h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Citizen Four is the documentary about Edward Snowden and the government spying scandals around the world he revealed.

This is behind the scenes of the actual reveal of these programs and his identity. It's really tense seeing the scenes Laura Poitras shot in that hotel room in Hong Kong.

This is the biggest issue I have regarding Obama's administration, that he increased the illegal spying programs and that he has used the WWI era Espionage act to punish whistle-blowers and journalists. Snowden cannot get a fair trial under the Espionage act because it negates all his defenses. It doesn't matter if what he exposed was unconstitutional. It doesn't matter that the information he revealed resulted didn't expose any US personnel. It doesn't matter that he wasn't working for an enemy nation or agency. All that matters is that he revealed classified information regardless of whether that information should have been classified or not.



"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." - Ed Snowden

I finally got around to watching my copy of _Local Hero_. It had been a long time since I saw it and I've been meaning to watch it again since I missed its showing in Edinburgh two years ago.

There were a couple of surprises for me. I completely did not recognize Peter Capaldi in the roll of young Danny Oldsen. He looked familiar, sure, but I just didn't connect him to the Peter Capaldi we know and ing love now.

Another small surprise was in the credits. One of the companies thanked for their cooperation was the Zapata Corporation, Houston. That company was once headed by George H.W. Bush. If you search for it you'll find links to a LOT of conspiracy websites.

Oh, and I just learned that Denis Lawson who played Gordon Urquhart is more widely known for playing Wedge in the Star Wars films. I probably wouldn't have ever made that connection on my own. I found it in a list of Local Hero trivia.

He has a long, long list of credits. I remember him from an 80s series called Dead Head, which I can recall almost nothing about now and would quite like to see again. Ah, this rings some bells http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Head_(TV_series)

I just spotted another young Peter Capaldi. This time in a rerun of the first series of _The Vicar of Dibley_. He's the young man from the BBC's _Songs of Praise_ that sets the vicars' hormones ablaze.

I finally got around to watching Gravity.

I had been warned that it would likely piss me off.

It did, quickly. I just kept seeing things that weren't moving correctly in "zero G" or things the characters were doing that absolutely NO real astronaut would do. Clooney idly zooming (circling at that, the most propellant wasteful maneuver possible and extremely difficult with constant attitude and velocity changes) around in his EMU, Sharif pushing off and bouncing at the end of his tether and "dancing". Just a whole lot of NOPE.

SPOILER ALERT!

But the biggest thing was the main, vital plot point of the film. Clooney didn't have to let go, at all. That's not how it works. Clooney and Bullock are tethered together and Bullock's legs are tangled in the 'chute lines. Clooney is being pulled away from Bullock... By what? Gravity? They're all in orbit! Once they reach the end of the tether, the tension instantly releases and he should have begun moving back toward her. They treat this like he's hanging from a building and gravity, or something, is pulling him away. IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!

So, fine. I've accepted this is a stupid plot so I'm not surprised at all that the rest of the film revolves around getting from the Shuttle/Hubble to the ISS and then on to the Chinese station (that I recently read was spinning out of control and will likely have an uncontrolled reentry soon. Look up!) There's something everyone should know now following the Columbia accident. Many people speculated that if the crew had known about the damage they could have survived by just going to the ISS until another shuttle or other spacecraft could rescue them. But that wasn't even considered by anyone seriously at NASA because of the simple fact that these craft are all in different orbits. First off, they're at different altitudes. The ISS is at around 350 km, the Hubble is at around 569 km, and who knows how high Tiangong is. It's probably around the same as ISS is though. Even if it is at the same orbital altitude, it's still on a different orbit. Even if it was in the exact same orbital path, it could literally be on the other side of the world. If they're not in the same orbit they will be moving at high relative velocities anyway. The point is that it's highly unlikely one would be even visible from another and it would take one hell of a lot of propellant to get from one orbit to another even if they were at the same altitude. That's why rockets are huge, they have to take all that fuel with them to reach a certain orbit. To get to another orbit could easily take even more fuel than it did to reach the original orbit.

Anyway, now that I've said that, I'll watch this clip featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson explaining many other things wrong with this film.

http://youtu.be/VzE6bKIKK3A

Oh, and Gravity is still NO WHERE NEAR as stupid as Armageddon.

I detested the film too, although I didn't notice as many of the nuanced faults with it as you have. And I can't even recall exactly why I disliked it so much, but it was probably because I found it utterly preposterous.

At least Armageddon was preposterous ha ha, not preposterous WTF.

And there's already a Gravity remake. (gotta admit, it's an improvement.)

http://youtu.be/TXFhL1xF_G8

Netflix just notified me that they have shipped _The Peanuts Movie_.

