Avatar

The first movie I saw that was written and directed by James Cameron was Aliens, which I saw on tape back in 1987. I was blown away, and eagerly devoured everything he did before and since. Terminator, The Abyss, True Lies, he had a knack for creating sci-fi that was unlike everything else out there. Unlike his contemporaries, in a Cameron film, the science worked. Robots were competent, spaceships went where they were supposed to, and when a site was to be nuked, it got nuked.

So like many a Cameron fan, I was looking forward to his first major film in over ten years, Avatar. At 9:00 AM on a Sunday, the IMAX theater was nearly full. After watching the film unfold, I can see why.

Many have said that Terminator 2 was primarily a remake of The Terminator with a bigger budget. The same could be said of Avatar; this is Aliens writ large. Cameron knows this: I do not think it is a coincidence that he cast Sigourney Weaver in a lead role. The trip to Pandora is via cryogenic freezing, Ripley's construction loader gets a military upgrade, and many of the themes are the same with the primary one being the evils corporations do in the pursuit of a quarterly earning report. And like all Cameron films, the themes are held up front and center. The planet is named Pandora; Cameron is not exactly subtle.

Unlike Aliens, however, which is framed as a horror story, Avatar is framed as a hero's journey. Here our hero is played by Sam Worthington. He's one of those actors who has been quietly putting out great supporting and lead performances for years, but has just now burst into the American action film scene. With knockout roles in Terminator: Salvation and Avatar this year, he looks set to assume the action hero mantle that has been drifting from one thirtysomething actor to another this decade. Seeing an actor in one role tells you whether he is interesting to watch--seeing him twice you find out if he can act. Worthington was a completely different person in Avatar and Terminator: Salvation.

But back to Avatar: the visuals are spectacular. Not quite photorealistic for the animals of Pandora, but close enough that I quickly and completely lost myself in the effects. And the flowers and native people themselves are flawless, a tribute to the profession. Like all modern films, more than one effects team created the world, which aids considerably.

The plot is taut and suspenseful, moving always at a fluid pace. Cameron is nothing if not precise, he tends to avoid deus ex machina resolution, carefully laying the groundwork for the finale well in advance. This also makes his films fun--looking for clues to what the future holds. I loved this film from start to finish, its rich visuals and its stalwart protagonists.

Avatar: 5 out of 5 stars

Stargate Universe

Stargate: SG-1 was the spiritual successor to Star Trek. Filled with unbridled hope for the future of humanity, it worked its way through an impressive 11 seasons. The spin-off Stargate: Atlantis was more of the same.

SG-1 ended two years ago and Atlantis finished up this year, but MGM wasn't going to let the franchise die. The next series debuted this fall: Stargate: Universe.

The first season ended a few weeks back, and it was quite a run. They decided to mix more Farscape DNA than Star Trek into this go around though, and the result was something I enjoyed thoroughly. This is a much darker version, where the characters are as concerned with finding their next meal as upholding deep humanistic principles.

Their ship "Destiny" is decidedly low-tech compared to the earlier vessels in the Stargate Universe, capturing a Firefly vibe where everything seems about to fall apart at any moment. The main conflicts rise not from dangerous alien empires, but their own human failings, and so far that has made the episodes more compelling than the last few seasons of Atlantis or SG-1.

Dark SF is nothing new, certainly The X-Files and Forever Knight qualify. But I think it took the long term success of Battlestar Galactica to get a show like SGU greenlit. Here's hoping that they can match the depth that BSG managed to attain.

The proof is in the pudding.

I am nearing the end of the publication process for a journal article, and yesterday I received what are called page proofs.

I hate page proofs.

Those who know me know I'm not typically a hateful person...but page proofs, oh they get my blood boiling. Let me start at the beginning.

The birth of a paper (at least for me) goes something like this. One day, an idea will strike, an idea of unbridled loveliness and all around awesomeness. Of course, then begins the long process of taking the idea and putting on paper, where in the cold light of reality, the awesomeness factor was perhaps overrated.

After maybe a few months to a few years of kneading the idea into a form suitable for publication, the article is submitted to a journal. A few months later, an editor at the journal will find one or more people to referee the article--read it to see if it seems roughly correct, if it is novel, and put their own awesomeness rating on it. Sadly, the referee's awesomeness rating can go negative, and it usually takes anywhere from 3 months to a year in mathematics journals to get the referee's report.

If it survives the process, the editor usually returns it with some notes: Fix this, move this figure over here, take that figure out completely, what does iid mean? A month or two later you resubmit the article to the journal, they send it back to the referee, and the merry cycle continues until it is finally accepted.

So the editor sends it over to the publisher, and then at a surprise date returns the paper to the author with the dreaded page proofs. Keep in mind that this could be anywhere from a few weeks to a year after the paper was accepted for publication, depending on the backlog.

One day, out of the blue, a message will arrive in your inbox: "These are your page proofs. You have 24 hours to check them over, and return any corrections to us."

Okay, the generous ones give 72 hours.

Let me reiterate. A paper that was literally years in the writing, you now have at best a few days to check to see if the publisher messed something up accidentally. But that's not all!

See, editors like to edit, and they do. So not only have they returned your paper to you for checking, they have also made what appear to be random changes throughout the paper in order to make it "read better". Some of these changes will be marked. Others will not.

You have the next few days to try to unearth these changes, and correct it before it is too late forever. Sometimes I have succeeded, other times I have failed.

The worse change I missed: one editor replaced every use of the Number sign (#) with the musical symbol for sharp. I have to believe I'm not the first person this has happened to, since the Wikipedia entry for the musical sharp opens with: "Not to be confused with the Number sign...", but I failed to catch it, and now it's a part of the mathematical literature.

This latest page proof? They edited one of my definitions. An edit that completely changed the meaning of the definition. Fortunately, this wasn't just any old definition.

It is what I did my thesis on.

So I caught it. I caught that, I caught a few others, but of course those aren't what worry me. Those aren't what give me the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. The ones I didn't catch, the edits that got away, that's what keeps me up nights.

I hate page proofs.

The downfall of Eastwick

Fantasy is not a license for your characters to transgress all bounds of moral decency.

This is a lesson that the writers of Eastwick, unfortunately, failed to learn. Now some would say that since Eastwick has been canceled already, that this is pointless, no new episodes are being made, so why belabor a mistake? But I just can't let this go, this was so very wrong. So here goes.

Rape is never funny. Period. You cannot have one of your main characters rape someone and retain any warmth towards that character. Now, Eastwick is a fantasy where at least three characters possess magic powers. One of the three characters in Eastwick has the power to make men do anything she wishes. And on last week's episode, she forced a man to have sex with her.

Sadly, that is rape. What makes it worse is that the tone of the scenes were all comedic. She did it after knocking back a few in order to get back at another guy who told her she was "not fun", a guy that they are clearly setting up for romance later on. But back to the sex. After finishing, the man's spouse walks in on them. And here's the surprise, the spouse was also a man. Yes, he was gay! So that makes it hilarious that our heroine just raped him.

