Dark Matter

"The only true wisdom comes from knowing you know nothing" 

-Some guy in 'Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure'

I finally GET dark matter.  I had heard the term for years in the context of bad sci-fi and good Nova episodes, but it never really clicked for me what that term meant.  Thanks to some free time and the wonders of a show called The Wonders of The Universe, I now feel pretty certain I get what the mystery is all about.

If you know how big the earth is, and you know how big the moon is, you can use that information to predict certain things about how the two bodies will orbit around one another.  It's just mass and math.  OK, saying 'just' makes it sound simpler than it really is, but still, it's something we've known as a species for a few hundred years now and it helps us figure out predictable stuff like, eclipses and planetary location and other kinda useful stuff.  If you scale that math up a stage, it still makes sense - the Sun and the planets and the nearby stars are all behaving like this.  Mass and math.  The problem comes when you scale it up ANOTHER stage.  When we take all the stars and dust and crap that we see in a galaxy and try to predict how fast that thing should be spinning, we're wrong.  So we work backwards and say, OK, if we can figure out how fast the thing is spinning, then we should know how much stars and dust and crap and matter there is. 

What that math tells us, apparently, is that based on how fast galaxies are spinning all the stars and dust and crap that we can see - all of the MATTER that we can detect - makes up only about 15% of the mass of a galaxy.  The rest... Dark Matter.

Dark Energy is the same sorta thing - we know what the math SHOULD be, but then the stuff we observe out there in the world shows us something different.

What does this all mean?  Well, it's all another example of the limits of knowledge.  I often think about this.  The limit of what is knowable.  Usually, I think about it in historical terms - someone in the past knew something important and wrote it down in a scroll or a book or a papyrus, but that scroll or book or papyrus was lost or burned or whatever and now we can never know.  It's like the pocketwatch Belloq shows Indy in Raiders, only no one ever finds the watch.  History is actually littered with many such examples, but there are many smaller examples of the unknowable in our day to day experience.  You might see initials carved into a tree while on vacation.  You will probably never be able to find out who carved them, when or why.  Your time of exposure is just to small, your means of investigation just to limited.

There are things we may want to know, but never will, and the mechanism by which each of us copes with that fact is what we call our 'belief system'.

Traditionally, the unknowable has been given over to the divine.  Whatever manifestation it takes, it's a catch-all for everything that lay beyond our explanation.  I grew up thinking of it in monotheistic terms, but just as many people have some kind of trinity in mind when they think about it.  Other cultures see it in terms of shamanistic magic or a pantheon of gods and goddesses, but the purpose of all this seems the same: to contextualize the inexplicable.

But the inexplicable doesn't stay there.  As each generation builds on the work of the previous and as our time of exposure grows and our means of investigation become less limited, unknowable things become known and new things are discovered which will remain unknowable for generations, or maybe forever. 

So how do you contextualize with divinity the ever-changing state of knowledge?  God once created light, but then we figured out how stars explode into existence, and no creator was needed.  We took the motions of the stars and the moon away from the divine, too, handing it over to gravity.  Of course, light has a 'force carrier' called a photon, which is something we understand very well.  Gravity probably has a force carrier, too, we just don't know what it is yet.  We no longer chalk up the attraction of two bodies of significant mass to the Will of God, we just say, we don't know...yet. 

Defining what we don't know is the job of science, dealing with the not-knowing is the job of the divine.

And finally back to dark matter.  I think it is so wonderful to have our knowledge violently re contextualized with the same force and fury that the divine has had to endure.  It's like that moment when Copernicus first moved God further away from the Earth, or when Newton lashed the moon to the will of the Earth, only in this case, it's the solid ground of Newtonian physics itself thats getting pushed away.  And this time observation didn't answer our questions, it questioned our answers.

Under the Sea: The Movie: The Blog

 

Written by: No One

Since it's looking more and more likely that I will never be asked to record a directors commentary, partly because I have never directed anything, I have decided to write a compendium book to my most recent/ only film, Under the Sea.

If you haven't seen it yet, you can view the film in question here.

