Learning Charisma March 2, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in ideas, movies, movies & TV, robot rights, weird news, writing.add a comment
No, not Charisma Carpenter, though that would be interesting, but rather that unidentifiable trait that makes a person shine, sparkle (not in the vampire sense) and be the center of attention…even if they aren’t trying.
John Wayne had this star quality. He came onscreen and whatever else was going on didn’t matter. He wasn’t all that good an actor because no matter the role he was always playing John Wayne, unlike actors who act and become chameleons (Dustin Hoffman comes to mind). So there was something about John Wayne that commanded attention. Q: could Dustin Hoffman capture this quality in a character and *act* charismatic?
The answer is that it might be possible. Crafty scientists have made charismatic robot fish that become the leaders of their schools. Tail motion is the key. A stationary robot fish got no attention but when it duplicated the tail flicks of a leader, the real fish followed. It is likely the same thing is possible with humans.
Can it be speaking ability? Hitler enthralled an entire country into war, but John Wayne’s verbal delivery was never all that compelling to me. But I still couldn’t stop watching when he came onscreen even when he didn’t speak. Something about him made him a star. He had charisma. Watching Hitler’s speeches and not understanding German makes me think there is something about body motion, stance, confidence. Is there a human equivalent to the robot fish tail flip? Can we make a robot with human-attracting charisma? I am sure this will make the Japanese perk up, if it is possible since they are world leaders in robotic/human interactions
A while back I did a Magic: The Gathering book, Dark Legacy, that addressed whart made a charismatic leader, at least in part. After all these years, the notion still intrigues me. Rather than 15 minutes of fame, maybe we should all get 15 minutes of charisma?
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This Is The End, My Only Friend… February 29, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in death, e-books, ideas, movies & TV, VIPub, writing.add a comment
So sang Jim Morrison. For him it was pretty close, but in fiction you, as writer, should have *lots* of ends. One for each story you write. I addressed the need for a strong hook a couple days ago.
Now we get to the nether region of your writing. The end. You’ve wowed the reader with your title, put such a powerful hook in that first sentence/paragraph everyone reading it has to find out what’s going on, then you have the huge middle of the book, and finally, the end. The conclusion. The part that will keep readers thinking about your story for a long time.
I have pretty much come to hate Steven Spielberg’s endings because he doesn’t have confidence enough in his story to put *one* conclusion. He keeps tacking them on, one after another until you collapse from outrage, fatigue or laughing at such indecision. (Take a look at what might have been a classic tale in Kubrick’s hands, AI, and see what Spielberg did to it with the endless endings).
After all, you’ve invested the time to write a book, and a considerable outlay of effort it is, too. You wanted to say something. You want the reader to come away with some memory, some feeling, some call to action. You owe it to yourself to have that slambang end. Even better, the reader wants it, too, after surviving 80k or 100k words of all the harrowing perils your protagonist had gone through.
When you are initially plotting the book, you often jump around, pick a wonderful character, have a scene that has to be put in…and usually you come up with the end before anything else. From here, you can backward construct the book to reach this point.
Ending with a zinger line is hard (“here is the race that shall rule the sevagram”) Leaving with an emotional conclusion is easier. “Barker stepped into the saddle and turned his mare’s face toward the edge of town where Ruth waited for him. He hoped to hell he would know what to tell her before he got home.” Or one I like from Mask of the Sun: It didn’t pay to reach too fast for gold.
What is harder when it comes to endings are novels in a series. The book has to have a satisfactory ending but leave a cliffhanger for the next book. More on this later. I leave you by coming full circle with the title
Virgin Circus Clowns Shooting at Cops in Low Speed Chase February 26, 2012
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How you open a story is important. Really important. Vital. The title catches the reader’s imagination and then your first sentence or two has to drag the reader along (that ever-so-famous hook) until so much time has been spent wondering what’s going on that the commitment to read the rest is easy to make.
Scott told me about a YA book with the first line: The forest was silent except for the screaming.
