Departures and Arrivals

Alex and Christina headed back to Massachussetts today, So things are pretty quiet here in Collegeville just now.

When Jas called me late in the afternoon yesterday my first thought was that he was wanting to come over for coffee; but those days are over - he was calling from the welcome center just inside the Florida border. He and Kathy are no longer Pennsylvanians. They'll come back in April to sell their house; but based on how Jas was talking while here the two of them aren't going to be coming back for many extended stays.

Alex and Christina suggested that we all go and see the new Avatar movie in 3D last evening. We came away dazzled. Everything you may have read about the movie being seeded with trite and stupid political messages is true; but the sheer technical power of the thing easily overwhelmed the sheer idiocy of a great director putting such hackneyed tripe in his work. And the story and acting were on the whole pretty good for what is after all a combination kiddy film and second childhood film.

The movie is going to be a major hit with a very long run as word of mouth promotes it. If the director is smart he's right now working on a directors cut that will eliminate the stupidest of the references that will date the movie in five or ten years.

Even if he doesn't do that, I think people are going to remember and watch the film for a long time in the same way they watch the first Star Wars movie and Jurassic Park, as milestones in storytelling at new plateaus of technical capability.

The Pandorans in Avatar are very believable aliens, and the natural environment of the planet Pandora is very realisticly presented even while it is cleverly alien. Some of the plant and animal life on Pandora is reminiscent of the best thinking of writers like Larry Niven.

I'm thinking that the technology of movie making is getting to the point where realistic Puppeteers and Kzinti and Moties are possible. We may soon be treated to Ringworld and Mote in God's Eye as movies. I hope they do a better job with those than they did with Starship Troopers which was only so so. The bugs were true to Heinlein's sketchy description of them in the book; but what worked in 1950 for a novel did not work on the big screen. Plus, of course, the movie makers missed the whole point of Heinlein's book; but that was only to be expected.

Hollywoodians are very talented gabbling lefty geese. When they digest a plot the effect is much the same as what happens when you run grass through a goose. What comes out after processing is not recognizable.

In other news we've been having as cold a December as I can remember. Alex went out on the pond the other day and reported the ice almost 4 inches thick in the center. I can't recall ever walking on the pond this early in winter. It usually freezes solid enough to support weight in mid January or even February.

As a result of the cold and the fact that I've been home during the days I've been burning a heck of a lot more wood that I expected. I need my cracked toe to get better so I can get out there and get cutting and hauling more over from the other side of the big creek. Dan the woodcutter has quite a bit of unsplittable stuff set aside for me, but that's next year's wood, or even the year after, since unsplit rounds take a long time to dry out. The woodstove will handle and burn anthing that will fit through its door; but unseasoned rounds take some care and planning and plenty of dry kindling since they won't take fire easily.

The good news is that sunspots started to arrive again early in December and we've now had 22 straight days with sunspots. So it appears the latest solar minimum may be over. Better late than never. Global warming is a concern; but the sort of global cooling we could get if the sun fails to resume it's normal pattern and goes into a deep minimum (as it did in the late Eighteen Hundreds when they called the period the Little Ice Age) would really be serious. Global warming extends growing seasons in the main crop growing regions. During the Little Ice Age of the Eighteen Hundreds growing seasons shrunk and there were real agricultural problems.

Do you have plenty of warm clothes?

In response to a previous post here Nephew David wrote a question on my wall at Facebook about the probability of serious global cooling. Fortunately Facebook sent me an email about it because I don't know how to get to the damn wall to read what's on it. And I wanted to read what's on it a couple of weeks ago because I got an email that made me think a young gal who should have her mouth washed out with soap also wrote stuff there after seeing my cowboy hat picture, although David told me he didn't see what she wrote when he went to this supposed wall.

Have I mentioned that my cowboy hat picture is the very best child's picture in the known universe. I would post it here, but I don't know how to post pictures here. Facebook is very easy to post pictures on. Maybe too easy, because like, Dude, some of the young folks who have posted pictures there are seriously going to be like embarrassed in ten or twenty or forty years when their like kids and grandkids find those pictures.

Anyway, here's a post by Edward John Craig on National Review's Planet Gore blog that talks about sunspots and the little ice age and why the way out there in the heliosphere scientists think we should be thinking about it. As a surprise bonus it also explains why you have straight black hair if you are one of the so-called "black Irish;" but you have to read kind of between the lines to get the joke about that, and you have to know where Spain is, and what kind of people live in Spain and what kind of people mostly live in Ireland and so forth, headsplittingly boring stuff they don't teach in schools nowadays. Anyway, even if you don't know where Ireland or why Spanish rice is kind of pink the post is very interesting because it explains why you might like freeze your ass off this winter or next winter.

http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTk4YjBkMDk5NDM4Zjk5YmIzN2UxNGVjNTVmMTQ1Mjk=

Stock up on warm clothes!

In case you didn't notice August was the first month since 1913 without a single sunspot. In general sunspot activity has been significantly low this year. Some scientist types have been talking about the low sunspot activity for a while, but they've been pretty muted about it because real scientists wait for the data rather than promote paranoid fears (like a certain ex Vice-President I could name if this weren't a strictly non-political post).

The link to the article that I've pasted below will give you a hint about why you may need warm clothes soon. If you want to be really terrified about climate change google Maunder Minimum and read all about it. Or, if the Little Ice Age of the Middle Ages is too long timey ago for you young whippersnappers google, "year without a summer." That happened a few years before Grandpop L and Grandpop A were born.

http://www.dailytech.com/Sun+Makes+History+First+Spotless+Month+in+a+Century/article12823.htm