert Gans, "The Levittowners." Just skimming the article, I get the impression that this was the beginning of urban sprawl. This is the connection with the megalopolis, which is a wide area that is population dense. This family developed three communities all originally called Levittown (I think two still keep the name). They built thousands of homes on "curvilinear streets" that surrounded a center which contained the schools, library, city hall, and shopping center. This way, the residents didn't have to take a long trip back into the city. There's a community down here in Florida that did the same thing. I thought they were pioneering, but his stuff was going on back in the 40s and 50s.

They used all kinds of mass-production techniques including the assembly line to built houses quickly. They were able to put up 30 three- and four- bedroom Cape Cod homes a day when they built up Long Island. They bought 4,000 acres of potato fields for this development. Herbert Gans supports their creation of urban sprawl. He wrote that the farms that were taken over were no longer needed now that factory farming was providing food to the country on a grand scale. Yikes. That was going on that far back?

It makes me wonder how they got the power to do this, but it seems it was partly due to their filling a need. All those baby boomers after the war were having large families. They all needed a house and place to raise their families. It may not have been the best solution, but that's the one that was provided.

There's also a Levittown in Puerto Rico, but I don't know if there's any connection. I doubt there isn't.

Meteors Out of Leo

The Leonid Meteor Shower peaks tonight at 11pm. It's not supposed to be as spectacular as previous shows, but North American's will have a clear view because the moon will set early.


I don't think I'll catch it because I just flipped back my sleep. I'll be feeling like dozing late in the afternoon or early evening. I'm already feeling it.

They say there won't be any spectacular displays for more than 20 years. This kind of bums me. Makes me almost want to stay up for it.

See what happens.

Funny Story About Noble Man

Got a good laugh out of this. I mean no disrespect. It is the circumstances that I am laughing about. And the way that they were presented. It is universal humor. It just happened to be about someone who is a practicing Muslim.


The news spoke of Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor being the first Malaysian astronaut and the first Muslim to be in space during part of Ramadan. A comprehensive guidebook was made up by the Islamic National Fatwa Council. It includes info on how to face Mecca from the International Space Station.


The guidebook instructs Sheikh Muszaphar to pray according to a 24 hour period instead of following the sun. People in the ISS experience 16 sunrises and sunsets a day (24 hrs). The radio story said that if he followed the sun he'd be praying over 80 times a day. It was the matter-of-fact way he stated this and the image of someone doing something over and over again with hardly a break. He ended by mentioning that the guidebook said that if there is trouble locating where Mecca is, just face earth.

mission insignia

That said, I feel much respect for the man, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, for his accomplishment. He sounds like a noble person. As well as being an astronaut, he is an orthopedic surgeon. He was born in Kuala Lumpur, home of the Petronas Towers.

Night Tides

I found a new show on an NPR station that's rare and remarkable. It's called Night Tides. It's hosted by Renee Blanche.

I was looking for stations that aired Humankind throughout the week and who had high quality streaming audio. I discovered a new station in Kansas City, MO called KCUR. It's streams at a whopping 128k. That's the highest I've seen so far, and only a few stations offer it.

The show plays stream of consciousness music. Supreme for the evening, for mellow moods, for filling the air with a timeless quality.

I feel like a discovered a gold mine.

I like it better than Hearts of Space, which is good, too, but the variety of music is more narrow and mostly electronic, it seems. Night Tides has lots of acoustic pieces along with the electronica. It is more soothing, too. Mellower and (didn't think it was possible) more 'contemplative', as the host describes the music of her show. Add to that the fact that the host is a woman with a sensual tone.

She spoke of one her favorite phrases to say in Spanish: "Otro dia en el paraiso." Which means, "Another day in paradise." (To make it, "Another perfect day in paradise," you say, "Otro dia perfecta en el paraiso.") I immediately thought that this is a good mantra to say regularly to remind me of when the ABAHI say to take it easy, have fun with it, since you can never get it wrong because you never get it done.

"Otro dia perfecta en el paraiso."

She also ended the show with a quote, something that seems to be a regular practice for the show. "Before I go, I'll leave you with some words from Aldan Nowlan." (No, I didn't remember this. I caught a few key words and looked it up.)

"The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise."

Good words. And on that note, I'll end this post.

Solar Wing

I caught some of the spacewalk this morning. I missed most of it, actually, because I was sleeping. They started early and, with my sleep flipped, I was heading to bed when the morning doves were rising.

It's a curious thing that, while I was getting ready to doze, I set NASA TV to play. I have the link to it saved in RealPlayer. It was an aimless action, at least consciously. I sort of feel like I was led to it by the subconscious. Whatever the case, when it started to play, I heard the announcement that the spacewalk was about to occur. There was a tear in a solar panel of the International Space Station and the crew of the shuttle was going to mend it.

I was very impressed with how methodical the procedure was. You have people in Houston, and I suppose Cape Canaveral, communicating with people zooming around the earth in space. They said they were 250+ miles from the earth's surface. It's amazing to consider it all. And they were able to methodically work together to complete a tricky task.

Wow. Just found out that Cape Canaveral was named by the Spanish and it's name is really Cape Cañaveral. I also found out that 'cañaveral' means canebrake, and that 'canebrake' is a dense thicket of cane, and that 'brake' is another word for thicket or brier: an area overgrown with dense brushwood, briers, and undergrowth.

Translate. Most times I hear this word when speaking of language. A spokesperson for NASA gave a quick summary of the mission with video clips. While speaking of the astronauts maneuvering to the other side of the robotic arm (made by Canada), she referred to him as translating to the end of it. (He was harnessed by his feet to the end of it and the arm was extended to get him out to the solar panel that needed fixing.)

Sure enough, the fourth meaning of the word 'translate', as a transitive verb, is "To transfer from one place or condition to another." I've had other instances of the word being used this way, but this time I really took notice of this usage and looked it up, thanks to the handy on-line word reference source, Answers.com.

This was a fun time in solitude. I enjoyed learning and growing while getting things done. It was inspirational to do my daily stuff while listening and peaking at the spacewalk repair mission. I just wanted to mark this moment so that I can look back on it fondly.

Chinese Chess - Xiang Qi

Xiang Qi

I decided to give Xiang Qi it's own post. It deserves more than being mentioned as a side note along with less mentionables. Here's the game given closer attention with pictures to help give it form. It's new to me, so this is just as fresh as any new discovery.

A beat up board and crude playing conditions is scene as a good thing.
It's a sign of less focus on the physical and
more on the intellectual aspect of the game.

What is the reason for the remarkable success of Chinese players in the international chess circuit? According to Prof. David H. Li it is entirely due to the fact that they are all weaned on XiangQi, the fast and combative Chinese version of the game.

This is from an article from ChessBase.com.