This week's launch of India's spacecraft to Mars should not come as a surprise. Five years ago, the country sent a mission to the Moon. And going ahead, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has bolder aims. In 2015, it plans to send a probe to Venus and then another to the Sun. A reusable launch vehicle is already in the works, something that NASA is letting SpaceX develop. These achievements, however, haven't stopped detractors from asking why India is doing this when a third of its people live below the international poverty line.
The simple answer is because it makes economic sense, as technological and social development go hand in hand. This reasoning has been embraced throughout the developing world. Investment from poor countries has helped double global government spending on space programs in the last few years. It was $73 billion in 2012 but only $35 billion in 2010, according a report by the space market consultancy Euroconsult. In that time, NASA's budget fell from $18.7 billion to $17.7 billion. Countries like Bangladesh, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam are leading the charge. More than 70 countries now have space programs of some sort.
India's success in space has proven to these countries that modest investments can provide big gains. The Mars Orbiter Mission, for instance, cost only $73 million. NASA's next mission, which will not do a lot more, is going to cost $671 million.
As an experiment to test an idea being kicked around at SEG, I designed a Google Form that let's SEG members express interest in volunteer service on SEG committees.
If you want to help out, please try the form (SEG member or not) and submit your results. Comments welcome, just put them in the last question text box on the form. Thanks!
Years later, now, I just was made aware of this great pumpkin idea of yours and wanted to thank you personally for keeping my toaster ’alive’ in a fun new way… this is SO cool.
It struck me as odd that the ancient Norse bad guys in this
movie come equipped with assault rifles and hand grenades. And I
question, just from a visual perspective, how wise it was to render
their most fearsome weapon as a hovering puddle of digital goo. But
since this is a movie about a hunky thunder god with a magical
hammer, subsidiary quibbles are probably beside the point.
Thor:The Dark World picks up from the
concluding events of last year’s The Avengers. Now we find
Thor (Chris Hemsworth) back home in Asgard wrapping up a two-year
battle to bring peace to the Nine Realms, of which Asgard and Earth
(and the delightfully named Svartalfheim) are a part. At the same
time, Thor’s bad-seed brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), having made a
fine mess of things last time out, is being consigned to the castle
dungeon by his father, King Odin (Anthony Hopkins).
Meanwhile, back on Earth—London, to be precise—Thor’s
girlfriend, astrophysicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), continues
to pine for her runaway super-squeeze. Her mentor, Dr. Selvig
(Stellan
Skarsgård), is running around Stonehenge stark naked. And her
intern, Darcy (Kat Dennings), has noticed some weird space stuff
going on. This turns out to be the aforementioned puddle of goo,
known to evil adepts as the Aether. This in turn is urgently
coveted by the Dark Elves (not a name to strike terror, you’d
think; but apart from their pointy ears and interludes of subtitled
elvish badinage, they’re human-size sci-fi marauders with the usual
nasty plans). The Elves, you’ll be surprised to learn, want to use
the Aether to…whatever, whatever, whatever.
This rococo comic-book plot plays out in a sometimes pretty but
more often airless environment of high-end CGI. And of course it’s
further encumbered by so-what 3D (still a big deal overseas, where
The Dark World has already cleared the $100-million mark).
There’s plenty of action, in the familiar video-game manner; but
the movie feels rote (whoa, a portal!), and it comes to an end a
bit too long after it should.
However, depending on one’s frame of mind, it could also be
passable fun. Director Alan Taylor—more prestigiously employed on
Game of Thrones—leavens the superhero bloat with
wisecracks and campy quips (spurning a palace butt-kisser, Odin
purrs, “You must think I’m a piece of bread to be buttered so
heavily”). And some of the actors help. Hopkins is clearly passing
through on his way to a paycheck, and it’s too bad the head Elf,
played by Christopher Eccleston, is barely one dimensional. But
Portman has a lively comic spirit; Hemsworth brings a warm star
presence to the title role; and Hiddleston, with his devious eyes
and inscrutable smirk, remains a perfect Loki (the series’ true fan
favorite).
The Dark World is a pit stop in Marvel’s long march
toward total archive monetization. The movie will further swell the
corporate coffers, no doubt; but it’s otherwise more than usually
disposable.