What a wonderful beginning! And I was watching foreign vampire films (because I woke up at 3 in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep–aside: I think the first sleep, second sleep notion is bunk. I do better with straight through sleep and less well the next day if my sleep is interrupted.) Lips of Blood was, uh, interesting, but Jean Rollins’ Requiem for a Vampire had the opening I alluded to in the blog title.
The chase scene goes on for about ten minutes, and in typical French fashion, it has nothing to do with anything else in the movie, which is about vampires and haunted castles and I have no idea what more. In a way, the opening is a cheat because you never find out why the women are dressed as clowns, what crime they have committed, why they are willing to kill the cops and who the driver was of their car who is shot dead by the police (how this happens is as much a mystery as the plot itself).
But as impervious to American logic as the movie is, no matter how much the vampire is in serious need of an orthodontist, that opening is a classic. I had to watch to see what was coming next.
Look to the (New Mexico) Skies! February 24, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in awards, business, history, New Mexico, space, writing.add a comment
Last night I trundled on down to the NM Museum of Natural History to attend a talk on 100 years of space flight in New Mexico by author Loretta Hall.
She won a NM Book Award for her history of space exploration since 1930 and gave an entertaining presentation ranging from Robert Goddard to 2025 or so, when Virgin Galactic figures to break even on its space tourism.
Much of the talk was familiar, especially the pictures of early launches from White Sands. She touched on how Randall Lovelace was charged with testing the Mercury astronauts (and that the movie The Right Stuff was pretty accurate). What I had never heard before was Lovelace’s crazy notion that women ought to be in the program, too. One pilot named Jerrie Cobb tested out to within 2% of the top men. Five other women also qualified. So it ought to have been the Mercury 13, not the Mercury 7–except NASA wouldn’t accept women. The kicker was that the women weren’t jet test pilots.
One of the un-Mercury 6 has a ticket on Virgin Galactic. I hope she makes it (another interesting factoid–90% of everyone from 21-80 yrs old can qualify to be a space tourist. Think I could raise $200k on Kickstarter for a ticket? Loan me $200k till my (rocket)ship comes in?).
The entire space tourist trip will last about 2.5 hrs, with 90 minutes being a slow spiral upward to 50,000 ft to get above the turbulence. Another 6 minutes to apogee, perhaps 10 minutes of floating about and sightseeing, then descent a la space shuttle (ie, unpowered, like a falling brick) Hall said that maximum g-force would be 6g, which seems wildly high to me since the shuttle launch only had a max of around 3g. Instantaneous g-loading? A football player takes 80g instantaneous–repeatedly. So maybe 6 isn’t outrageous for a sudden stop?
NM has a great history from Goddard’s liquid fuel inventions to probably satellite launches from White Sands/Spaceport America in a few years. Ad astra!
http://space.about.com/od/astronautbiographies/a/jerriecobb.htm
Previous Post February 23, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in business, New Mexico, science, science fiction, space.add a comment
Water Worlds and Space Elevators
Lou passed along this about a water world around a red dwarf. Twenty times as massive as earth, the atmosphere has water, but in “super fluid” phase. Not sure what this means so will check it out to see. Maybe an entire planet of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Ice 9″?
But another item caught my eye. It looks as if Japan is committing to a space elevator by 2050. Alas, I will never see it work, but I have doubts about this technology and if I lived to be 200 might not live to see it work. Still, go for it! No idea where the earth base would be. One of the Pacific Islands, probably. Iwo Jima is a bit north since nearer the equator would work, but it would be good seeing something rising from Mt Suribachi in addition to an American flag. (This date, 1945)
As an exotic technology for cheap launches, I’d prefer something like a laser launch vehicle. (For both this and the space elevator, a tip of the space helmet to Jordin Kare.)