When I watch a movie that starts to creep under my skin and worms its way deep down into my soul where I'm soft like a woman, I often try to detach myself from it emotionally before it squeezes my insides so hard that salt water oozes from my eyes.  One of the tools of emotional detachment I use is to try and imagine the physical realities of production that went into the filming of that moment.

This kind of meta-viewing may come in handy when you're in your Methuselah years, like me, but it doesn't seem to help my 5 year old.  I've tried to explain to him what an 'actor' is, and how a 'camera' comes into the process, but the lesson wasn't sticking.

So in classic Mickey Rooney fashion, we decided to make our own movie!  We took the shortest, cutest book we could find and tried to talk Isaac into starring in an adaptation.  While his verbal agreement was non-binding, we still moved forward with the production.

Both my wife and I have a camp counselor butterfly gestating just beneath our old person chrysalis, and this project brought the beast out.  We hung a sheet on the wall and worked with out oldest boy to set up a production line to crank out decorative bubbles.  We scoured our home for useful props and decorations.  The only hiccup was that talks with our star broke down and we were forced to improvise.  Thankfully, Isaac agreed to narrate and we were able to re-cast with stuffed animals.

Our star was easy to cast, and while it didn't have the color scheme outlined in the source material, it had a certain... I don't know what.  I'm sure the French would have a better term for it.

I was particularly pleased with the casting of the Crab, who has a major role in the first and third acts of the piece, but who serves as mainly a MacGuffin through the second act.  Something about the crabs general demeanor and chiefly around his eyes communicated to me that, yes, indeed, this was a crab I would seek.

The other players were discovered by our casting director, me, who really did an outstanding job of locating talent from the strewn piles of playful detritus that litter every corner of our home.  A quick note on the turtle that plays The Turtle.  I had felt, from an aesthetic point of view, that even though the turtle had no discernible mouth, our audience would be sophisticated enough to presume that it was speaking.  Other stakeholders in the film felt very strongly that The Turtle needed the visual cue of a mouth.  Since fim making is a collaborative process, we affixed a mouth to the turtle, though I maintain to this day it looks more like a mustache, since it sits away from the face.

The octopus needs no introduction.  Anyone familiar with the classic Disney film 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea may recognize him, though it has been a few years and he was dressed like a squid.  Also, all of the horrible behind the scenes stories you've heard about him are true.  He is a drunken, hedonistic wreak.  If you ever get the opportunity to see an octopus strung out on cocaine pleasuring 5 women, 2 men and a manatee  simultaneously, I strongly recommend NOT doing it.  But you can't argue with the on-screen results.  He's a genius.

For those with a keen sense of hearing, you may have noticed that the voice of the crab changes with his final line, "SURPRISE!". This is due to the popularity of the line with the crew.  Everyone wanted to read that line, but the intensity of passion shown by Isaac was more than we could fight.  So the crabs first line, "Sure!" is read by Barbara and his second line, "SURPRISE!" is read by Isaac.  I think the strong narrative 'voice' of the crab in a dramaturgical sense still comes through, despite the late casting change.

One final note - we tried to credit the author and/or the illustrator of the original book, but there is actually no name credited with this work. 

Under the Sea: The Movie

Bad Goon Rising

My son wants to be a goon.  Most kids probably have a fascination with the boss, but not mine.  Faceless gooning is good enough for him.  In the LEGO Batman game, his favorite character is called 'Joker Goon'.  

A while back I took Isaac to historic Union Station to celebrate National Train Day.  Naturally we took the train there.  As always, Isaac was wearing his LEGO Star Wars shirt, a smile and his sunny disposition, made even sunnier by the fact that he was on a train. 

At one of the stops an unusual family came on.  It was a mother and her three children.  Well, maybe...  It was an older woman, probably in her forties, a boy and a girl roughly 15 and a kid about 7.  Only the 7 years old looked to be developmentally normal.  The rest of the family members had... something not quite right.  I don't want to sound like a jerk, so I'm not going to diagnose Downs Syndrome vs. Aspergers vs. mental retardation, but it was one of those things. Wide set eyes, smooth features, etc.  Only the 7 year old girl was untouched by... whatever.  It's not really important, except to say that it put my exceptional 4 year old on roughly the same intellectual plain as the 15 year old boy, and when the boy noticed Isaac's t-shirt, he immediately struck up a conversation about the passion and the glory that is Star Wars. 