Coincidentally, this was not the only fantasy series this week where sex under magical compulsion was contemplated. In the "Sword of Truth" series of books, a character also has the power of compulsion. And this week, in the T.V. series based on the books, "Legend of the Seeker", the same question arose--should she have sex with someone under magical control? LotS realized the magnitude of the question, and created a back story to make the choice far more difficult. In the end, however, she took the moral choice to not take advantage. Why? Because LotS realizes the important fact that if you are writing fantasy, you need to be more aware of the consequences of your actions, not less.

Are we in the black yet?

My first Black Friday back in California! I decided to begin the day bright and early at 10:00 (that's when the stores opened, right?) at my local Toys "R" Us. Man was it packed! Packed but friendly. You'd never know they'd been open all night.

Next I headed over to the outlet mall. I figured it wouldn't be too bad, as they weren't the ones running doorbusters ads for the last two weeks. I was wrong. Couldn't even park it was so full. I guess the people headed to the outlets were there for the long haul.

So I turned by attention back toward Montclair Plaza (yes Claremont and Montclair are within spitting distance of each other, don't ask me who was in charge of names.) Anyway, J.C. Penny was full, but not packed--I didn't even have to wait in line (like I usually do at Penny's.) It is rare to actually see a person for every register they have.

I swung by Best Buy to see what the hot items were this year. People seemed pretty spread out through the store, but the line for the Geek Squad stretched across two aisles. I'd have asked someone in line why, but they seemed a grim lot. I had a good time checking out some new hardware, though!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This was a year of tremendous change for me. At the beginning of the year, I had no clue where I would be living or whether I could find a place that matched my outlook and particular talents.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful that life turned out great! I'm now most of the way through my first semester at Claremont McKenna College, and life is good. The class sizes are small, the students are bright and enthusiastic, and the teaching load is light enough that I still have plenty of time to pursue research.

CMC is part of the Claremont University Consortium, a collection of five undergraduate and two graduate institutions that yield a unique environment. Across the colleges there are about 50 mathematicians, which makes it large enough to support several colloquium series that I attend regularly. However, my own department at CMC has only ten tenure track faculty, which makes for a nice department able to move quickly when it needs to. Thanks partially to the free lunch that CMC faculty get once a week, I have had the chance to have lunch with almost everyone, and get to know people through the time honored way of lunch time chats.

Finally, I'm thankful for the invitation from Asuman Aksoy to join her family's Thanksgiving celebration today. Happy turkey day, everyone!

V and the Lost Effect

Science fiction and Fantasy are hard. TV SF is even harder. In the 1990's, every science fiction and fantasy show that I can think of put forth by ABC, NBC, and CBS failed miserably. Earth 2, anyone? But on the off network side of things? Babylon 5, Farscape, The Outer Limits, Star Trek: The Next Generation. The WB then kicked in with Buffy and Angel. In the 2000's, this state of affairs looked to continue, with another failed remake of The Twilight Zone from the networks, while off the majors we had Farscape, Stargate: SG-1, and Battlestar Galactica. On the Fantasy side, Legend of the Seeker is a great successor to Hercules and Xena. And the (now CW) continues to produce a wonderful product in Supernatural.

So why can't the big three get SF right? My guess is the need for epic ratings. A show like Supernatural can pull in 2 or 3 million, and make it up in DVD sales later. This is peanuts compared to the 11 million viewers Grey's Anatomy pulls in.

Things did change this century, at least for ABC. The first successful SF series of the 2000's was Alias. Now, spy fiction is probably the most accessible form of SF, and the change in the world climate followed 9/11 probably didn't hurt. So it was no surprise that ABC turned to J.J. Abrams' production company again to create "Lost" in 2004.

And where Formula with a capital F sets in. ABC decided this season to launch not just one but two science fiction shows this season, FlashForward and V, and decided to push the Lost formula to the hilt. Both shows follow Lost in that they:
1) Begin with large explosions. FlashForward's are everywhere on the planet, V just over every major city. Apparently the Visitors still haven't developed the elusive giant-spaceship-muffler.
2) Keep the characters guessing as to what's going on. FlashForward has to result to gimmicks to keep the future hidden: one key character doesn't turn around, another is drunk during the info session. V has a bigger problem: it's a remake, so adding to the mystery is an extra challenge.
3) Stir in a touch of whimsy. Lost had its polar bear first season. FlashForward has a kangaroo occasionally run through. V has stayed away from the animals so far: will birds react to the Visitors the same way they did in the miniseries?

So far, FlashForward has been a disappointment, but I'm cautiously optimistic about V. The Visitors were upfront this time around about needing water, and the viewers learned of their reptillian nature in the pilot. So the question is: what do the V's want?

The writing seems to be much more careful in V than FlashForward. If they achieve the level of Lost, that would be great, because after all, it is the slowly woven mystery and makes Lost so entertaining. The V's have said several times now that humans are the first intelligence that they have encountered. What if that is a lie? What if the Visitors are themselves fleeing from a bigger alien threat? Or have they destroyed other civilizations (in which case there might be the odd survivor?)

The traitors to the V have only said cryptic things like "the plans for the humans." I find this fascinating, because it was phrased in such a way that the Visitors could really be working to help humanity (or at least see themselves as helping humanity.) There are a hundred different questions of morality that arise in these types of "needs of the many versus needs of the few" situations, and watching these play out could lead to some great stuff.

Here's hoping they can put out the ratings to survive, unlike the two SF shows from last year on Fox, Terminator and Dollhouse, both of which have now been canceled. At least Fox is planning to show all the episodes of Dollhouse they have, unlike what they did for Firefly.

Halloween

This year for Halloween the Cartoon Network showed the 1990 version of "The Witches", based on the Roald Dahl novel. Like Willie Wonka and Dahl's other children's tales, there's a fair amount of fairy tale style horror in this one, brought beautifully to life by Jim Henson Company Studios.

Those who have seen The Dark Crystal and Farscape already have seen the creepy side of Henson's muppets, and that type of work is on full display here, as well as the more subtle mouse puppetry after the Witches test out their evil plan to turn all of England's children into mice.

In 1990 I was just graduating high school, meaning that I missed out on this delightful little film. Angelica Huston is perfectly cast, essentially playing the same role that she would later turn to comedic purposes the next year in The Addams Family. There's no gore (it is after all a movie aimed at kids), but for me transformations (a Dahl specialty) have always been extremely scary.

The transformation of human to beast is a thread that runs through multiple fairy tales, and it is easy to see why. It allows the tale-teller to emphasize the character (or lack thereof) of the transformed. Children are typically powerless in an adult controlled world. But if children are powerless, mice are even more so, being practically the smallest mammal around plus the object of revulsion. Yet it is in this form that the hero of the film has the greatest effect on events. Sometimes the ability to move through the world unnoticed can be an advantage. Actions speak louder than squeaks sometimes.

The Witches: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

I love "Community"

And it's not just because they think that Statistics professors are hot. Although that doesn't hurt. I mean, I knew it was true, it's just high time the rest of the world caught on.

For those who didn't see the Halloween episode, post credits finds Jeff ogling his stats prof while lecture is ending. She begins with "The Bernoulli distribution is the number of successes in a sequence of independent yes/no experiments."

Now anyone who has taken a probability course (and hopefully my students come next Wednesday's midterm) knows that is in fact the definition of a binomial distribution, not a Bernoulli. So as is my usual practice, I headed over to Wikipedia to make sure that no one had fooled with definition again.