About Time
On the eve of moving to London to begin his career as a lawyer,
young Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) is called in for a talk with his
father (Bill Nighy). The subject, entirely surprisingly for Tim, is
time travel. Dad tells him that all the men in their family have
had the ability to travel back into the past, although within
limits: you “can’t kill Hitler, or shag Helen of Troy,
unfortunately.” No, this gift can only be used for things one
personally wants, his father says—“to make life great.”
Over the last 20 years, as a writer (Notting Hill,
Four Weddings and a Funeral) and, infrequently, a director
of his own scripts (Love Actually), Richard Curtis has
perfected a distinctively sparkly brand of romantic comedy. He’s
unapologetically sentimental, happy to head right for the
heartstrings; but he’s also witty in an often memorable way, and
it’s difficult to imagine that even the most rom-com-resistant
viewer will be able to completely resist About Time,
Curtis’ latest film (and the last he’ll direct, he says).
Introducing a sci-fi element into this tale about love among the
well-to-do freshens the formula, and the actors sail away on the
new possibilities.
Arriving in London, Tim moves in with a family friend, a grumpy
blocked playwright named Harry (Tom Hollander). Tim has always been
awkward with women, but in a unique meet-cute scene, he makes the
acquaintance of Mary (Rachel McAdams), an endearingly odd young
woman (she’s obsessed with Kate Moss) who works in publishing.
Unfortunately, Mary has recently acquired a boyfriend. When? Tim
asks. And exactly where? Furnished with this information, he ducks
into a closet and makes his way back into the recent past. When he
returns, Mary is all his.
The plot has a well-turned simplicity that could be dismissed as
corn if it weren’t so undeniably entertaining. The utility of
time-travel is inventively demonstrated (it’s especially handy for
rewriting romantic failures), and when its possibilities hit a wall
at the end, the solicitation of tears feels—in rom-com
terms—justified.
Nighy, appearing in his third Curtis film, is pricelessly
comical. With his eloquent slouch, he circles his lines as if still
working out how best to deploy them. And Gleeson, who previously
featured in True Grit and the last two Harry
Potter films, reveals a winning touch that should soon make
him much better-known. Some of the characters are
underdeveloped—principally Richard Cordery as a fubsy uncle and
Lydia Wilson as Tim’s vaguely troubled sister. But McAdams is
adorability incarnate, and several of the supporting
players—especially Hollander, who’s wonderfully sour—are given
small showcase moments of their own. The movie may seem too pat,
too carefully constructed. But it has a smooth, easy
charm, and a romantic glow that’s hard to deny.
Today, then, I want to talk a little about my own experience with ethnic slurs. As you know I am a Sikh, with family from India. I wear a turban and full beard as part of the custom for Sikh men. All of the adult men in my family have worn turbans, going back many generations. Given what has happened on campus this week, I want to talk a little about the damage that can come from ethnic slurs – but also about the strange and sometimes paradoxical thinking that leads them to be uttered in the first place. I will use some personal experiences I have had as examples, but my goal is to use those examples in connection with some general ideas about ethnic and racial slurs on a college campus. This is a personal essay, yes, but it's not really about me.
In the books we have read in this class, slurs have sometimes entered into the story somewhat ambiguously. In T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain, slurs for Mexicans are used but in one instance at least Candido Rincon doesn't read enough English to understand what's being said -- though he certainly understands the message since the vandals who spray-painted the words “Beaners Die” on a rock near his makeshift camp also destroyed his personal property. With Henry Park and Chang Rae-Lee’s Native Speaker, we had some discussion about the slur "gook," that American soldiers coined with reference to the North Koreans they were fighting in the Korean War in the early 1950s. (As we discussed, "gook" would also be applied to other Southeast Asian people, especially the Vietnamese.)
An anti-patent-troll bill was introduced in Congress two weeks ago and debated at the House Judiciary committee last week. Yesterday, a Senate committee convened to talk about one of the nastier sides of the patent wars: patent licensing companies that send out thousands of letters asking for payouts from small businesses, often for everyday business behavior like using scanners
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) convened a meeting of the Senate Commerce Committee, bringing four key personalities in patent reform to Capitol Hill. Her goal was to find out if something could be done to stop the patent threat letters, from a consumer protection standpoint.
