Come visit my new science blog, "Daughter of Hypatia"

If there's one thing that I love, it's science and science blogging!

Visit Daughter of Hypatia, my new science-themed blog. It's pro-science and anti-bullshit. (Oooh, that's good! I've got to make that a header or something...)

Daniel Dae Kim

I've made no secret on this blog that I'm a big, big fan of Daniel Dae Kim from Lost, even though the show itself lost my interest with this recent season.

Personally, I find the emphasis on time travel to be absolutely goofy and made a monkey out of what I always thought was the series's best and most unique characteristic, the Twin Peaks subtlety with which the supernatural and fantasy elements were handled.

"That's what all of them had been building towards? Time travel? Seriously?"



My critiques of the show aside, Daniel Dae Kim is a male Selma Hayek, an actor that Hollywood just doesn't know what to do with. I think he has the potential to be a great villain or hero.

Bodybuilders in Good Korea

One thing that's always interested me is how muscle revues in other countries involve a lot of state-trained athletes who have a lot of skill with agility, flexibility, acrobatics and dance...witness the Las Vegas beefcake show that featured Russian muscle hunk Denis Sergovisky that showed a lot more than just the usual bump and grind but also had tumbling and other displays of astonishing athleticism.



One thing that's always fascinated me is the view of bodybuilding and body image in other parts of the world, and this great vid of a pair of bodybuilders on a variety show in "Good Korea" is absolutely fascinating and sexy, and a direction the sport of bodybuilding should go: bodies as living artwork, to the point their very movements become a thing a beauty indistinguishable from dance, combined with displays of athleticism, agility and strength.

I say all this despite the fact the kitschy production makes Sabado Gigante look like a paragon of dignity and restraint, and the bright colors and loud pop-up text gave me a gigantic migraine after watching it for more than five minutes. Despite all of this, I don't think I've ever seen muscular physiques presented quite so attractively as here. The uninteresting to watch "slab of meat" bodybuilding competitions have a lot to answer for.

It's easy to look at the Koreans as less sophisticated than us in the West because they're obviously blown away by muscles of any kind, ooohing and ahhhing over the muscled couple. But I doubt a reaction on a Western series would be any different, either. Comic books aside, we're just no more used to huge physiques than the Good Koreans are. Come to think of it, even Beowulf's CGI bod was pretty subdued compared to those of the sixties real-life musclemen, and in 1949, Steve Reeves was refused the part of Samson in Samson and Delilah because he was so big the audience just wasn't used to his kind of bod.

One of the more interesting moments (in addition to a neat leverage trick shown near the end) is when they ask our male bodybuilder to slip a piece of paper and grip it between his pecs. Audience members, particularly female ones, looked on in fascination and what was funniest to me (blink and you miss it!) was one older sister or mother who tried to cover the eyes of the young teen next to her when our guy did his feat of strength! It reminds me of why 19th Century carnival strongmen started to wear their distinctive posing costumes, as it was believed the sight of flexing male bodies might cause women viewers to faint.

I Don't Remember Lemuria!

The John Cleves Symmes post got a good response, and so I thought I might devote some words to another idea at the fringe that time has discarded, as well as an interesting piece of forgotten Americana.

What was the Shaver Mystery? Oh brother, where to even begin…it was a mass movement that was one of the great controversies in the early days of science fiction fandom.

William Shaver was an indigent construction worker with what today looks like a clear-cut case of late-onset paranoid schizophrenia. While at a construction site he claimed the magnetic coil of a drill caused him to experience a vivid hallucination of a torture session at the center of the earth, and periodically he received hidden telepathic messages and even claimed that other mentalities, including one from 24,000 years ago, took control of his body periodically.

The jist of what Shaver came up with was that, thousands of years ago, the Titans, a superhuman race of giants, came to earth and created humans as a ro-race, “ro” meaning designed for work. Because of contamination from our sun, which causes aging and death, the Titans left the earth, leaving behind both their human creations and their wondrous cavern civilizations filled with machinery. The beings that remained in the caverns, the dero (short for destructive robots) took control of the Titans’ machinery because the solar poisons in their brains made them insane, and then used them to destroy all other life. Because of machines like telaugs and telepathy spy-rays, they periodically observe our thoughts from their secret caverns and place in us evil compulsions and aberrant behavior. They also spoke a hidden language called Mantong, evidence of which can be found everywhere as a root language spoken at the dawn of time.