To my delight, I found "...the binomial distribution is the discrete probability distribution of the number of successes in a sequence of n independent yes/no experiments". Now that is too close a wording to be an accident. The writers ripped a line right out of Wikipedia. Chutzpah of that level is to be admired, and that's reason enough for me to love the show.

But it goes further than that. If they lifted the line from Wikipedia, why the Bernoulli/binomial switch? Only after watching the show to the end did I realize that the character was going to exhibit a holier-than-thou attitude towards the students the whole way through, even going so far as to introduce herself later as "Michelle Slater, Ph.D.". Who does that?

So here's my theory: they intentionally had her make a mistake at the beginning to establish that while she thinks she's all that, in fact she's a bit of a dim bulb. Naturally I went trolling through the tape afterward to search for further errors.

And indeed, I was not disappointed! As my students should also know by this point of the semester, the square of the standard deviation is the variance. However, what was written across the top of the board was "Sqaire S.D. to get vairiance" Okay, so vairiance could just be another error, but "Sqaire". That had to be intentional. But there's more. On the board, a calculation appears that is equivalent to saying 2 + 3 + 3 = 12. You don't have to be Good Will Hunting to get that right.

The piece de resistance? The most well known theorem in probability, abbreviated CLT, is the Central Limit Theorem. What's written on the board? Central Limiting.

Here's hoping that these are intentional jokes, or some writers need to get their college tuition refunded, post haste.

FlashForward

Time travel is tricky.

The first time travel story that I remember seeing on television was "The City on the Edge of Forever" from the original Star Trek series. That story went with the "future is not written in stone and can be changed" paradigm. I have seen dozens if not hundreds of time travel stories since, and they have become a beloved staple of science fiction.

And yet despite all the history, all the different renditions, time travel remains incredibly difficult to do right. I would say the last season of Lost is a shining example of how to do it correctly. Questions of fate intermixed with how knowledge of the future plays out beautifully. But one of the reasons it worked so well was that the writers were clearly aware that you need to pick a philosophy of how time travel works and obey the logic that follows.

FlashForward, ABC's latest science fiction offering, is a mess that drops time travel to new lows. The premise is that for two minutes the entire population of the planet blacked out, and saw two minutes of the future six months from now. But the show's writers made a fateful decision: the flash forwards people saw depended on the blackout event happening. That is, this was a glimpse of the future that depended on the blackout event. In fact, the main character bases his entire investigation of the blackout on clues seen during his flash forward.

And immediately everything breaks down. If you knew, knew, that you would have a glimpse of the future at a certain time and date, would you go about business as usual that day? Would you spend those two minutes calling your credit card company? Would you go to bed early that night? Of course not!

Stockbrokers would have a summary of the economy's performance in front of them. Scientists would be looking at six months worth of the top breakthroughs. Someone whose husband died of cancer detected too late would be pouring over medical tests.

The problem is: everyone would know that they had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to communicate with their past selves. They would not choose this unique event in human history to read the sports section while in the restroom. But the show expects us to believe that a field director of the FBI would do exactly that. And that another character would decide that these pivotal two minutes would be a good time to get drunk.

All this could have been fixed if the show designers had realized for one second that the flash forwards cannot depend on the blackout event. Then they could have realized their vision of flash forwards that represent random slices of the future. But knowing the time and date of the flash forward makes the entire concept of the show ridiculous from the get go.

In science fiction it is more important that basic logic and rules of storytelling be obeyed, not less. It really is that simple.

[Here's hoping they didn't screw up the remake of "V".]

And they say bad news travels fast....

I received the following email today from Columbia:

Thank you for applying for the recently advertised position of Assistant Professor. The search for this position has been discontinued, without success in filling the position. We appreciate the time and effort you put into your application and we extend our best wishes on your job search.

Whew! The suspense on whether or not I got a position that would have started a month ago was killing me.

Toy Story double feature

This weekend I headed to the theater to catch out the latest retro 3D showing from Disney. In this case, a limited engagement of Toy Story and Toy Story 2, now newly remastered in 3D.

Not having small children, it has been many a year since I saw these two great films (they came out in 1995 and 1999), and they have held up beautifully. Partially this is because of the inspired choice of using toys: the naturally plastic look of computer animation is perfectly suited to capture a Green Army Man in action.

My greatest surprise, however, happened during the opening credits for Toy Story. To my amazement, the first writer listed for the screenplay was Joss Whedon. In 1995, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series) was still two years away, and that was the first thing that put Whedon on the map of SF lovers everywhere.

Dollhouse (Whedon's latest) Season 2 premiered two weeks ago, and so far has been great. The Dollhouse concept has always been ripe for questions of what is meant by mind and free will, but now they've jumped into these questions with gusto. Juxtaposing the dolls angst against Buzz's realization that he's just a toy is interesting, to say the least.

Anyway, for Whedon and non-Whedon fans alike, I would recommend seeing Toy Story and Toy Story 2 again in theaters. They have a ten minute intermission between the movies, but I recommend hitting the restroom during the Toy Story credits. As the first Pixar full length movie, this was before they starting putting cute things in the credits, and the intermission is really a ten minute show with some fun tongue-in-cheek trivia and a few 30 second vignettes with the characters. They've also got a nice 50's drive-in style countdown clock during the intermission, so it is easy to see if you have time to leave.

Toy Story: 5 out of 5
Toy Story 2: 5 out of 5

Heroes goes to college

Heroes is the show that makes me feel like Charlie Brown. The series has such great character actors, high production values, and such a fun premise, that I keep tuning in again and again. Just to have the football yanked away by being repeatedly bludgeoned with plots and character actions that do not make a lick of sense.

They reached a new low for me in the Volume 5 premiere on Monday.

Claire has finally flown the nest to go to an unnamed college and meets a driven classmate who convinces her to take a placement test to see who gets into linear algebra.

Come on, linear algebra? First, this is a sophomore level course, we're not talking about the seminar in "thing-I-got-my-Nobel-Prize-in" course that only admits a few students. Every campus in the nation offers linear algebra, and it is no professor's "specialty".

Second, who goes to a placement test because their roommate told them about it? Colleges have these people called "advisors" that kind of work with freshman to set up their initial course offerings. Nobody decides on the spur of the moment I think I'll try to get in an advanced math class, one that is usually taken after the Calculus sequence.

Third, and this is what really killed me, Claire and her annoying friend arrive at the placement exam to find that it consists of solving a four equation, four unknown system of equations. Moreover, they are given 45 minutes.

This blows me away, because it reflects the sloppy nature of Heroes for the last few years. Here's the main issue: this is a linear algebra problem. You don't give a linear algebra problem at a linear algebra placement exam, you give whatever type of problem you'd like the incoming students to know. If they are passing out of the Calc sequence, you give Calculus problems.

Next, are you kidding me? This problem might look tough to someone who slept through high school algebra, but making the system 4 equations/4 unknowns doesn't make the problem conceptually harder, and forty five minutes is way to long for this travesty.

I can almost picture the email to some UCLA professor or whomever the show asked to consult: "Could you please send us a linear algebra problem that isn't very easy?" They couldn't possibly have asked their consultant for a problem that would appear on a linear algebra placement exam, because if they had they wouldn't have gotten such a joke of a problem.