WTF?

There is no way in a myriad of hells that I ordered _The Peanuts Movie_.

I'm not even a fan of the comic strip and I wish they'd stop rerunning them in my local paper. If they feel they have to rerun a dead artist's comic strip, at least they should go back to the beginning when Snoopy walked on all fours, no one knew who actually owned Snoopy, and all the characters expressed real, existential angst.

How did this get in my queue? This also makes me wonder whether the film I just watched was something I actually selected or not. I just received and watched Candleshoe. I thought it was an odd selection since it's an old Disney film and I loath Disney. But this did feature a young Jodie Foster and is set in an old English manor... but no, I don't remember ordering it.

Maybe my Netflix queue has been corrupted, or hijacked.

Netflix DVD has gone to pot. I've been waiting four weeks for Doctor Who series 2 disc 1, the first of the Tennant discs, and three weeks for a Deep Space 9 disc (I forget which one). Each time I have my allotted two discs at home they're both available. When I send one or both of my discs to Netflix, they both go back to 'Very long wait'

Hey, Gosho...

Look what Snopes had to debunk...

Giants men in Japan.

http://www.snopes.com/giants-in-japan/

Oh, thank you for that Not just for the laugh, but I've been trying to remember the name of that film for a while now cos I want to see if Netflix has it.

They do

My reaction to that is not surprising. Of the first eleven discs in my queue two are short wait, one is long wait, and three are very long wait. The first two in my queue fall into that last category, and I've been waiting for them for more than two months. They're not anything as obscure as Big Man Japan though. They're Star Trek Deep Space Nine Series 7 disc 1, and Doctor Who Series 2 disc 1. The other 'very long wait' is Lost in Translation, also hardly an obscure film.

Far from being a company who would acknowledge receipt of a disc the day after you sent it with an email, and send both the next disc in your queue and an email telling you they'd sent it the very same day, I find myself maybe once a month reporting a disc lost because I mailed it five or six days previously and they haven't yet sent me the next one. But they find the disc the next day.

Last week I got a couple of discs from them on the same day. That was a day before they acknowledged receipt of the two I'd sent back, and two days before the email telling me they'd sent the new discs. The really don't give a any more.

I was having trouble with returning discs for a while. Then they caught a USPS worker in Houston stealing thousands of Netflix discs.

Oh, and I have a copy of Lost in Translation. If you give up on Netflix sending it to you, you can borrow my copy.

I love that film. A lot of critics panned it, but I liked it for exactly the reasons they pan it. (My mother hated it. She didn't get it.)

I'd elaborate, but I don't want to spoil it (if that's even possible).

I've seen it a couple of times so it wouldn't spoil it for me. Not sure about anyone else reading the conversation.

It's a 13 year old film, so...


The problem a lot of critics complained about was that they felt the story "didn't go anywhere" (as did my mother). But I felt that was the point. The main characters are sharing a distinct period of time outside of their usual lives, a temporary break, isolated from everyone and everything they know. And the film really captures that... mood. I felt like I was on a vacation while watching it.

Yeah, it doesn't really go anywhere, but I didn't want it to. Like a vacation, you want it to go on just a bit longer, but you know it's going to end and everything will go back to like it was before.

I just enjoy watching it.

Of course there are some deeper aspects to it. The relationship reminds me of Lolita. As the film, and the relationship progresses, you start to think about how inappropriate it is. But when it ends as it does, you realize that's just what it should have done.


(Of course, that opening scene is prurient, gratuitous, and sexist. And I'm guilty of enjoying it in a truly prurient fashion.)

That's the thing about stories, whether they be books, plays or films - they're (usually) about one small slice of a life or lives. We tend to like endings so the events in this small slice (a few days or months, maybe a couple of years) will come to a conclusion of one kind or another, which might actually be the beginning of another chapter in that life. The obvious exception to this, of course, is when it's a biographical story, but even then it might not be the whole life.

But once in a while a story comes along that doesn't have a conclusion because that's not how life works for most of us. It just portrays the events that happen when someone does something or goes somewhere, then it finishes in a mundane and everyday fashion without a dramatic conclusion. It's what happens to most of us all the time.

And as if to illustrate the point about Netflix...

I sent two discs back on Saturday; yesterday (Wednesday) I got an email saying they'd sent two more (not the first two in my queue - still waiting for those - 10 weeks and counting). They'd actually sent them the previous day (Tuesday) and I picked them up on my way home from work. I'm sending one back today. This morning I got the email saying they've received the two discs I sent back last Saturday