Tonight I’m likely going to a talk by Loretta Hall on the NM Spaceport and a NM perspective on the history of rocketry. (7-8:30, Natural History Museum, for you locals)
R46.1, That’s My Code February 22, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in gummint, history.add a comment
Lunch with a variety of folks always gives me the “You gotta be kidding” when they come up with things so strange not even a lawyer could imagine it. One of the top doctors in town made the claim that under new federal bureaucracy there are 140,000 possible claims that can be made for insurance compensation.
I didn’t think there were 140,000 ways to injure yourself, but the one he was sure would be used frequently was “Code V91 07XA burn due to water-skis on fire.” Except he was unsure which of the *3* code variants might be most useful. Three? You have to wonder about spontaneous combustion codes and even what the codes might be for alien abduction and subsequent anal damage.
How many bureaucrats does it take to screw in a light bulb? Oh, wait, we can’t own 100 watters any more. Never mind.
One of those story ideas that never seemed the least bit plausible (and certainly qualifies as uber sf) was Frank Herbert’s Bureau of Sabotage stories-–the Bureau of Sabotage was required to keep things from working too well. And of course there is Clarke’s Against the Fall of Night/City and the Stars where a wild card is introduced every few generations to keep decay from setting in. That is almost reasonable since it assumes things are tending to entropy rather than working perfectly and entropy must be introduced.
And one of those stories that might well be our future is Keith Laumer’s “In the Queue.” We spend our time waiting, filling out forms and then…
Otherwise, today was a fine day. Went geocaching and found a cache in an alligator/dragon’s belly. Seems appropriate, from the belly of the beast.
BTW, the code in the title is for “bizarre personal appearance.”
Today, 1962 February 20, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in history, science, space.1 comment so far
Fifty years ago, America sneaked into space. John Glenn actually orbited the Earth. Hard to believe space tourism will duplicate what the prior two Americans did, at least as far as “going into space” altitudes. (I am discounting Ham’s flight, too. Ham is buried at the west end of the parking lot at the Alamogordo Space Museum. At least he didn’t die in orbit as did Laika back in ’57) We are lucky to still have an original Mercury astronaut around. The first man in orbit died in a Mig15 crash back in ’68, while we elected ours to the Senate to insure his mummification.
One of the major head scatchers of the 20th Century has to be the sudden decline of our space program. We reached the Moon, that was it (I can blame Nixon but Vietnam was also a big part of it). I find it hard to believe vision is missing, but it seems to be so. If I remember the story, one of the dogs the Russians sent into space was recovered, had pups and one was given to JFK. Wonder if there are offspring? And why does Eric Frank Russell’s story “Into Your Tent I’ll Creep” come to mind?
Congratulations to all who have gone into space. May another, albeit far future, generation join you in this achievement.
Blast Off For High Adventure… February 19, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in business, New Mexico, science, science fiction, sense of wonder, space, Texas.add a comment
But probably not from New Mexico’s Spaceport America. The legislature mostly failed to do anything this year in its 30 day session, but what else is new? A lot of egregious oversights but getting bought off by lobbyists and not passing limited liability for the spaceport is going to cost us dearly.
There are six in the works, with Colorado getting into the foray.
I suspect the Texas spaceport might be financed by Jeff Bezos (go buy more of my stuff on Amazon so he can afford to build his own rocket–and I can afford to launch!) Check out the link to see what Texas did to provide launcher protection–which is what NM failed to do.
With Virgin Galactic only on the hook for a few offices rented in Las Cruces and not paying a dime so far to the state, chances look mighty good to me they will shift their attention to either Texas or Colorado. Rutan is building the White Knight out in California but going to the Mojave Desert for a launch lacks…class. It’s hot out there and miles from civilization. Space tourists (it said in the paper this morning that Victoria Principal is on the roster for the first Spaceport America launch–hope she can get a ticket elsewhere) are in it for a little adventure and a lot of bragging rights. Roughing it in real desert is nowhere near as brag-worthy as staying in a posh hotel and then launching. Sort of like comparing Magellan’s Trinidad to the Queen Mary (the trial lawyers would likely make the comparison to the Titanic…) Exploration, no, elegance and adventure, yes. The difference between naming the Magellanic Clouds and “merely” seeing them from space.
