9mar22 – linking a piece on McCarthy’s new diptych.
The Reader In Mind Is Me – McCarthy’s method
Half A Piece Of Art – screenplays and McCarthy’s THE COUNSELLOR
WARREN ELLIS LTD Articles.
Today, I start going back into my CD library.
Turns out that people I work with do actually use the status notes to check on me!
ON DECK: I wrote most of the Sunday newsletter earlier in the week, need to go back into that and polish it off and amend the scheduler. I have two sticking points in the script in front of me that need two or three set-piece moments of invention, and I need to figure that out today.
INBOX: 39. Non-work emails being kicked to tonight/tomorrow, probably.
SHIPPING FORECAST: I read the recently updated blogs list on ooh.directory and boy are people expending a lot of energy on trying to make Mastodon work like Twitter, the Twitter they hate and want to leave but need to replicate the experience of. And then some people do, and don’t like it. (I do feel bad for him, by the way.) Off to do the things.
“Our technique provides a non-contact and long-distance pulling approach, which may be useful for various scientific experiments,” said Wang. “The rarefied gas environment we used to demonstrate the technique is similar to what is found on Mars. Therefore, it might have the potential for one day manipulating vehicles or aircraft on Mars.”
Space exploration is an increasingly energy-hungry endeavor. Orbiters and fly-by missions can perform their tasks using solar power, at least as far out as Jupiter. And ion drives can take spacecraft to more distant regions. But to really understand distant worlds like the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, or even the more distant Pluto, we’ll need to eventually land a rover and/or lander on them just as we have on Mars.
Those missions require more power to operate, and that usually means MMRTGs (multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generators.) But they’re bulky, heavy, and expensive, three undesirable traits for spacecraft. Each one costs over $100 million. Is there a better solution?
Stephen Polly thinks there is.
Polly is a research scientist at the NanoPower Research Laboratories at the Rochester Institute of Technology. His work focuses on something most of us have likely never heard of: the development, growth, characterization, and integration of III-V materials by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE).
Metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy!
A short selection of previous notes on writing and process:
status 1nov22: Zero Draft – “The zero draft is the draft you will never show anyone….”
On Winging It: Work, Planning And Growing Your own Luck
It Doesn’t End When You Think It Does: The Penultimate Chapter In Serial Storytelling
Morning Routine And Work Day, January 2022
The throat singing in this scene is performed by Michael Geiger, and I found a video interview with him, usefully chaptered in the notes under the video. It gets right into the technical stuff of both recording the piece and the operation of the vocal system in achieving it.
I actually sat forward, the first time I saw this bit, saying, “holy shit, that’s Tibetan throat singing.” I love this bit so much. Probably my favourite part of the film, both visually and sonically.
There’s an excellent BBC documentary about Hans Zimmer, who composed the DUNE soundtrack, saying of it: “I don’t think anybody’s ever won an Oscar for a score that blatantly is bagpipes, heavy metal guitars and a woman screaming at you.”
I’d love to hunt down a copy of this one day. Check out that cast. It also included Ciaran Hinds. I remember Tim Roth’s performance being one of his most exuberantly evil. It was a tv play on BBC 1 in 1990, part of The Play On 1 strand that I think was a belated and brief replacement for Play For Today. Because, back then, we could do strands of hour-long standalone originals on tv.
Written by Malcolm McKay, whose Wikipedia entry surfaces this note about another play in the Play On 1 strand that he wrote, AIRBASE:
His writing has always dealt with extreme behaviour and includes the controversial BBC play Airbase which dealt metaphorically with drug abuse on a USAF base in England. The play achieved notoriety after it was mentioned in Parliament and the Lords after Prime Minister Thatcher demanded a copy, the Chairman of the BBC, Marmaduke Hussey publicly apologised for the content, and Mary Whitehouse, of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, issued a second apology to President Reagan on the behalf of the British people.
Anyway, this is what YELLOWBACKS was about:
Chilling drama set in the future when draconian powers have been given to the authorities under the new Secret Emergency Provisions of the Dangerous Disease Act. Dr Juliet Horwitz finds herself hooded, handcuffed and interrogated by a ruthless pair, as does a scientist Alex McPherson, both of whom are the key to finding Martin Pitt, a virus carrier who has disappeared.
I watched it on the night it was broadcast, and haven’t ever seen it since. The AIDS-inflected plot had faded from memory, and I just retain the sense of its British Dystopia atmosphere, its clever details, the recollection of its grim tension, and some immense acting. We have a vast amount of lost gems in the televisual history of this country. Imagine: The Play On 1 alone generated thirty plays – 60-90 minute films, is my memory – in two or three years.
Achieved absolutely nothing of note yesterday other than roasting a new batch of beans.
ON DECK: probably finishing a script. Brain still feels a little AWOL – probably just powered down at a temporary lessening of the stress that’s informed the last six weeks.
INBOX: 41
LISTENING: Hypnagogue 374
LAST WATCHED: HANS ZIMMER: HOLLYWOOD REBEL
SHIPPING FORECAST: my big prodco meeting at the end of the week got pushed into next week. I have to check in on the kids later to see what’s next, but right now it looks like I have a clear run through till Sunday to focus on work and finish the notes I have in draft here. Good morning, reader.
An international team of archaeologists have analyzed hundreds of ancient human remains found in Europe’s wetlands, revealing these “bog bodies” were part of a tradition that spanned millennia. People were buried in bogs from the prehistoric period until early modern times. The team also found that, when a cause of death could be determined, most met a violent end.
New research has been published on the organic analysis of the Winchcombe meteorite that crash landed onto a driveway in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire in 2021. The research, led by Dr. Queenie Chan, from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, found organic compounds from space that hold the secrets to the origin of life.
Gallery: Yasuhiro Ogawa
Taking a moment to look back on my mark-making here recently and pick out the pieces I thought worked better than others, mostly for my own consideration going forward.
Fluxonium! – it was a good month for new words. Also Elaliite and Elkinstantonite
Content – god I hate that word
Filtered For: Avant-Garde – connecting up previous posts.
The Sound Of David Lynch – an important-to-me piece of the book I later wrote about in more detail here.