Right here with William Shaver, we have almost all the elements of classic, almost textbook-precise schizophrenia:

• Irrational terror of poisons and contamination, especially in food and water;
• Themes of paranoia about hidden evil and conspiracy;
• Vivid hallucinations;
• Enemies that can observe a person’s thoughts and place evil compulsions;
• An obsession with identification of patterns;
• Figures that periodically take over a person’s body.

Because he had a little more panache than the average schizophrenic, apparently Ray Palmer, for reasons we can never understand, published “I Remember Lemuria!” in Astounding after rewriting Shaver’s crazed, energetic prose.

Read “I Remember Lemuria!” here.

Now here’s where it gets really weird.

Apparently, the publication of this story in 1940 started a wave of mass-hysteria, where dozens wrote in to confirm elements of Shaver’s story and to say they had similar experiences! What. The. Hell.

As a Psychology masters student, I took a special course exclusively on the identification and treatment of schizophrenia. One of the things we’re taught to identify are “ray” delusions. In many neighborhoods there is usually a person that has the typical profile of being isolated and elderly who experiences the delusion that someone, usually a neighbor, is observing their activities with a spy beam and hitting them with a ray that causes hair and teeth to fall out, food to be poisoned, milk to sour and meat to rot. No wonder something like the Shaver Mystery would really resonate.

Shaver Mystery clubs started to spring up all over the country, and Ray Palmer devoted much of Amazing Stories just to Shaver Mystery content. In other words, the Shaver Mystery became a mass hysteria that would eventually only be eclipsed by the UFO phenomenon, for which the Shaver Mystery paved the way. Worse, because Mystery-related stories were profitable, everybody was pushing Shaver for more Mystery content, especially his publisher, Ray Palmer.

Of all the people involved in the Shaver Mystery, Ray Palmer comes off as the least sympathetic. Harlan Ellison once backed Ray Palmer into a corner and got the editor to admit that he personally never believed a lick of it but it sold magazines. Palmer wanted Shaver to continually revisit his hallucinations so his magazine could make money, an “enabler” that exploited a crazy person and prevented him from getting healthy. Worse, there were all these fervent cultists of the Shaver Mystery that defend him unto death. Because of that, Shaver never had anyone in his life that told him how things really were, and there’s something sad about that.

In the meantime you get prose that’s just awkward and sloppy, like this…

They understood concept, and I came to realize that concept had become a frozen thing on Mu by comparison. The Nortans used the truth, for it was the right conceptual attack. Evil has no concept; it is a mad robot to detrimental force. When Evil has power and men must obey or die, then only is it to be feared. But sometimes men fight for Evil unknowingly.

I read the book, and I still have no idea what this means.

Or, looks obviously repetitive and insane to the point of meaninglessness, like this…

The direct need for a greater future for man is strengthening of the general mind by T forces, the growth of a better brain. No progress is truly progress unless man grows a better brain to grow a better brain. That is the pattern of progress—to grow a growth to grow, etc.

…and that’s just what we could read after Palmer edited them extensively!

In fact, I remember reading that Palmer cut out particularly weird and sexually deviant elements from Shaver’s manuscripts, like the obvious S&M of the Dero slave lairs, not to mention uncomfortable, weird stuff like (supposedly) the life machines that cause a woman’s pubic hair to grow three feet long. Palmer once had to excise a 50-page sex scene!

Not only that, but Shaver might have been one of history’s first recorded furries, in the pre-Don Bluth era. The hero’s girlfriend, “Jane” to his “Tarzan,” is a half-human girl with hooves and a luxurious tail that Shaver’s hero thinks is the sexiest feature on earth.

To his credit, however, Shaver was an apt pupil under Palmer with a sincere desire to improve, and the later Shaver Mystery stories were considerably more polished and professional. He did get better, but brother, this stuff was bad.

Having actually read the Shaver Mystery stories, the thing that jumps at me immediately is that they seem like perfectly serviceable, space opera stories where, like many other works of science fiction in the period, you can identify the geneology of its ideas (for instance the race of blonde telepathic giants and cave civilizations with secret knowledge comes from Bulwer-Lytton). Claiming that they’re true or once happened is as laughable as slapping “BASED ON A TRUE STORY” tag on the Star Wars movies.