If Heroes was on in a different time, such sloppiness might have gone unnoticed. But in a time where shows like Mad Men takes enough care to get the train schedules for its protagonist correctly, this shows an utter lack of respect for the viewer. Heck, even Star Wars: The Clone Wars shows more respect for continuity and its universe than Heroes. If a half-hour animated show can do it, why can't Heroes? It appears to be the one super power they have no interest in.

Crossovers

This week I went to the movie "9", and finished the Shadow series by Orson Scott Card. Both struck me as having forms that were introduced in computer games.

"9" opens with what has become an adventure game classic: you awake in a dark room, not knowing who you are, with only a few random objects nearby to guide you. The mystery unfolds only when you exit the room and venture out into the world. Of course, the look of "9" also matches the lush detail of games such as Myst.

Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, and Shadow of the Giant owe more to turn based strategy games like Romance of the Three Kingdoms (which the author does acknowledge.) These games arose from simpler board games such as Risk, and were an attempt to use what computers are good at to make games more fun. Each country has but one or two statistics in Risk or Settlers of Catan, while in a modern computer game usually several resources and production numbers exist for each region. But the goals are the same: world domination!

I think this is a good thing. Direct translations of computer games to movies(I'm looking at you Super Mario Bros.) have rarely fared well. Uwe Boll alone has turned more than a half dozen computer games into horrible movies. But when the spirit of a computer game is incorporated into a movie or book, the result can be great fun. I do not think that "9" or the Shadow series are particular great works of art, but they are fun, and their use of computer game tropes sets them apart and gives them a unique flavor that I hope leads to more such experiments.

District 9

Last day of summer (academic time, nothing to do with the Autumn Equinox) I went to see District 9. Wow! This is what science fiction is for: take some idea, any idea, and throw the twist of new science into the mix. Stir, boil, and see what happens. In this case, the central events take place in the midst of a refugee camp. The twist: the refugees are aliens with advanced technology but no clear leadership.

Naturally, it is the presence of the alien technology that drives the plot, and in our modern world, military tech is what the humans always strive for. There is some seriously great weaponry effects on hand here, the kind you can't see in something like G.I. Joe because District 9 is an R and G.I. Joe isn't.

But even more fun was reading the reviews afterwards. This is not a straight forward allegory simply because nothing like this exists on Earth. For me, that is what the best science fiction is about: when an utterly new situation arises because of the introduction of elements that are possible, but have never occurred. But for a generation of movie critics raised on Star Trek, science fiction is supposed to be a pure allegory for our current political and social situation, without the messiness that arises when things just do not translate.

Much as I loathe much of the Sci-Fi (not SyFy) channel's approach to science fiction, their ad campaign, "What if?", captures the essence of what the best in science fiction is all about, and District 9 is full of what if.

Now to the mechanics of the movie: District 9 is presented as a faux documentary, and that makes the special effects even more important. They've imported several important ideas. First, effects shouldn't look too good. You can barely see the mothership in some shots because of the haze over Johannesborg. That's a good thing, as it makes the effects seem much more real.

Also, sometimes the camera catches the action, sometimes it doesn't. This keeps the viewer off balance, and is a visual clue that perhaps that this is not all that the viewer is missing.

The story contains a wonderful expository style. The "documentarians" assume the viewer knows the basics of the story already, and so skips over details that someone in the world of the film would already know. This means that the information that is presented comes at a breakneck pace, and not always in the form you expect. For instance, the only clue to the viewer that the aliens landed in 1982? A quick video code shown on inserted footage to the documentary.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Orientation

It's always darkest before the dawn, and its always quietest on a campus before the students arrive. Convocation and the start of the new semester is Sept. 1st, which means this week was the last where quiet reigned supreme.

I always feel some nervousness before starting a new job or position, and this time is no exception. No matter how prepared, how experienced I become, each new entering class of students is different, with unique needs and presenting unique challenges. Of course, that's one of the reasons I love the job--diversity keeps all the neurons firing full speed ahead.

At least now I know quite a bit more about CMC. Monday and Tuesday morning of this week I went to orientation, where everyone from the Registrar to the Library to Campus Services had their hour to fill the new faculty full of information. It was very different from my last orientation, though. This time around, with eight years experience as a faculty member under my belt, I knew exactly what I needed to know, and that confers a huge advantage. Braced with that knowledge, I knew what questions to ask and so I think that I have all the answers I need.

At least until the students arrive.

Moving On

Settling in a new place is always...interesting to say the least. There are good aspects: the staff and faculty at CMC have been great about helping me learn the ropes and get up to speed on the local system.

But there are always bad aspects too. Most baffling is my new faculty housing. In many respects it is a wonderful small two bedroom house: the air conditioning is both effective and quiet, and the blinds are great. On the other hand, the laundry room isn't wide enough. Sure, it has both electric and gas hookups for a dryer, but the room physically lacks about four inches needed to fit a washer or dryer in there. This is the kind of thing you'd like a think a builder would know about.

So today I took my second trip to the laundromat. Not much to say there, as like most things in Claremont, the Coin-Op Laundry is clean, sunny, and modern. After a year or two of tramping over there I might feel differently, but for now it seems better than the last time I used a laundromat regularly by a wide margin.

Of quartz it is....

My next to the last day of travel found me in the Petrified Forest National Park. I'd been here as a kid, but the burning sensation left my the merciless sun left no other room for memories.

The sun is still there, but oh nelly is this a wonderful place! Petrified wood is found all over the world, but only here was it found in true forest fashion--carpeting the landscape like a quartz reminder of the slow geologic processes of time. Of course, much of it was removed by tourists before the park became protected. Even today, the park says it loses about 1 ton of wood a month. This is both sad and sickening, when you realize that what makes this place special is the sheer intensity of the amount of petrified wood found. Outside the park? Well, it's just another pretty rock, of fairly low value.

Add to that the plethora of petrified wood available for sale in sizes large and small outside of the park, and I seriously wonder at the mental capacity of the visitors who steal the stuff out of the National Park.

Anyway, rant complete!

Now on to the next sight of the day: Meteor Crater! Words fail to describe the sheer awesomeness of this (privately owned) hole in the ground. They try: they've put a little tiny 6 foot astronaut that you can barely see through a high power telescope in the center of the crater, and that does give a bit of a hint as to the magnitude of the thing that lies before your eyes. It is a wonder.

So burned and seriously fatigued, the next day I finally made it into Claremont! Now for a week of hooking up (with cable and phone service at least) and learning the ins and outs of CMC.

Of Pecos and Pueblos

I stayed the night in Albuquerque because it was on the road, but my goal for this day of sightseeing was the Santa Fe area. First stop, the tiny village of Pecos, next door to the Pecos National Historic Monument.

This was the home of the Pecos Pueblo builders, who picked a humdilly of a spot. From the top you could see the whole valley, and one pass to the north narrowed to be only 30 feet wide, allowing them to charge tolls and get a nice little city-state going.

The only problem? It was in the 1300's that things really got rolling for them. So just like the Aztecs and Incas whose empires were formed just before European discovery, they never really had a chance to go big.

They did have a really good spot though, so it took a few centuries before things went south. Today you can tour the ruins (I went on a very thorough Ranger led walk--took about two hours for 1 1/4 miles,) and they have a small museum.


