Month: August 2008

It’s all about perspective

In this week’s Radio Lab podcast, Robert Krulwich interviews Columbia University physics and mathematics professor Brian Greene about theories of the multiverse and the ever-expanding nature of space. Midway through, Greene makes this interesting point:

The thing to remember is that when Einstein established that nothing goes faster than the speed of light, what he really established is that nothing can traverse space at a speed greater than the speed of light. But his equations full well allow space itself to grow at any speed. Bigger than the speed of light is perfectly fine.

More thoughts, more links

  • TV Squad reports that at this year’s Emmy Awards, “celebrities will utter famous catch phrases and lines from 60 years of television.” I think they should read them off in one long extended list, in a sombre monotone, as if they were reading off the names of the fallen dead.
  • I think I would better enjoy Doveman’s Footloose covers — which I’ve heard about practically everywhere by now, including on NPR’s All Songs Considered — if I thought his singing was any good. It’s an interesting idea, though.
  • Ann Hornaday on George Lucas and why he’s a bad storyteller:

    Although the difference between plot and story may seem arcane, it’s quite crucial: The plot is merely a sequence of events, whereas a story limns those events’ deeper motivation and meaning. The plot gets characters from point A to point B; the story makes us care.

    She’s not wrong.

  • Another reason why fast food is bad for you.
  • I’ve been working on an update of the Kaleidotrope submission guidelines (along with the whole site, actually), and I’m thinking of adding a caveat along the lines of “Why I don’t want to hate your story but probably will…”
  • Matthew Baldwin almost makes me want to use my Twitter account. I particularly liked this “recent tweet” of his:

    War in Afghanistan, rising US / Russia tensions. This WATCHMEN ad campaign is amazing.

    I can’t access Twitter on my computer at work or with my cell phone, so I don’t think it’s going to happen, even if I had anything half that clever to write.

Laugh and the whole world laughs with you

Maybe sometimes, laughter isn’t the best medicine:

Perhaps the most unusual documented case of mass psychogenic illness was the Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic of 1962. A paper published the following year in the Central African Journal of Medicine described what happened.

Triggered by a joke among students at a Tanzania boarding school, young girls began to laugh uncontrollably. At first there were spurts of laughter, which extended to hours and then days.

The victims, virtually all female, suffered pain, fainting, respiratory problems, rashes and crying attacks, all related to the hysterical laughter. Proving the old adage that laughter can be contagious, the epidemic spread to the parents of the students as well as to other schools and surrounding villages.

Eighteen months passed before the laughter epidemic ended.

That must have been some joke. Still, at least it wasn’t this one.

The whole article is actually pretty fascinating, from the mysterious dancing plague of 1518 to “plagues of koro — an irrational male fear that one’s genitals have been stolen or are fatally shrinking into the body.”

Via Jeff Ford.

Some thoughts, some links

  • I keep meaning to give Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series a try. Given Liz Hand’s review of the most recent book, however — “Reader, I hurled.” — maybe that’s not such a good idea. Gwenda Bond has more.
  • And then I read this in Ansible, where Meyer is quoted as saying of her recent adult novel The Host:

    It’s science fiction because it’s about aliens, so there’s no other way to categorize it. And I like science fiction. But this doesn’t feel to me like science fiction; once you get past the basic premise, it’s just about being human.

    Which I realize is just the same old sop to the “I don’t usually read science fiction” crowd, but it still doesn’t make any sense. You know what we call stories that aren’t in some way about being human? Bad stories.

  • Going back to Gwenda Bond for a second… In her post, she brings up the ’90s British vampire show Ultraviolet. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen an episode, but there’s something that always sort of bugged me a little about the show. They played up the science of vampirism, realism instead of magic, and I think they offered a passable enough reason for why vampires don’t show up on video cameras. (A modern update of why they don’t reflect in mirrors.) But that never explained why their clothing didn’t show up.
  • TV Squad reports that fifteen percent of the world watched the Olympics opening ceremonies. Count me among the world’s other eighty-five percent. Is it wrong that I don’t care at all about the Olympics?
  • Can we please ban the term “staycation” from the modern lexicon now? I’m just saying.
  • Have you seen The Guild yet? I think Felicia Day may be my new favorite person in the whole world.
  • Speaking of Felicia Day (sort of), here’s a fan project I find equal parts endearing and ridiculous: cataloging the books in Dr. Horrible’s apartment
  • And speaking of Dr. Horrible’s apartment…