There’s nothing in there that wouldn’t be able to be produced by someone working in the pulp magazines of the 1940s. It’s almost like reading the always-wrong Immanuel Velikovsky: there’s nowhere I can point to something and say, “a-ha, he anticipated something that someone from that era shouldn’t have been able to predict.”

Besides, this stuff is all too “fifties” to be a real look at an actual culture of the distant past. I mean, God help me…every time I pictured the characters, I imagined them dressed very much like Zap Brannigan from Futurama. The worst is the villain Lord Sathanas, who is too much of a cackling cartoon character, too much of a low-rent Ming the Merciless, to ever make anyone entertain the notion he ever really lived. Ultimately, I think that’s what ended the Shaver Mystery and its various clubs: it was far too "fifties" to be taken seriously, and crank theories are required to keep up with the times. Eventually, it was eclipsed by the UFO phenomenon that ironically, the Shaver Mystery played a role in creating.

Incidentally, Richard Shaver is often given credit for being the “inventor” of the UFO, just like Raymond L. Wallace is the creator of Bigfoot. I simply don’t see it. Much ado has been made of the “rollats” used as travel in the cave world as the prototype flying saucer, but my reading of the story shows them as nothing more than a glorified future space-car of the sort the Jetsons use; to compare vehicles of this sort to "flying saucers" is like calling Chinese "dragons" after their Western brethren: despite the nonexistent similarities, they're both called by the same name erroneously. In fact, in I Remember Lemuria! the actual means for interplanetary travel are the usual forties Flash Gordon-esque penisrockets.

More Dennis Newman

After all, 6' and 245 pounds is far too big to squeeze into just one post, isn't it?

This one, for some reason, I find amusing. I've seen lots and lots of pics of artificially tanned bodybuilders. Heck, I think I've seen more orange skin than Tropicana. But for some reason this one stands out. I mean, was skin bronzer technology significantly less advanced in 1992? He looks like he's cosplaying as the carrot monster from Lost In Space.

The Un-Swayziest Day in History

Someone I had a crush on as a teenager is dead, which means that once again, all of you have to hear about it!

Dirty Dancing is the ultimate slumber party movie and its role in the culture can't be denied. Patrick Swayze was a dirty, intense beast, and my Dad, like nearly every Dad I know, hated him and was extremely upset I got into that movie all the while Mom looked on knowingly (she "got it" and Dad didn't). What's amazing is, with the death of John Hughes a month ago, it's like everyone associated with the slumber party film is dying off. I hope that the lady from Flashdance or Anthony Michael Hall are aware the Icy Scythe of Death is inexorably heading their way.

While writing this entry I was surprised to see he wasn't in Big Trouble in Little China, also called Big Redneck in Little China. It was such an utterly Swayzesque part I was amazed it wasn't him, as I remember, and I'll bet anything the script was written for him.

Some mention should be made of Roadhouse, which was so dead-on that it's totally sincere. The catch phrases from that movie have to be heard to be believed like "It's my way or the highway" or "You're my new Saturday night babe!"

I've wondered why it is that a lot of the movies my generation considers important such as the Hughes teenager movies, Dirty Dancing, Footloose, Flashdance, etc. and on the boys' aisle, Back to the Future, Terminator and Raiders of the Lost Ark, were made in the late seventies and early to mid-eighties.


Then it occurred to me: this was the beginning of the current era of movies, centered on the idea of the blockbuster and the big opening weekend. No wonder people of my generation have never heard of any movie before Jaws; Jaws was the beginning of the current moviegoing experience.

Welcome to America: Speak Spanish or Go Home!

First, a little about me: I speak six languages, and I am fully bilingual in English and Spanish. Some people have remarked how interesting they find it when they see me do mathematics and I jump and alternate between the two tongues!

As a multilingual person, I always found the "English language only" movement to be a meaningless inflexibility that transforms ignorance and provincialism into a point of pride. Sure, English is a great equalizer and lingua franca and all that, and it is certainly important for for new immigrants to speak English well for no other reason than upward mobility, a fact I can support with family experience! Still, that ideal doesn't always match the "facts on the ground," and people that want to meaningfully participate in their communities should do what intelligent and mature adults always do: adjust to their circumstances instead of instead of insisting everyone adjust to them.