Santa Fe has big museums, including the new New Mexico History Museum, which opened a few months ago. It's very nice, and has all the amenities of a modern museum--artifacts interspersed with interpretive text and paintings, a well thought out flow, and gorgeous theaters.

The Palace of the Governors Museum is somewhat more old school, but that can be nice too, and when I visited they had a photography exhibit and a special exhibit on religious art that were both very good.

Lunch was Nu-Mex at the Plaza Cafe, where they cheated by seating me right in front of the pie case. Boy was that Apple Pie with Caramel on top good though.

Heading to the great Southwest

So yesterday I traveled from Oklahoma City over to Albuquerque in New Mexico, with a brief visit to Texas in the middle. Texas does have the coolest rest stops, and all of them have Wi-Fi, even if it is a pretty weak signal.

But the most fun I had was at the Mesalands Dinosaur Museum in Tucumcari, NM. They have a unique setup, with the museum being run by the Mesalands Community College. What do they have that most places don't? Access to a foundry.

Most of their casts are actually solid bronze, and I must say, that makes for a real cool dinosaur exhibit. They have a large number of fossils and casts that you can touch as well, which always adds a nice immediacy to the experience. It took me about an hour to see everything, then run back and pose for pictures--a nice little experience.

More on Pigeon Forge...

Nested in the foothills of the Great Smoky mountains is Dollywood, Dolly Parton's paean to her Appalachian roots.

It's a fun theme park--even more family orientated than the Disney parks, but without the size of the budget. Therefore the rides tend to be simpler. For instance, for me the best ride in the park is the wooden roller coaster "Thunderhead". While it does not include any animatronic critters, it is a superbly designed ride where you feel like you are going much faster than you really are.

The music in the shows at Dollywood pretty much consists of country and bluegrass. The 50's and 60's rock revue was dark the day I visited, so I missed that. All of the shows I saw were top notch quality, in addition, the Kratt brothers were running an animal show for a week and they are as funny and charismatic in person as they are on their show.

As I stated in my previous entry, Dollywood has also partnered with a company to offer a zip line tour of the surrounding mountains. There is an additional fee of about forty dollars, for which you get to zip down four different lines. Two cross the park walkways, while the other two cross two nearby ravines. The longest is about 850 feet, long enough to get going at a pretty good clip. It was a great experience: they have it set up so that it is very easy for novices such as myself
to get started, and it really does give a different view of the trees to be able to stare straight down at them. Highly recommended!

Dollywood

Good news! Dollywood has zip lines now!

Stairs, stairs, stairs

It is truly amazing how much garbage a tiny one bedroom apartment can hold. But eighteen trash bags later, the remaining stuff barely fit in my car. And so, I was off on my great American cross country road trip!

Unfortunately, I live (or lived, I should say) in a third floor apartment, and so each trip meant two flights of stairs. It was a very long day.

So any sane person would have stayed away from hiking their first day of travel.

Fortunately, sanity has never been one of my weaknesses, and so i headed for Chimney Rock. A private tourist attraction up until 2007, now it is run by the state park system of North Carolina. Fortunately, they have an elevator to the top, so it was only on the down trip that my legs started to feel like rubber. Still the view was worth it!


On a side note: the Holiday Inn Express in Hickory and Lazy Bear in Pigeon Forge are both great places to stay!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

It started so well.

There were wonderous effects. Okay, they weren't as good as Lord of the Rings, and they served a simple plot, but the makers of the Harry Potter series had a fully realized notion of what the world of Hogwarts should be like. The early movies were fresh and exciting and morphed over time into fare like "The Prisioner of Azkaban" where discrimination and childhood fears became themes that drove the fantasy.

That is now over with.

The latest Harry Potter installment is a vapid, slowly paced bore where our characters discover teenage love, and then proceed to begin caring more about who is going with whom to the Christmas party than the pesky little matter of the Dark Lord who is trying to kill them all. For two and a half hours, not much happens. Then a little happens, and then credits roll.

This is it? This is the training that Harry Potter has received from Hogwarts over the last six years? For this we sat through Order of the Phoenix, where it appeared as if Harry was actually about to, you know, do something about his situation? Instead we are treated to such thrilling scenes as Harry deciding who gets to be on this year's Quidditch team.

At this point we should be past the simple patterns of high school life: people have died, and Hermione has turned back time for crying out loud. But this installment has our players back to the mewling magical infants of the first movie. There is nothing wondrously magical here--only poor timing, cheap gags, and characters who have moved two steps backwards.

The set design and effects are better than ever, but only a shell of the former greatness remains for this series.

2 out of 5 stars.

Into the wild green yonder

Futurama has always included parodies of the classic sci-fi Gen X grew up on (Exhibit A: Zapp Brannigan.) But I think it was at its best when it took those classic themes and made them the heart of the story.

That is what I thought that "Into the Wild Green Yonder", the last of the four Futurama straight-to-DVD movies, accomplished. It took the tried and true plot line of hero with special power needs to fight dark power and wrote a story around it that bounced between humor and action. Despite the name, it was not the wildest Futurama, but it had earnest characters trying to do right in their screwed up universe, and that is something that everyone can relate to.

I am glad to see that Comedy Central has ordered up another season of the show--Futurama is a unique gem written by people that love science fiction but who are not afraid to play around with its conventions. For the record, my rankings of the movies are:
1) Bender's Big Score
2) Into the Wild Green Yonder
3) The Beast with a Billion Backs
4) Bender's Game.

It breaks my heart to put Bender's Game last, given that D&D and fantasy gaming in general has always been near and dear to my heart, but the script did not rise to the same level as the others.

Festival for the Eno

This year I decided I would head out to the Festival for the Eno for the full three days as a last blast of Durhamness before I embraced fully the need to pack. And I was not disappointed! There were lots of great acts this year, and some favorites of mine.

First, though, I feel I owe a plug for Ellis. Her music and lyrics paint pictures of the kind of soul that I want to be, and that is a wonderful thing. If that were all, she would be one of my favorite performers--but she also manages to deftly weave funny poignant stories in between her songs. It wasn't until Saturday that I realized that many of them were made up right on the spot.

And that brings me to why I owe Ellis a plug.

On Friday I had gone to her concert and bought her new DVD set. While wandering the craft booths looking for a present for someone, I realized the perfect gift would be an Ellis CD. Besides, she's always friendly to chat with and signs her CD's, so that would be perfect. So I went back and bought another CD. Which is probably why she recognized me the next day.

On Saturday I went to her show at the Meadow stage at the Eno, which is notable for having a large area in front of the stage that is in the sun. On a day like Saturday with 91 plus weather, no one sits in the sun unless they have to.

So in order to get a picture, you have to get pretty darn close to the stage, and you will be the only one standing in the sun in full view. Okay, so I accept that, and I know that the performers all see you.

But I didn't think I'd be distracting, until I saw through the viewfinder that Ellis had taken a step back from the mike and turned to look at me. She smiled, so I didn't think anything of it, until she finished the song and started chatting with the audience again.

"I'm sorry I forgot the lyrics there for a moment. You see, the gentleman taking pictures down there was here the day before and we had a sweet interaction. And so when I saw him, suddenly all I could think of was...yesterday."

