I Must Be Severely Out of Sync

But the "best movie of 2012" leaves me cold...

Beasts of the Southern Wild is regarded by the Sundance crowd and many, many others, even Roger Ebert, as some as some sort of masterpiece.  It certainly has its clever, quirky moments and visually striking scenes. At its center is a charming and spirited performance by five year old Quvenzhané Wallis , who plays Hushpuppy, the protagonist through whose eyes we view life in The Bathtub, a dysfunctional community of raw characters living in a rude collection of shacks somewhere in the bayou outside The Levee.

In order to create this masterwork director Benh Zeitlin and co-writer Luci Alibar expose  Hushpuppy and other children of The Bathtub (and the actors who played them) to all manner of jeopardy, ignorance, poverty, parental neglect, eating off the floor, beer-swilling, rum-chugging, child abandonment, meals of dog food, burning houses, verbal abuse, family violence, a hurricane, storm surge, forced evacuation, life in an emergency shelter, rotting carcasses, splattered blood, a brothel, and a herd of pigs made up as giant, carnivorous (?!!) aurochs.  I suppose it must be some sort of high-minded allegory, but I’m not feeling it.  As Hushpuppy tells the audience in a quieter moment,

Sometimes you can break something so bad, that it can't get put back together.

Indeed.

SpaceX In The News

NASA selects SpaceX to return Americans to space...

Press Release
 
(Hawthorne, CA) – Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) today won a $440 million contract with NASA to develop the successor to the Space Shuttle and transport American astronauts into space.

“This is a decisive milestone in human spaceflight and sets an exciting course for the next phase of American space exploration,” said SpaceX CEO and Chief Designer Elon Musk. “SpaceX, along with our partners at NASA, will continue to push the boundaries of space technology to develop the safest, most advanced crew vehicle ever flown.”

SpaceX expects to undertake its first manned flight by 2015 – a timetable that capitalizes on the proven success of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft combination. While Dragon is initially being used to transport cargo to the International Space Station, both Dragon and Falcon 9 were designed from the beginning to carry crew.

Under the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative’s base period, SpaceX will make the final modifications necessary to prepare Dragon to safely transport astronauts into space. These include:

• Seats for seven astronauts.
• The most technically advanced launch escape system ever developed, with powered abort possibilities from launch pad to orbit. SpaceX will demonstrate that Dragon will be able to escape a launch-pad emergency by firing integrated SuperDraco engines to carry the spacecraft safely to the ocean. SpaceX will also conduct an in-flight abort test that allows Dragon to escape at the moment of maximum aerodynamic drag, again by firing the SuperDraco thrusters to carry the spacecraft a safe distance from the rocket.
• A breakthrough propulsive landing system for gentle ground touchdowns on legs.
• Refinements and rigorous testing of essential aspects of Dragon’s design, including life-support systems and an advanced cockpit design complete with modern human interfaces.
• SpaceX will perform stringent safety and mission-assurance analyses to demonstrate that all these systems meet NASA requirements.

With a minimal number of stage separations, all-liquid rocket engines that can be throttled and turned off in an emergency, engine-out capability during ascent, and powered abort capability all the way to orbit, the Falcon 9-Dragon combination will be the safest spacecraft ever developed. 

About SpaceX 

SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches the world's most advanced rockets and spacecraft. With a diverse manifest of more than 40 launches to resupply the space station and deliver commercial and government satellites to orbit, SpaceX is the world's fastest growing launch services provider. In 2012, SpaceX made history when its Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle to successfully attach to the International Space Station—a feat previously achieved by only four governments. With the retirement of the Space Shuttle, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft are carrying cargo, and one day will carry astronauts, to and from the space station for NASA. Founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, SpaceX is a private company owned by management and employees, with minority investments from Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Valor Equity Partners. The company has more than 1,800 employees in California, Texas, Florida and Washington, DC. For more information, visit www.spacex.com. 

End Press Release [hyperlinks mine]

NOTE: Okay, okay, NASA has other CCiCap partners:

• Sierra Nevada Corp., Louisville, Colo., $212.5 million
• The Boeing Company, Houston, $460 million

I'd Cross My Fingers

If that would help...

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover is fast approaching the Red Planet for one of the most ambitious planetary exploration missions of the 21st century.  That would be an unalloyed pleasure if Mars wasn't also the graveyard of more than half of the flybys, orbiters, landers, and crawlers humankind has sent there.  