With the death of all space missions and NASA still sucking up the same amount of money for a lot fewer programs, private space is our salvation. Mine, at least, for seeing space travel. (The sf I read as a kid still burns brightly in my imagination).
A Simple Change In History February 15, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in death, history, ideas, science.6 comments
It’s great to have friends who come up with nifty ideas. Scott & Pat have actually done research on this and it sounds plausible. Pat goes to garage sales and managed to get a lead crystal decanter worth several hundred bucks for only a few, but should she use it since it is lead crystal (from the turn of the last century)?
Turns out it might be pretty bad if she did. The lead leaches out of the glass fairly rapidly when the decanter is filled with something mildly acidic. Like wine. Which is what you would likely put in a wine decanter. But how much? Scott found that concentrations would be 50,000 micrograms in a few weeks (and the edge of oops for lead in drink is around 50 micrograms). So you could get quite an overdose…from just one glass of wine from that decanter.
As Scott pointed out, the aristocracy most likely to use such a fine piece of artwork would fill it, possibly close the house for a few months, then return. And drink highly contaminated wine.
Worse, the Romans used lead to “sweeten” sour wine, a practice later vintners followed.
What are the symptoms of lead poisoning? When you think about British aristocracy, well, it’s like a checklist.
High blood pressure
Declines in mental functioning
Pain, numbness or tingling of the extremities
Muscular weakness
Headache
Abdominal pain
Memory loss
Mood disorders
Reduced sperm count, abnormal sperm
Miscarriage or premature birth in pregnant women
In addition, it can cause a condition very similar to gout.
The aristocracy methodically poisoned itself over the years, likely drinking more wine to cure their hangover symptoms which could well have been due to lead poisoning.
If the aristocracy had not been susceptible to lead poisoning, they might still be top dogs. How’s that for an alt history idea?
If Nature Abhors a Vacuum Why is It So Hard to Send Manned Ships Into Space? February 12, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in death, gummint, New Mexico, science, sense of wonder, space.4 comments
It was with real sorrow I saw that NASA is forsaking the Mars exploration. In the words of this article, Mars lost.
No, we lost. If the race is to the stars, that is. If it is to become a third-world, second-rate country then we are certainly crossing the finish line.
The conjecture is that NASA figures Virgin Galactic, SpaceX and other private companies will do it. Fine, I’d say, but there is an incredible impediment skyward for that, at least in New Mexico. The trial lawyers have spent a reported $200k lobbying to kill a bill limiting liability at Spaceport America. IOW, they want to sue the place into oblivion at the first accident.
If you are smart enough to accumulate $200,000 for the ride and smart enough to go through the release form where it states in *three* places “you may die if…” and the form must be signed at least 24 hours prior to launch to give time to think it over, then I’d say you are well on your way to understanding the danger. Everyone dies. I’d love to go up in the Virgin Galactic launch vehicle to space, and if I had to die, there’s no way I’d prefer more. But that’s just me. If I had $200k, I’d pay for the privilege of maybe dying on my way to space. Color me DD Harriman. And if I didn’t augur in, then I’d have one hell of a story to tell for the rest of my life.
Word is that Virgin Galactic is pulling back a bit because of the lawyers. VG has sunk more money into offices and the like in Las Cruces but they haven’t yet ponied up a dime to the state for use of the spaceport. It might well be they pull out and go to the Mojave site or Wisconsin or wherever. The loss to them would be negligible at this point. To space tourism in NM, it would be a crushing blow if not a fatal one.
This isn’t to say Spaceport America would close. 90% of the facility schedule would still be A-OK to go as unmanned launches are lined up and waiting to blast off. But space tourism is, excuse the expression, the boost NM needs. Thanks for trying to kill it, ambulance chasers. And thanks, NASA, for killing our entire space program.