Everyone laughed, and it was the perfect segue into her next song, a lighthearted number about forgetting where her car was parked. The point is, obviously she couldn't have prepared the thought she had, she just used what happened naturally to make a joke and make a great show even better. It's a skill I'm constantly trying to perfect while giving lectures, and it is always great to watch a master at work. Thanks, Ellis!


Fiddlefoxx is now a trio, and remains a unique sound combining (unsurprisingly) the fiddle and Steve Foxx's beatbox skills. The Midtown Dickens throw everything they have at all their songs, and often are holding an instrument in each hand and running around to get more during their sets.

Finally, the big draw of the show this year was Albanach, a Scottish drum and pipes band in the US for the Highland Games in Linville next week. They are very high energy, and since so many in North Carolina are of Scottish descent, was a fan favorite. They did four sets, and all were very highly attended.

Happy birthday, dear blog....

So my blog is exactly one year old today! Hurrah!

Anyway, on to today's news. Since Michael Jackson died last Thursday, I can tell that the data mining software at Amazon has been completely overwhelmed.

For example, today I was searching for some music by a Danish composer to put behind the videos I took in Denmark. I settled on The Champagne Galop by Hans Christian Lumbye. I traveled to Amazon to hear a sample, and as usual, they suggested several related best sellers in music that I might like to purchase.

Unfortunately, "Bad", "Off the Wall", and "Michael Jackson 25th Anniversary of Thriller" albums are not even tangentially related to either Danish music in general of Hans Christian Lumbye in particular. I have a hunch the searches Amazon is getting right now is simply crushing its normal algorithms operations underfoot and sending out all Michael all the time to its customers.

U-Haul's marketing genius

So I bought several boxes from Home Depot the other day. They sell basic 1.5 ft^3 boxes for 97 cents apiece. A good deal, to be sure.

But it turns out 1.5 cubit feet of books is not such a good thing. So I went back to U-Haul, who sells 1 ft^3 boxes (as their "book box" size) for $1.43 apiece. They have an interesting marketing scheme.

It goes like this: buy as many boxes as you want, and if you keep your receipt, you can bring back the extras. Personally, I believe this is pure genius. I have never, I repeat never, had leftover boxes during a move. Everyone has more stuff than they want/expect/can fit into the boxes they bought, so there's always usually some emergency "throwing out" or "garbage bag suitcases" involved near the end of a move. U-Haul is basically removing the element of risk from buying boxes, and so getting people to buy the amount of boxes they really need, and so which they won't be returning. Like I said, genius.

Milestone

So one year today I broke down and bought my first cell phone. I know this because I have a "pay-as-you-go" phone, and my minutes would have expired today had I not leapt to the rescue by adding additional minutes. In my plan, I am charged $1 for every day that I use the phone at all, plus an extra 10 cents per minute thereafter. Close study of my friends showed me that most of their calls nowadays are of the short and sweet variety--for long distance or international I might as well use Skype anyway, the quality is as good as a cell phone.

So I like to think of my plan as an $8 a month plan where I get 6 days of use and 20 minutes of talk time. Several months I used more, but several I used less. Of course, I'm a single guy, not an uber-parent attempting to coordinate with a clan. I'd place it's usefulness above most of the gadgets I own (sorry infrared thermometer) but still below that most important accessory of modern life, the microwave.

Digging into the past

So I've started getting ready for the big move, and as usual this involves a lot of archaeology, trying to determine what of the detritus from the past should be kept and what should be thrown away or donated. "Rosetta stone paperweight", goodbye!

Probably the most fun is when I stumble across some bit I wrote for high school or earlier. I don't know if this is true of most people, but my personality and beliefs were pretty much set by the time I'd reached high school, and available video, photographic, and written relics of my high school years tend to back that statement up. I like to think that this is because I was exposed to such a wide range of thinkers by that time, and not a sign that I became a curmudgeon at age 16.

In any case, by high school, I had already realized how important the access to knowledge was to what I believed and thought. It is always daunting to realize that if I was raised in a different environment, or didn't have access to public libraries in a country that values free speech so highly, that my very psychology would be different. Submitted as evidence that I have always believed this: an English assignment from high school where various phrases were to be examined. For each phrase, I was supposed to write whether or not I agreed or disagreed, standard stuff. The teacher wrote after my essay: "Neat idea--Everyone else who wrote on this, disagrees with you."

The phrase was: "There are no walls, there are no bolts, no locks that anyone can put on your mind."

My response was as follows: "I strongly disagree with that statement. We build ideas on 20,000 years of the past knowledge of the human race. If you are deprived of this knowledge, you have to "start over" with learning. No one can possibly do this. So that is the most effective lock that you can put on someone's mind."

What do you think?

A room of my own

At last, it appears that I will no longer be homeless in Claremont!

Claremont-McKenna has some faculty housing available, houses that they rent for 20% below market value. Once you start renting, you have to stay for at least a year, but you are allowed to stay for several years if needed. Today their agent wrote me and indicated that a nice little two bedroom had become available that will suit my needs just fine. Awesome!

My goal, given current prices, is to save up a new down payment for a home as quickly as possible. Half of my previous down payment was invested in stocks--so took a big hit this last year. Moreover, I was saving for a home in Durham, while homes in Claremont seem to run about 60% above value.

Ironically, rents in Claremont are somewhat more in line with Durham, which means that after the 20% discount, I might even be paying slightly less than I did for my apartment here.

There have been issues in the past with getting into faculty housing at CMC, but fortunately with the fall in housing prices many have been leaving the rentals in order to take advantage of the prices. My hope: after a year of saving I'll have an understanding of Claremont and its neighboring towns enough to purchase a home and finally install that sweet sweet home theatre system I've longed for lo these many years. It's good to dream.

Terminator: Salvation

Okay, so I'm catching up on my summer movie going, and first out of the gate is Terminator: Salvation. This is a sharp break from the previous Terminator films, and a lot of critics did not like that one bit.

I, on the other hand, loved it. Apocalyptic films are tricky. The last four to grace my radar: Wall-E, I am Legend, Resident Evil: Extiction, and of course Apocalypto. The set design and photography in T:S takes the Wall-E approach: all that is left in the world is the rusting crap left by a destroyed technical civilization. In mood and props it is closest to The Road Warrior, or the Fallout series of games.

So that's the first break with the first films. This is a fully immersive vision of the future. The second break: John Connor isn't really the main character. Sure, he gets a lot of screen time and dialog, but he is pretty much just reacting to events through the film, rather than driving them. Really, this is the story of Marcus Wright: a death row inmate in the early 2000's who donates his body to Cyberdyne at the insistence of a dying scientist. The choices Marcus makes are the central plot of the film.

The third break is that is really an episode rather than a complete story. In the first Terminator, the story came full circle, and in the second, Sarah and son thought they had stopped Judgement Day. Even the third had all the loose tied up by the end of the movie. T:S, on the other hand, is the story of something that happens within the larger story. These are the early years, where John Conner is moving towards leadership of the resistance but isn't there it. Skynet isn't fully up to speed yet either: the first T-800's are just starting to stalk menacingly off the assembly line. In many ways this is a more personal film simply because it can't yet have the final battle. Of course, in Fellowship of the Ring everyone knew that was the way it was set up, here it was more of a surprise.