I lived for a number of years, while on full scholarship as an undergrad, in Astoria, Queens, a neigborhood that is mostly Greek to the point some restaurants publish menus in Greek only. So, guess what I learned to do? Speak Greek! I can still do it, too. In fact, after a few months with my looks, lots of people I regularly interacted with assumed I was Greek myself! I swear, only in America could lack of knowledge, xenophobia and thickheaded obstinacy become virtues instead of obvious liabilities.

Obviously some may take exception to that characterization, and to that I have two responses.

The first is that the stereotype of the "Ugly American," monolingual and hidebound, is a stereotype that has real longevity because it is unfortunately often true. Before anyone has the right to get offended about a stereotype, they should ask themselves this question: what have you, personally done to contradict that stereotype?

My fellow women: if you don't want men to stereotype us as incompetent and dependent...don't be incompetent and dependent! If you don't already know, learn how to change a tire. Take a higher level math and science course. Jars can be a pain in the ass, but I use a mechanical jar opening kitchen gizmo, and I have a stepladder in the apartment.

Second, there is indeed inarguably a segment of the American population that revels in ignorance and obstinacy. I do not agree with President Obama on everything, but when he said that every American child should learn a second language, it struck me as a totally true, noncontroversial common-sense statement. No one, anywhere, should just speak one language, and the fact that many do is indeed shameful. But lo and behold, some pundits took exception to the idea Americans should have to learn a language other than English! I just couldn't believe it!

Read them here. These links are work-safe but sanity-unsafe.

Obama: Americans who aren't bilingual are an embarassment (Well, it is an embarrassment!)

Neil Cavuto: Obama wants U.S. Kids to Speak Spanish?

ALIPAC - Voters reject Obama's call for bilingualism

All of this is a part of a greater trend in our culture I find troubling, one so masterfully lampooned on the Simpsons: the demonization of intellectuals, specifically, the manipulation of the doubt that drives science into claiming there is a dispute in areas where in reality there is a universal consensus. Of course I'm talking about anti-science positions like creationism and global warming denial. It takes a special kind of chutzpah to deny physical reality.

The most embarassing moment in recent political history was in Bobby Jinda's response to a recent State of the Union address. He complained about stimulus but singled in on the single worst aspect of the entire bill, support to fund volcano research and early warning. The kicker here is that a few days afterward, one of the volcanoes so monitored erupted!

This reminds me of a great Simpsons episode where a giant comet headed for the town but was narrowly averted. An angry mob formed, with the rallying cry "Let's burn down the observatory...so this never happens again!"

Renaissance Man: Morris Mendez

If you've ever seen a bodybuilding mag in the past five years or so, you can probably recognize Morris Mendez. There's nothing sexier than a bald guy. And best of all, he's as aerodynamic as a car hood ornament! What's even more impressive about Morris Mendez is that he's a true Renaissance Man, with successes not just in natural bodybuilding and modeling, but also in other fields: he's a clinical psychologist that works with disabled kids. You go, boy!

Anyway, he's got the most intense, soulful look ever. He's one of the few bodybuilders you could just look at his face.

"Mathematics Illuminated"

For those of us with a love and curiosity about mathematics, check out the 13-episode series, available entirely online,"Mathematics Illuminated."

Visit the Series Website

Series like this, that really explored and laid out mathematical functions, are part of what made me a fan of math in the first place. Well, that, and the art of M.C. Escher.

That’s NOT Funny! Review of “Young Hercules”

Booooooo!

Thanks to Hulu, you can see all the episodes of Young Hercules for free, and they’re worth that, too. The humor reaches near-Battletoads levels of terrible. Just check out the titles like “Lyre, Liar.”

Hey, I can do some Greek-themed puns too:

“A Pita the Action”
“Olive You Very Much”
“Juno What I Mean?”
“The Feta All Mankind”

HILARIOUS!

The jokes in this series are like a mighty Cyclops of myth: you see it coming from a mile away and don’t laugh at all.

QUESTION: where was hunky Jerry O’Connell during all of this? He was big during the nineties, right? He would be my first, second, third and only choice to ever play a young Hercules. He has incredible heart-melting blue eyes and a likeable gee-whiz quality.