"Who's your favorite Star Wars character?" the older boy asked Isaac. 

After screwing up his tiny face into an exaggerated 'I'm thinking' expression, Isaac finally said, "Stormtrooper"

This puzzled our fellow traveler, who tried to clarify his question a bit more to keep the conversation going, "No, I mean, like, which CHARACTER? Luke or Obi-Wan or Han Solo..."

"OH!" said Isaac, faking understanding, as he so often does to look more sophisticated around people, "In that case, probably a jungle trooper or a snow trooper."

No hero, no villain.  No one at the top of the Empiric food chain appeals to him, nor any heroic rag tag freedom fighter.  The faceless goon who's just following orders is my sons aspirational self.  A cog in the undifferentiated mass of warriors. 

I can only imagine how excited he will be in a few years when I introduce him to the Borg. 

How Deadwood helped me raise my children.

"Either way this comes out, we're only going to have to do this once."  Al Swearengen.

I have never had very much internal discipline.  This statement will come as no surprise to anyone with even a passing knowledge of me.  One of the most daunting elements of raising a child for me was the question of how to instill within them the positive character qualities I myself lack.  Self discipline - hell, discipline in GENERAL - being chief among these.  (all my other character deficiencies haven't really bothered me much).  I haven't' been through this with the little one, but I clearly remember the turning point in my discipline relationship with Isaac.
It was a brisk Rosh Hashanah afternoon.  Isaac, then an only child, was napping peacefully in his crib.  My wife had gone to her mothers to help get ready for the big family dinner and all I had to do was dress my two year old when he woke up and head out the door.  Seems easy enough...
It was starting to get late and I decided I should wake up Ike to make sure we made it on time.  He woke up ANGRY.  I was able to change his diaper while he laid on the table screaming and crying, but the nice outfit was a different issue.  He started squirming so hard he almost fell off the changing table, so I brought our fight to the floor.
"Isaac, you have to put your pants on." I said calmly
"NO!" He screamed back at me.
"Isaac, either you will put on your pants, or I will FORCE them on you."
"NOO!!" he replied.
Swiftly, I moved in, grabbed my screaming, naked child in one hand and the tiny, adorable corduroy pants in the other.  While Isaac screamed and kicked, I grabbed one tiny ankle in my hand, hoisting him briefly like Achilles, and threaded his foot into the cords.  I repeated the steps while he swung his arms at me wildly and screeched at the top of his tiny little lungs.  With both legs in, I flipped him over.  I wrapped one arm around his torso, immobilizing his flailing arms and started inching his pants up his legs and over his hips.  I had to wrap my leg around his to keep it from kicking and flinging the pants off.  All this action was set to the soundtrack of a child screaming in, what I like to call, pain-ger-steria.  Eventually, I got the pants snapped and released my lock down of all his limbs.  Immediately, he turned onto his back and fled from me in a panicked, reverse crab walk, reminiscent of Newt scurrying away from a face-hugger.
We took a pause - each eying up the other.  I kept my mean ol' Dad face on, and I could read fear, terror and surprise in Isaacs face.
No dad ever wants to be the cause of fear, terror and surprise in their child's face, but what happened next made it all worth while.  Slowly, and with Clint Eastwood-esque resolve, I said to my son, "Now, put on your shirt, or I will force you to put it on."
Isaac got up right away, walked over to the bed where his cute sweater and fake collar shirt was waiting and without fuss or argument, slipped it over his head.  All the while maintaining eye contact with me.

Over three years later and the ultimatum of, "...or I will force you" remains INCREDIBLY effective.  I have modified it slightly depending on the circumstances (i.e. "come along or I will CARRY you"), but it really only took that one encounter to establish that part of our relationship.