So what I liked about T:S was: the inventiveness of the humans, the inventiveness of Skynet, the integration of special effects, and the attention to details of the Terminator universe. The humans don't give up faced with Terminator's, they do what people always do: fight or flight. I especially liked the Kyle Reese approach. What do you fight a Terminator with: anything you've got. Still Skynet was equally on top of things, using it's machines in clever ways and the overall attack plan had even Machivelli in it to garner my attention.

The special effects achieved that place where occasionally you forget it's an effect. Okay, not the giant people snatching robot, but after watching, the smaller things that I thought about and realized had to be special effects just registered as reality at the time, and that's a good thing. Finally, the attention to detail was immaculate. There were callbacks not just to the earlier three Terminator films, but Terminator 2 3D at Universal Studios and the first trailer to Terminator 2. I'm sure I missed many more references, but at least we got to find out how John Connor got that great scar he sported at the beginning of T2. This was a lovingly crafted film.

What I didn't like: the utter seriousness and lack of humor. If they had interjected any emotion other than anger or fear I would have felt more for the protagonist's plight.

This is a solid sci-fi film. Those looking for emotional catharsis should look elsewhere. Those looking for the best depiction yet of a future war between man and machine, this is your film.

Terminator Salvation: 4 out of 5 stars

Last Day in Denmark

On our last day, we headed to Århus, a city a bit to the southeast of Aalborg. They have the world's first open-air museum there, Den Gimle By, a collection of buildings that range from Renaissance times up to the early 1900's. (In fact, they are currently planning an extension up to the 1970's.)


They also have a collection of posters advertising other such museums, including Colonial Williamsburg and Sovereign Hill.

Århus itself is a very old city at over a thousand years old. We headed downtown to see the Cathedral, but it was closed for Sunday services. They did have an excellent photo exhibition sponsored by a group trying to raise money to slow climate change in the courtyard, though, so that was fun.

So that was it: a week of the top sights in Denmark! I want to thank Jesper Møller for inviting me to Aalborg in the first place, and Robert Wolpert for humoring me in the Viking Ship Museum and accompanying me on the trip. Safe travels!

To be or not to be

The next day we headed north to Kronborg Slot, in Helsingør. This Renaissance castle was the inspiration for the Danish castle of "Elsinore" in Shakespeare's Hamlet. It was built in order to successfully levy taxes on shipping entering the Baltic Sea, but remains a gorgeous sentinel by the sea.


The tour of the royal apartments covers about half of the castle, including the enormous ballroom and collection of tapestries that tell the history of Denmark. There is also an underground tour where you can view the casements underneath the castle. The chapel was one of the few things to survive an early fire, which meant the intricately carved and painted pews survived as well.

After a picnic on the grounds, we then headed southwest towards Roskilde and the Viking Ship Museum. Five ships that the Vikings sunk in a sound to protect the harbor have been retrieved here, in surprisingly complete condition.
They have rebuilt the ships as well, and experimental archeologists have sailed them as far as Ireland and back to learn more about how well they operated in northern Europe. But the most fun was the room were they keep the Viking outfits and weapons. Being a Viking is fun!

Under Copenhagen

Okay, so Copenhagen has had extremely bad luck with their royal castle. During the time of absolute monarchy, they built a lovely new castle: Christianborg Slot. It burned down. Undaunted, they built another. It burned down.

You've got to admire the pluck of a people who would choose to build it back a third time, but that's exactly what the Danes decided to do. And in doing so, they found a hidden treasure. While excavating for the third incarnation of Christianborg Slot, they found the ruins of the original fortress built by Bishop Absalon when he founded Copenhagen in the 12th century, as well as the later Copenhagen Castle built after the Hanseatic League decided to tear down most of Absalon's place.

You can go down on a wonderful tour below the current Christianborg Slot to see these ruins, in a very nicely put together museum that not only gives archeological insights into the ruins, but provides a timeline history of all the palaces built on the location.


Next we went above ground to see the current palace, at least the rooms set aside for royal receptions and the like. Since Christianborg Slot houses the Parliment, the judiciary, and the royals, it is enormous, and the tour is lots of fun. They do hand out baggies for your feet so the marble extra shiny, too.

For lunch we went to a place recommended to me by a friend and in the guide books, Ida Davidsen. The food is unbelievably good here. A favorite of Denmark is the open-faced sandwich, but the ones served here seemed to exist on a different plane from everything we'd tasted so far. We each had two--one seafood and one meat, and the combination of flavor was exhilarating to say the least. The chef walked us through the choices up at their counter, but I have a hunch anything we would have picked would have been heavenly. The best place we ate in Denmark, hands down.


Next was the (free!) Statens Museum for Kunst. Containing not only Danish works of art but paintings and sculpture from around the world, this is a museum full of works that I wish I had hours to study. Again, highly recommended!

Moving at a palacial pace

The next morning we started with a little more walking. First past the Little Mermaid by the water again, and then down to a victory monument.

But the big thing was Amalienborg Slot, the current royal residence. Fortunately, it consists of four palaces, so while one is home to Queen Margarethe II, another serves as a museum to the royal family that covers from the 1860's up to current times.


Next on the list was Frederick's Church, popularly known as Marmorkirken: the Marble Church. It's not hard to see why. The dome is visible from around the old town, and inside it is indeed something special. That effort to complete it (it took about 150 years owing to funding difficulties) paid off.

Finally we rode the tour bus some more and ended up at the eclectic Nationalmuseet. Sure they covered the Vikings, but they also had an extensive collection of ancient pottery, statues and mosiacs, and a great history of Denmark as a country told through artifacts of the time, right up to modern times.

Copenhagen

At last it was time to hit the big city, Copenhagen!

Copenhagen is a walkable city, in many ways similar to Paris. Both offer excellent and easy to use mass transport, both have world class museums and a fascinating history that draws you in at every corner.

So naturally, faced with the daunting task of unraveling Copenhagen in three days, I took the easy way out by getting tickets for the hop-on hop-off tour bus. This was actually a good idea, and a better one was buying the add-on ticket to make it a two-day, all four lines ticket. Of course, the line that I had initially bought, the "Mermaid" line, did hit most of the highlights, the other lines also have some cool stuff on them, especially when it is pouring down and you don't feel much like walking anyway.

But I get ahead of myself! The first day the sun was shining and it was a great day to see the statue that is inextricably linked to Copenhagen: The Little Mermaid. Isolated from shore by a few feet of water (cuts down on the "stealing her head" type of events, apparently,) she patiently sits and gazes outward from the harbor while (again like Paris) nearby vendors try to sell small copper replicas.

After finishing the Mermaid line of the bus, Robert and I were oriented, and headed off on a winding route through the Old Town towards treasure. Our first stop was the Rundataarn, or Round Tower, a lovely way to view the city. The distinguishing feature of the tower is that there is a wide (about 15 feet) ramp all the way to the top, so the inside is one continuous space.

Next up was Vor Frue Kirke, the cathedral of Copenhagen. An airy and spacious interior that caught the sunlight and spread it out over wonderful statues of the apostles made this an uplifting place. Turns out they were the work of Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, and I was to get to know his work very well over the next few days.