Unless something goes wrong before then, late Sunday evening (12:30 am Central 5 August 2012) Curiosity will treat its fans to Seven Minutes of Terror as the rover descends in a steerable entry vehicle - sheltered from friction behind a heat shield, then by parachute, then by rocket motors, then by sky crane.  Remember, the Martian atmosphere is "too dense to ignore but too thin to help."  What could go wrong?

If it survives its very complex  delivery to the planet's surface NASA has 23 month's worth of scientific exploration planned for it in Gale Crater.

If, like me, you want to follow the progress of Curiosity (and the fate of our $2.5 billion investment) there are many sites to choose from before resorting to the traditional media outlets.

I may cross my fingers anyway...

Update: An hour and five minutes to cruise stage separation.  Watching the Universe Today's YouTube channel coverage and NASA's live feed from JPL.   

Reupdate: Curiosity has landed!  It's 12:31 am and the MLS has "wheels on Mars."  Images from the hazard cams are on the flat screens at JPL.  Great job, NASA!  Woo hoo!  Awesome, just awesome!

Image by way of http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2012/06221711-how-curiosity-land-part-1.html

Not New

Not getting worse...

When faced with dramatic and horrible crimes we naturally seek ways to make sense of the senseless.  Such is the case with mass murder, such as we've seen committed in a movie theater in Colorado and a Sikh gurdwara in Wisconsin.  Where shall we turn?  There seem to be very few experts on mass murder. Perhaps that's because - despite the 24 hour news media's urgent pronouncements to the contrary - it's rare. Author Grant Duwe, Ph.D., Director of Research at the Minnesota Department of Corrections, is one the experts on this highly specialized and frequently misunderstood topic. He's written on the issue for years and has been widely quoted in the aftermath of the mass murder at the Batman premier in Aurora, Colorado.

Duwe's 2007 book, Mass Murder in the United States: A History, is a fine piece of scholarship that draws upon his detailed examination of 909 mass murders committed in the USA during the 20th century. He makes a compelling case that mass murder is not new, that the rate of mass murder is not on the rise, and that the severity of each incident is not, on average, increasing.

Duwe tells us that mass murder scenarios break down into three broad categories: criminal massacres of competitors, public mass murders, and family annihilations. Involvement in gangs or illegal drug distribution seems to be about the only segment to which conventional theories of criminality might be applied. With regard to the other two types, the fact that there are only ~20 incidents a year in a country of 311 million people, suggests even most psychological theories won't have much to offer by way of detection or prevention. Forensic analysis may help us categorize the offender after the fact, but only the slimmest fraction of "crazy" people ever act out in this horrible way either.

Mass Murder in the United States draws upon 909 mass murder events in the U.S. in the 20th century.  Duwe selected cases in which four people were killed in an event lasting less than 24 hours.  He detected two surges in the data. The first, in the 1920-30s, were largely divided between gangland crimes – the “The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre” being a notorious example – and family annihilations perpetrated by distraught Depression-era fathers with a sadly misapplied sense of obligation to their families. The second wave started in the mid-1960s, peaked in the 1990s, and is now in decline. The wave of mass murder our generation has lived through is evenly divided between criminal massacres, public mass murder – in public, in schools and at work, and again, family annihilations. Grimly interesting is the fact that bombing and arson have accounted for a higher proportion of deaths than most realize.

Duwe's discussion of moral panics and the role the news media play in the social construction of concern on this and other issues is very helpful to those of us interested in understanding why hysteria frequently drives public discourse. As we attempt to engage in productive discussions about frightening events we must lead with facts rather than fear. If you would have an opinion on this topic you owe it to yourself, your clients, and your community to read this book.

Mass Murder in the United States: A History, by Grant Duwe
Paperback, 213 pages
ISBN-13: 9780786431502
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date: 6/28/2007

Gun Safe?

Not so much...

If you keep a handgun at home in a small gun safe please have a look at the videos in this disturbing report at the Wired Threat Level blog titled Kids Can Open Gun Safes With Straws and Paper Clips, Researchers Say by Kim Zetter.

Seriously, watch it today.

UPDATED TO ADD: Another excellent in-depth article, Unsafe Gun Safes Can Be Opened By A Three-Year Old, by Marc Weber Tobias in Forbes.