Eccentric Flower:200907/Arks and More
From Eccentric Flower
Arks and More
The front page of the Metro section in the Globe today has illustrated, step-by-step instructions on how to build an ark. ("Step 1: Acquire a large quantity of gopherwood.") I'm sorry the graphic isn't online. The "sources" cited were Genesis 6:11 and eHow. Culprit: Brian McGrory.
[EDIT: The Globe later expanded the graphic into an amusing slideshow which begins here. I smell McGrory's hand in this copy as well.]
This is an example of why I am still pissed off that they are wasting McGrory's considerable talents. Making someone who actually writes compellingly and well an editor is like taking Rembrandt and making him a gallery curator. It's not that editors aren't good and necessary, but I feel the skill sets for writer and editor only overlap by happenstance. They are mostly different, and if you say, "wow, you're a good writer, let's make you an editor," you have just put a square peg into a round hole, where the writer talents will not have sufficient outlet for expression, and the editing will likely be mediocre.
I'm not going to get a login with AMC's website just so I can make one comment on one comment on one post, but the reason the Nostromo blows up several times is that it is a flying refinery. The idea is that it holds the content of an oil-bearing-rock mining operation, and as it travels the long, slow (I think it's supposed to be nearly a hundred years) trip back to Earth, the crew in cryosleep, the refinery slowly chugs along in a cost-efficient manner. By the time they get home, it's full of a valuable cargo of petroleum products. If you ever look carefully at the ship before it blows up, you'll see that it's built like a set of several large towers or stacks. Each tower is a mini-refinery. The multiple explosions are because the towers don't all blow up at once; the explosion gradually consumes more and more of it.
I mention this not to show that I can occasionally be incredibly geeky despite my best intentions, but because (apart from the minor matter of sound in space) it always struck me as one of the most plausible and thought-out space explosions in a film ever - assuming such explosions could happen in space at all, which we won't discuss here. The problem is, the script in the film is so deliberately cryptic (one of the things I like about it, actually, the characters don't talk more than they have to), that you're never actually told what the purpose of the Nostromo is, as I recall, other than one reference from Dallas about the value of their cargo.
But some of us have read the novelization of the film.
An article in this past week's Economist discusses a hypothesis that mild depression (as opposed to clinical depression) is essentially a warning mechanism:
Furthermore, there seems to be some amount of clinical evidence that the better you are at disengaging from unattainable goals - heeding the warnings of mild depression - the less likely you are to develop the chemical condition that causes clinical depression at some point in the future. There isn't enough evidence yet for a firm conclusion, but hints are present: Persisting in unattainable goals is bad for you.
Of course the obvious objection to this - obvious especially to me in my present situation - is that often our unattainable goals are not set for us, not under our control, and merely having the will to disengage from them is not sufficient.
I've been away all day, and I discovered that, if I wanted to login to this location, I would have to request a... login... from that other computer. That'd be silly, so I thought it could wait.
What's a cubit? 8-)
I saw way too much of that promotion crap when I worked for the gummint. It's known as rising to your level of incompetence. It is just naturally assumed that, if you're good at something, you'll probably be good at something else, too. Everybody deserves the opportunity to fail, right? This is why, the further up the food chain you explore, the fewer competent managers you find. I much prefer specialization. Let people get really good at what they do--and that may very well not be managing!--and leave 'em alone to do their jobs. In my branch of service, U.S. Customs, there is no better example of this debacle than the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, which merged, among other branches, Customs, Agriculture and Immigration & Naturalization. Managers from one branch are now in charge of officers whose duties they have no idea how to manage. All the Aggies want to do, for example, is deal with their bugs and pests and protecting us against unsafe meat products, that sort of thing, which they all got degrees to be able to do; now, they are expected to go out and learn about immigration law and copyrights and cargo security. It's a whole other field. And the reverse is true, as well. Immigration guys know jack about insect infestation, and care even less. Employee morale is at an all time low, productivity has been seriously hampered and folks are retiring in droves, which means... there go the experienced professionals. Pretty much all that's left are the newbies, who regard these as entry-level jobs, not careers, anymore. I despair.
Finally, it would appear that, in your present situation, greatness has been thrust upon you, whether you want it or not. Here's hoping there's a light at the end of that particular tunnel.
(I fear I'm over-using commas, these days. I'd go back and count, but my sanity means more to me than my comma count.)
-- 00:49, 3 July 2009 (BST)
"I feel the skill sets for writer and editor only overlap by happenstance."
Well, maybe. I'm a really good editor but I'm a good writer too, so I'd hate to agree with you.
-- 03:50, 3 July 2009 (BST)
Your login to this wiki, as already established, should work from any web browser in the universe. You don't need to ask for a login again. Not sure what the problem was.
-- 03:58, 3 July 2009 (BST)
Okay, so the problem was that I forgot it. I never have to use it on my laptop. I might have it written down here, somewhere, or maybe I can get Mozilla to cough it up.
(Ah, I believe I remember. Good thing, too, because Sean says it depends how you have passwords stored, whether you would be able to recover it and send it to me. Or, I guess you can reset it, but no need. Thanks.)
-- 05:28, 3 July 2009 (BST)
Glad you remembered your password. As Sean surmised, I cannot obtain it, I can merely reset it.
-- 16:17, 3 July 2009 (BST)
Lisa:
Man. It took me about 10 clicks to figure out how to comment.
Are you still steadfast against Facebook? I get the immediacy of contact with Someone when I need it over there.
I find it easy enough to filter who sees what and it's quite easy to hide in plain sight from people who you don't want contact with.
-- 16:07, 6 July 2009 (BST)
Facebook makes me itchy, for reasons I can't quite clarify or understand myself. It just does.
-- 17:26, 6 July 2009 (BST)
...and i'd just managed to repress the memory of having read that much Alan Dean Foster in my formative years. <sigh> i do remember finding all of the extra background interesting and wondering if he'd come up with it, or if it came from O'Bannon or Scott.
-- 22:37, 7 July 2009 (BST)
Alan Dean Foster: one of the only people who wrote novelizations I'd bother to read.
The genesis of Alien was so very odd - much of the dialogue improvised, Scott tinkering with it, two sets of scriptwriters, etc - that god only knows who came up with the explanation of the Nostromo.
-- 23:05, 7 July 2009 (BST)
Columbina:
Department of Very Interesting: No one apparently knows exactly what "gopher wood" was supposed to be. Several theories here. I like the pitch theory near the end.
-- 17:36, 2 July 2009 (BST)