I did a double-take when I saw the credits. That couldn’t really be quirky, indie character actor and Academy Award nominee Ryan Gosling as Young Hercules, could it? The star of Lars and the Real Girl, which was easily the best movie of 2008, far and away superior to any other film that year? (I am still outraged that it wasn’t nominated.)


Ryan Gosling plays Hercules as a likeable yet quiet loner. Gee, what a stretch for him.

Also, it seems the actor playing the god Aries is named Kevin Smith, same as the stoner-movie director, and I had to double-check to make sure they weren’t the same guy. I’ve had friends that swear by him (the director, that is), but I’ve never understood the appeal of his obtuse and dimwitted stoner-comedies (actually, I understand perfectly since there’s a segment of the audience that finds jokes about the Ice Planet Hoth to be the height of wit, and since my mother may one day read this blog I’m not going to say whether I’ve taken my share of puffs from the giggle-sticks). His films seem custom made for people that enjoy Family Guy, but wish it was more subtle.

Anyway, Kevin Smith’s Aries is the only guy in the series that’s sporting a little beefcake arms. He has triceps of downright Jamie Bamberian proportions.

The episode I immediately went to was “Girl Trouble,” because contrary to my reputation as an ice-queen with a withered black heart, I do enjoy love stories as much as I enjoy CGI monsters. So why not have them together? And the good-natured, macho joshing between three guys that have trouble getting laid who compete over a woman seems believable. At least until you see the girl they’re fighting over, who, in the words of the movie “Spinal Tap,” looks like an Australian’s nightmare.



Speaking of the antipodes, the best part of this series is the constant struggle of the talent pool to hide their Kiwi accents. To his credit, Sam Raimi thought of filming a cheapie fantasy series in New Zealand long before anyone else, and certainly before Peter Jackson stole the credit for that particular idea in the eyes of the world.

John Cleves Symmes's Globe

If there's one peeve of mine, it's cranks.

All cranks, whether they insist 9/11 was an inside job, or we never reached the Moon, or there are UFOs that kidnap people, irritate me to no end.

There is one theory that actually is pretty interesting to me, the idea the earth is in fact hollow and there are gigantic openings at the poles. There's something so outlandish and 19th Century and improbable about this theory that it's actually a little charming.

The biggest booster for this crank theory was a guy named John Cleves Symmes, who in the 1850s petitioned Congress for three ships (like Columbus!) to head to what he thought were the openings at the polar regions into the center of the earth. He actually was about to get it, too, until the Civil War happened, which put an end to the whole thing.

Symmes's father was actually a great man, a signer of the Declaration of Independence for New Jersey (which to my mind, explains everything!) and his first cousin was the wife of President William Henry Harrison. Further proof that in Washington, it's possible to fail upwards really spectacularly.

Still, Symmes had made a fabulous one-of-a-kind globe detailing his crank view of what the earth looks like. Perfect for the crazy collectors among us.

Dennis "Inhuman" Newman

I can't think of a bodybuilder as sensational as Dennis Newman was in the early 1990s, and he was the first bodybuilder I ever knew by name as opposed to image. It was like he was custom-designed for bodybuilding magazine covers: soulful, crystalline blue eyes, he had a masculine and handsome chiseled face like a movie star, youthful and virile with a body like a classical Greek sculpture of a deity. He was so flawless he almost didn't seem real, exemplifying the ultimate male specimen.



His proportions were sensational: an incredible 6' and 245 pounds. No wonder he was often approached to be the "face" of the sport in muscle magazine covers, with one of the greatest physiques of all time. He was a rising star, and had nowhere to go but up...


...until he was diagnosed with leukemia, only ten weeks after getting his pro card and winning the Mr. USA.


Since then, we haven't heard much from Dennis. Nonetheless, I am very, very pleased to announce that Dennis won his battle with Leukemia and is with us today! There is a type of strength that trascends and is far more all-encompassing than just how much you can bench.



For many years when I thought of the perfect good looking guy I thought of "Inhuman Newman." In fact, the first time I read Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame I thought of Newman at every loving description of the ultra-beautiful Pheobus. But as often happens I forgot about him until recently when a reader reminded me of him.