"The issue here is not about the right to assert one's patent," said McCaskill. "It's not even really about the patent system. It's about the deceptive and unfair practice of threatening consumers. It's about scam artists preying on the vulnerable."
I had a slight advantage over the other kids in my junior high Louisiana history class: Two of my great-aunts, Sue Eakin and Manie Culbertson, wrote our textbook, Louisiana: The Land and Its People. I was the only person in my class (and probably the only kid in the entire state) whose textbook was inscribed by its authors. Of course, this wasn’t something you brag about in junior high, and I knew it probably wasn’t wise to tell my teacher that my aunts first gave me their book when I was in the fourth grade, lest he think I had somehow already memorized the whole thing.
Sue, Manie, and my grandmother Joanne, members of the sprawling Lyles family, were all history teachers. Along with their nine brothers and sisters (including three who were lost in childhood), they were born in Cheneyville, Louisiana and raised in nearby Loyd Bridge on the banks of Bayou Boeuf, in a place named, ironically enough, Compromise Plantation. Their father- my great-grandfather and a man I’ve only known through family folklore as “Daddy Sam”- farmed cotton, 800 acres of land that he leased and subleased to African-American sharecroppers. Truth be told, Daddy Sam was also, in the strictest sense of the term, a “sharecropper;” he never owned his land or his home. The “compromise” was complicated. I mention all of this for a reason.
When I was in the fourth grade, along with my autographed textbook, Aunt Sue also gave me the first of many copies of the book 12 Years a Slave, and perhaps knowing that it was heavy reading for an elementary school student, she spoiled it and told me the story in her own words. Sue, a history professor, spent most of her career researching and editing 12 Years a Slave. Her name appears in bold block letters at the top of the book’s cover; the author’s name, Solomon Northup, appears in bolder letters below.
Sue loved telling Solomon Northup’s story. She knew it was riveting and important, and after first encountering the book when she was only twelve years old, she spent the next seventy-eight years of her life chasing it down. Sue’s children affectionately refer to Solomon as their “brother,” which seems appropriate. After all, they grew up with him.
Today, because of Steve McQueen’s film adaptation, the world is finally rediscovering Solomon Northup’s story. I’d been hesitant to write about the movie 12 Years a Slave until I actually saw it, but it hasn’t been easy. The reviews have seemed, at times, too good to be true. And although I didn’t grow up with Solomon at the dinner table every night like my cousins in the Eakin family, I’ve nonetheless felt protective over it by proxy. I know what it meant to Aunt Sue: the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of hours that she dedicated, her exceptional compassion for and care-taking of a story that she hoped to rescue from the footnotes of American history.
A few days ago, I saw the movie. At the risk of sounding even more hyperbolic than I already have, the reviews are right: 12 Years a Slave isn’t just the greatest film ever made about American slavery; it is, in many respects, the only film ever made about American slavery. It’s an actual bona fide masterpiece. It’s staggering, blood-curdling, and perfectly, jarringly honest in its depiction of the greatest institutionalized atrocity and criminal conspiracy in our nation’s history.
However, six years later, when she was attending Louisiana State University, Eakin chanced upon a copy in a local bookstore. She asked the owner how much it cost. “What do you want that for?” he asked. “There ain’t nothing to that old book. Pure fiction. You can have it for 25 cents.”
As Eakin later observed, “I spent the next seventy years proving him wrong.”
A few years ago, Aunt Sue told another amazing story about what she experienced after inviting the Southern University choir to perform in Bunkie. Here she is, full-throttled, sharing another incredible story, in her own voice:
The movie 12 Years a Slave, because of its unflinching and unapologetic depiction of the brutalities and cruelties of a not-so-distant past, has understandably provoked a discussion about the lasting legacy of slavery.