Redux - A Love of Deadwood May Save Your Life

Re-reading my old posts and this is one of my favorites.
ORIGINALLY POSTED AUG 9, 2006

WARNING - the following anecdote may not be suitable for younger viewers.
So there I am, standing on the street in Santa Monica, minding my own business, when I see a scary crazy person coming at me from down the street.  I know this person was scary, not because they were screaming and yelling profanities at no one in particular, but because years of working in Santa Monica have taught me how to tell the scary crazy people from the benign crazy people.  Anyway, this guy was riding right up to the Vons parking lot exit, and as he approached, a van pulled out quickly and almost struck the cyclist.
"Hey!  Fuck you, man!  Why don't you watch where youre fucking going!  Fucking pedestrians have the fucking right of way, asshole!"
Legally, I thought Crazy Man was on solid ground.  Van Guy should have pulled out of the parking lot with more caution.  But Van Guy wasn't done making mistakes
"Hey Asshole," shouted Van Guy as Crazy Man rode off, "why don't you watch where YOU'RE going!"
Big mistake.  Crazy Man turned around in the middle of the street, stopping traffic and almost causing an accident.
"What'd you say!?  What the FUCK did you say, motherfucker?  I'll fucking drag you out of that fucking car and fucking TEACH you about how driving works!"
The string of profanities continued and Van Guy quickly rolled up his window as Crazy Man reached the side of the van.  With the traffic stopped (thanks to Crazy Man), the van was able to pull out of the lot with a squeal and get onto Lincoln Avenue before Crazy Man could catch up and follow through with any of his threatened Drivers Ed.
"Thats right, dick!  Fucking run off!"
Now Crazy Man was surveying the scene.  He was all worked up and looking for somewhere to land with his anger.  He saw me, standing on the corner and watching the whole exchange.
"What the fuck are you looking at?"
Now scary Crazy Man was focused on me, riding over to where I stood
Digression...
When David Milch talks about the language in Deadwood, one of the comparisons he makes is to gorillas in the wild.  The string of profanities most of the characters in Deadwood spew is similar to a gorilla beating their chest in order to convince the other gorillas that they are strong and shouldn't be messed with.  In a world as violent and dangerous as Deadwood, the first way a human being can express that they are as violent and dangerous as the environment is through language.  Hence, when someone uses a lot of language that most, if not all, would find offensive, they are really trying to say that the normal laws of civil human interaction don't apply to them.
Crazy Man was undoubtedly doing the same.  The life of a homeless man is tough, and it must require a great many defensive techniques in order to stave off all sorts of dangers I can't even imagine.  I had to quickly communicate three things to this guy; 1) I pose no threat to him 2) I agree with his interpretation of events and 3) I am a gorilla that is not to be messed with.
"What the fuck are you looking at?" Crazy Man yells at me.
"I was looking at that fucking cunt who don't know shit about how to drive his piece of shit van."
"That's fucking RIGHT!  That guy's a fucking CUNT!" He yelled as he rode off.
I used the worst, most offensive word I could think of and I put it in a sentence that had been consciously crafted to be grammatically incorrect.  Not only did my strategy work in deflecting the ire and attention of Crazy Man, but part of me was also proud of the fact that I had influenced him a little.  He hadn't used the word 'cunt' at all before, but once he heard how it sounded, he decided it was a more appropriate word for Van Guy then 'Asshole'.
I dont swear very often, but if I'm going to, I like to make it count.

PS. This was copied and pasted from my iPhone

Blog Migration

While I don't expect to actually be writing anything new anytime soon, I figured I'd start bringing over some of my old MySpace blog post and keeping them here.  It's funny how my Myspace page never had a lot of followers, but I knew everyone one there really well.  My facebook page has become a massive storing house of everyone I've ever had any kind of interaction with.  Co-workers, friends of co-workers, random farmville players and even a few whose connection to me has been lost to history.  MySpace had its problems, but those of you who read my blog there knew me, and that's kinda what made blogging fun.  Maybe re-reading some of that old chronicle of dreams, phobias and socially awkward situations will inspire me again. 

Although, I don't think I've ever told anyone about this site, so it will probably get a LOT less traffic.