Part of the reason that teenage girls often have their objects of adoration be pop stars that look like teenaged girls is that, as girls are initially discovering sexuality, men, who are often very aggressive, come off as extremely threatening. This is part of the reason for the fascination with pop stars, and is one of the reasons (though not the only one) for the fascination with male homosexuality. I always thought someone like "Inhuman" Newman would be what male idols are like in an alternate universe where there's a lot less anxiety about men.

I've always felt like laughing bitterly at movies that show awkward young guys stumbling as they try to talk to girls. Guys are such crybabies, I tell you. I assure you, nothing could be greater than the real fear women have of boys in early days!

From here on I'll let his photos and videos speak for themselves. What an object of adoration!








Considering his future illness, this video, which talks about his promise as a young 23 year old, is actually unintentionally bittersweet.



Well, what do you know? He was "the captain of the football team," the biggest High School movie cliche of all. Sort of like...(dare I say it)...Jake Ryan?



Also: I got through this entire blog post without a single Seinfeld reference! Woohoo!

Arnold vs. Bear: Hercules Goes to New York

After my look at Pumping Iron, a friend recommended I give Hercules Goes to New York another glance, a cheapie starring the current leader of the world's 5th largest economy.

The general effect of the movie is actually kind of depressing. Let me explain that. The movie was made is 1970, a full half-decade after the peplum boom ended and the only way that Hercules and other muscle heroes would be relevant is by poking fun at them. It's sort of like how Shatner and Adam West and other irrelevant actors past their expiration date reinvent themselves as self-parodies living up to their campy image.

I don't find this funny...I find it tragic. For that reason, as heretical as it sounds, I never much liked Blazing Saddles. Just look when it came out: 1974, a year after the last truly relevant Western, the sentimental Sam Pekinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which was the Hollywood Western's funeral, eulogy and last cry of defiance in one. In that context, Blazing Saddles is like a prop comedian seltzer-squirting a widow at her husband's wake.

When parodies are bigger than the actual thing it parodies, it's a sure sign something is no longer relevant. What I find amazing is that Blazing Saddles is often the only Western that people of my generation have ever seen!

I always thought the moment America stopped taking newspaper science fiction strips with any seriousness was with the Mad Magazine parody of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. Flash Gordon went from a strip with characters people love, to being an irreverent way for magazine writers to talk about an architectural style.

If you need another example, look at the hilarious Rent parody in Team America: World Police, "Everybody Has AIDS." There's such a thing as a parody that is so spot-on, it torpedoes the effectiveness of its target forever, and I'd definitely put "Everybody has AIDS" in that category. No wonder the ten years too late movie version with Rosario Dawson tanked.

Maybe I'm just not getting the joke of movies like Hercules in New York that reinvent their genre as parody, and instead I'm spending my time mourning the end of the peplum. A Norwegian friend of mine told me that there's much more of the Nordic character in me than the Latin, as Latins are a culture that enjoy life whereas I cry much more easily than I can laugh.

Then again, this movie is so weirdly done that with almost all the jokes you're not sure whether to laugh or not, if something is intentionally funny or just an elaborate translation mistake.

There is one bit of humor in the movie, though it's entirely unintentional. This has to go down in history as the most dated-looking film I've ever seen in my life. The best part has to be Arnold's tan cordoroy jacket/turtleneck sweater combo. Most people can guess when a movie is made (give or take three years) just based on how a movie looks, and this is one of the few films I've seen you can guess it to within the actual year.

Believe it or not, the most effective scenes in the film are actually ones where Arnold and his girlfriend are just walking around New York, enjoying each other. They're simple, quiet little scenes where the character of the city of New York is the star, and they're much to be preferred over Arnold stopping a forklift and going "a fine chariot, but where are the horses?" (THAT'S NOT FUNNY!)

The all-time winner has to be this scene:




I can't even identify the best part: the meat-smacking sounds when Arnold pounds that bear (only Harrison Ford has a more distinctive sounding punch) or the fact that, come the midway point, it's obvious the bear is down for the count and Arnold is just whacking it out of sadism. The merry bazouki music is a very weird, whimsical touch.

There was one scene where some New Yorker friends of Hercules got together and suggested that Hercules was just a demented guy that thought he was Hercules. For some reason, this struck me as a much more entertaining premise than the actual movie itself.