*****
Without question, Louisiana and most of the American South have refused to adequately and honestly confront and acknowledge the legacy of slavery. We spend millions of dollars marketing our plantation homes as sleepy, nostalgic, and beautiful destinations for weddings and tour groups, and we spend millions more incentivizing renovations of these homes under the pretense of historic preservation. And maybe that would be okay and understandable, but at the same time, we’re scrubbing all vestiges of slavery from these plantations. With few exceptions, it is almost impossible to find a plantation in Louisiana that preserves its slave quarters with the same diligence and care as it does its main house. And again, with few exceptions, you’ll likely never hear anyone in the Louisiana tourism industry admit that plantations, to quote my cousin Paul White III, are actually “concentration camps.” That thousands of African-American families also lived, worked, and died in these places, that hundreds of African-Americans were brutally murdered in these places, that the majestic oak trees in the brochures were once used for lynchings, that right beyond the immaculately manicured gardens there are long-forgotten cemeteries.
No, instead, these are beautiful historic homes on the river or the bayou, the ideal location for a wedding of rich white people whose idea of a good time is to dress up in seersucker suits and summer dresses and imagine themselves to be Southern nobility. I’ve been to a few of these weddings, and it’s been surreal every time.
When I was a kid, another one of my great aunts and another member of the Lyles family, Aunt Betty, owned a plantation on Bayou Boeuf, and I’ll readily admit: I thought it was a magical and mysterious place. But after spending a few weekends there and really exploring the whole property, it also terrified me. Outside of the main house and the cottage Betty built for herself, death was everywhere. Old slave shacks that were collapsing in on themselves, tiny one-room structures that had once housed twenty people. Near the bayou, unmarked headstones older than anything in my hometown that were mildewed and sinking into the ground.
There is no dignity in this. And as much as we may try to gloss it all over, to convince ourselves that we’re justified in presenting and marketing and incentivizing a simulacrum of plantation life, there is also no escaping it: These are concentration camps. We either preserve all of the story or we demolish all of it.
*****
But our misplaced nostalgia for plantations is not the only and certainly not the most important thing that Steve McQueen’s adaptation of 12 Years a Slave should force Louisiana (and, indeed, the entire country) to confront.
Louisiana is the prison capital of the world. Quoting from The Times-Picayune:
The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly five times Iran’s, 13 times China’s and 20 times Germany’s.
And although nearly 65% of Louisiana is white, the vast and overwhelming majority of prisoners in Louisiana are African-American. In New Orleans, one in seven African-American men are either in prison or on parole or probation.
160 years after Solomon Northup published his book, a black man in Louisiana is more likely to spend his life in prison (and often for the flimsiest reasons) than he would be in any other place in the entire world. A black man in Louisiana is disproportionately more likely to be executed or to end up on death row for the same crime committed by a white man than he would be in any other place in the entire world. Quoting from Vincent Warren, the Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights:
In Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison, home to all men on death row in the state, those sentenced to death spend their final years locked in their cells alone for 23 hours each day. During summer, death row inmates are kept in their cells even though the heat index regularly exceeds 110 degrees. The prison does not provide them with clean ice or cool showers, but it does provide the public with tours of death row and the lethal injection table.
At night, in an effort to keep cool, the men at Angola sleep on the floor where they are exposed to fire ants. When they “misbehave,” they are moved to cells in the hottest tiers. Men have lived up to 28 years on Louisiana’s death row, and most spend at least a decade in these dehumanizing conditions waiting for court appeals to go through. That is their due process.
The problem is systemic, but rather than address the fundamental inequities, the conservative ruling class in Louisiana, led by Governor Bobby Jindal, continues to exacerbate these problems: We create incentives to incarcerate poor, primarily minority people by privatizing prisons. In Louisiana, prison is not about rehabilitation; it’s about profits. We deny $16.1 billion in Medicaid expansion funds and turn the keys of our robust public hospital system over to private corporations- not because it’s good policy, but because it’s good politics. We tie school funding to test scores and politicized teacher evaluations- without ever considering the real and direct connection between performance and poverty, the fact that Louisiana’s lowest-performing schools are those who have more than 80% of their students on the free lunch program. And instead of lifting those schools up, instead of investing in them and in the neighborhoods they serve, we divert that money to churches and unaccountable private schools, not because they actually do better but because they vote Republican.
I don’t know what, exactly, my Aunt Sue would have thought about the film adaptation of 12 Years a Slave provoking a discussion on racial and economic injustices or historical revisionism in contemporary Louisiana. She passed away a few years ago.
But I imagine that she would have relished in the conversation and celebrated the idea that, although Solomon’s story may be 160 years old, it’s still more relevant than ever.
At spring 2013 commencement for the University of Arkansas Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, I happened to sit next to a couple of physics professors. Lucky me, because I had been thinking about cooking up a physics option for geology undergraduate students. Dr. Gay Stewart was very encouraging. We set up a coffee meeting, then had another, and another. She quickly locked into the idea of double major, not just a minor. After we had the rough outline, we brought in Dr. Matt Covington, a new Geosciences faculty member and a physicist by training (he did his PhD in Astrophysics). By late summer it was ready to present to Geosciences department chairman Ralph Davis, who made some suggestions but also strongly supported the plan. Last Monday the plan was emailed to the entire Geosciences faculty. We got important feedback from Drs. Guccione and Boss, and these were quickly incorporated into the plan.
Wednesday of this week we had the first faculty meeting of the academic year and the Physics/Geology Double Major was top of the agenda. The University of Arkansas is never likely to have a geophysics undergraduate degree, but that is fine. It can be persuasively argued that geophysics is best treated as a graduate degree, and that undergraduate years should be spent on more fundamental studies. This is particularly the case with petroleum geophysics that is aimed at a terminal MS degree. I explained to the assembled faculty that the double degree would take the same time as a single degree (8 semesters), would have the same number of total hours as a single degree (120), all by judicious use of elective hours in both degree programs. And it would be a solid degree on both sides, not something watered down. Physics all the way through quantum mechanics and senior project; geology all the way through field camp. The student who completed such a program would be attractive to the top geophysics or quantitative geology programs in the country. And is can all be accomplished with existing faculty and resources.
The thought here to catch a few early physics majors who want to have a specialization that benefits from physics training. It might be possible that a geology major could get into this double major, but it is unlikely since few geology students have quantitative skills necessary for advanced mathematics and physics required.
Anyway, the vote was taken: Unanimous yes in support of the new Physics/Geology double degree program. Physics had already given approval thanks to the tireless efforts of Gay Stewart. One degree, two majors. Still much work to get it in the catalog and recruit a few good students. So it begins.
27 Aug 2013 form of the Physics/Geology double degree. Now we just need a few of strong students.
Welcome to the new book from Agile Libre! The newest, friendliest, awesomest book about petroleum geoscience.
The book will be out later in November, pending review of the proof, but you can pre-order it now from Amazon.com at their crazy offer price of only $13.54. When it comes out, the book will hit Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, and other online booksellers.
63 weeks to mature
It's truly a privilege to publish these essays. When an author hands over a manuscript, they are trusting the publisher and editors to do justice not just to the words, but to the thoughts inside. And since it's impossible to pay dozens of authors, they did it all for nothing. To recognize their contributions to the community, we're donating $2 from every book sale to the AAPG Foundation. Perhaps the students that benefit from the Foundation will go on to share what they know.
This book took a little stamina, compared to 52 Things... Geophysics. We started inviting authors on 1 July 2012, and it took 442 days to get all the essays. As before, the first one came almost immediately; this time it was from George Pemberton, maintaining the tradition of amazing people being great champions for these projects. Indeed, Tony Doré — another star contributor — was a big reason the book got finished.
What's inside?
To whet your appetite, here are the first few chapters from the table of contents:
Advice for a prospective geologist — Mark Myers, 14th Director of the USGS
As easy as 1D, 2D, 3D — Nicholas Holgate, Aruna Mannie, and Chris Jackson
Computational geology — Mark Dahl, exploration geologist at ConocoPhillips
Get a helicopter not a hammer — Alex Cullum of Statoil
Even this short list samples some of the breadth of topics, and the range of experience of the contributors. Nichlas and Aruna are PhD students of Chris Jackson at Imperial College London, and Richard Hardman is a legend on the UK exploration scene, with over 50 years of experience. Between them, the 42 authors have notched up over 850 career-years — the book is a small window into this epic span of geological thinking.
We're checking the proofs right now. The book should be out in about 2 weeks, just in time for St Barbara's day!
Pre-order now from Amazon.com Save more than 25% off the cover price! It's $13.54 today, but Amazon sets the final price... I don't know how long the offer will last.