Finally we made the main event of the day: Rosenborg Slot. This started as a getaway for the king outside the city. Now of course it is smack in the middle of Copenhagen, but ended up being the royal residence for a number of centuries. In the mid 1800's the king decided to turn it over to become a museum, and so the interior covers the history of the monarchy up until that point. In the chambers below the castle lie something even more interesting: the Crown Jewels of Denmark. In fact, they have several sets and a wealth of treasure down there for viewing. Definitely the highlight of the day!

But, being only 4:00 in the afternoon, there was still plenty of day to go! First, we wandered over to Nyhavn, which two centuries ago would have been the place you didn't tell you Mom you'd been to. Today, it's pretty touristy, but that's because sipping a Carlsburg by the water and watching the people go by is so much fun.

For dinner we headed to the Hard Rock Cafe and I expanded my collection of T-shirts by one. There was two reasons for this: first, its harder to find a good burger in Denmark than you might think. Second, it was next to our final stop for the evening: Tivoli Gardens.

Tivoli goes back about a century and a half. Designed to keep the Copenhagen residents from rioting, today it has well tended grounds befitting its name, some very cool rides, and entertainment throughout the day. We listened to both the orchestra for a while and the Big Band music. There was also a Pantomime show, carnival games, and a vast array of restaurants for fine dining and snack shops for not so fine. The day ended with "Illuminations", a laser light show down by the fountain, and then we took the S-train back for the night. Whew!

Okay, so there's more pictures than I can fit into my entries at this point. For those wanting to see more, check out http://markhuber.shutterfly.com/.

"I will not waste chalk."

The next day found us searching for a church, and led to the most blatant error I've ever seen in an Eyewitness Travel Guide. Robert and I had located the village where the guide said the Fanefjord Church was located. However, after stopping in at a local bank to ask directions, a loan officer kindly informed me that in fact it was on an island on the other side of the water, and that the ferry could take me there.

Okay, so I've never had the Eyewitness Guide place a tourist site on the wrong island before. Undaunted we headed over there (taking the bridges) and it was worth the hunt.

You see, this church had two sets of frescos covering the interior. One from the 13th century, and another set from the 1500's. Both were then later whitewashed over, and only rediscovered in the 1930's. They are quite detailed and beautiful.


The second stop of the day was Møns Klint, graceful chalk cliffs that rise hundreds of feet above the sea. The wooden stairs up and down to the rocky beach let you know exactly how tall they are, as well. They have great trails around the area, and it is one of the those very rare natural phenomena that are just breathtaking up close.

Monday, Monday

So after visiting Legoland, we stayed the night in Odense. I hadn't realized when booking the hotel, but Odense is the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen.

So you know the next morning I was all like: "Let's go see where Hans Christian Andersen was born!". Ah the adventurous life of the vacationer!

Except of course, it was Monday. And in a cruel twist of fate, Hans Christian Andersen's birthplace (and museum!) was closed Monday's until June. Okay, maybe not as cruel a twist of fate as happened to many of the characters in his stories, but it was sad nonetheless.

Still, downtown Odense also has the Saint Canute's Cathedral which is totally cool. Besides the gorgous interior and incredibly old and detailed alterpiece, it has the skeletal remains of Saint Canute and his brother Benedict are out in the open for visitors. I have to admit, this was a first for me.


After leaving Odense, we headed for the grounds of Egeskov Slot. The castle itself serves as a museum, but their are also a variety of other museums around the grounds. A car museum, motorcycle, even one dedicated to the private company Falck that runs much of the rescue operations in Denmark.

In addition, there is a walk among the tree tops, and several hedge mazes. Winding fun!

Legoland

I had a lot of great toys growing up. My Steve Austin action figure went on many an adventure. And my Big Wheel had a lot of miles on it.

But the best toy of all were my Legos. With them I could build pretty much anything, although with the space themed ones that were my favorite space ships and star bases ruled the day. Over time pieces got misplaced or lost, and so the ships started to look more and more like they were products of a deranged junkyard--a mishmash of different ships, but with that distinct lego look.

So when I got a chance to go to the first Legoland in Billund, Denmark (they celebrated their 40th anniversary last year), you can believe I took it!

The best part was the model garden. Some, like Neuschwanstein Castle and the Golden Pavilion, I have already visited. Others, like Nyhavn and Amalienborg Slot, I planned to visit this trip. In all cases, the models are spectacular, and worth the price of admission alone.

The rides are geared towards a younger crowd, except for one. At the far end of the park is a build-your-own-roller-coaster ride. You construct a ride by piecing together multiple elements, like flip upside down or side to side. The ride is downloaded onto a smart card. When you get to the front, you give the smart card to the operator. The ride itself is a carriage attached to an arm that moves around at high speed. Very fun!

They don't sell the ships I remember when I was young anymore, mostly the space legos are used in conjunction with the Star Wars license today. Still, I was able to buy a vintage set of lego people--including my favorite little lego guy with his planet logo and space helmet. He'll be flying again soon.

It's a zoo out there

Saturday, and the Aalborg Carnival had begun! Robert and I had noticed the preparations of some of our neighbors--which mainly involved hauling massive numbers of cases of beer up to their apartment.

When morning dawned, the streets outside looking at 9:00 am much like Franklin Street in Chapel Hill at 9:00 pm. Most were in costume, and headed out to be part of the parade. Since both of us had seen that sort of thing before, we were headed in a different direction--towards the Aalborg Zoo. As we got farther from the site of the parade, costumes became less common, but there were still a steady stream of people headed towards the center of town.

Until we got close to the Zoo, and discovered another group of people streaming in to see the animals. It was a great day to be at the zoo, sunny and the forecast had very little rain in it. This is a relatively compact zoo, but the African animals have quite a bit of room, and the feedings throughout the day give a nice way to learn more about the animals. The polar bear and her cub win the cuteness award, though, for their carefree play with a tire and ball both above and below the water.

Vikings and Stilts

Well, Robert's and my last two days in Aalborg were exciting, to say the least! After finishing up the draft of the paper Friday morning, we took the bus out to a Viking cemetery, now also the home of a really good museum detailing Danish history from prehistory up to medieval times. It's called Lindholm Høje, and has an older part showcasing objects retrieved from the gravesites, while the new part has a very accessible introduction (in both Danish and English) to the history of the area.


After satisfying our yen for knowledge, we headed back toward the old center of the city, and discovered, to our delight, a parade about to start! Turns out that this is the weekend of the Karnival Aalborg, and we were witnessing the "Battle of the Bands", where carnival groups from around the world have been invited to compete for a prize. Before their competition, they have a 40 minute or so parade so that everyone can see what they've got to flaunt. The tallest were the stiltwalkers from Belgium, but my favorite were the animals--giraffes mobile enough to interact with the crowd, and a beautiful diaphanous elephant.

We finished the day at an authentic Danish Chinese Buffet. Yummy!

Finishing up

So this has been a really great week for research. My talk went very well (and is now up on my website here.) Robert and Jesper and I believe that we have finished up the main details of the first paper together that all three of us were working on here in Aalborg, and the city itself is delightful. The Prinsens Hotel in Aalborg where we are staying is very close to the old city area, and (as usual in Europe) the city transportation is both fast and easy to use.

We ate at the Stygge Krumpen restaurants on Wednesday, where I had some great seafood. On Thursday Jesper had us over to his place in a small town outside the city, and we rode the train back to our hotel. Very convenient that no one was driving--as that way we could celebrate our research success properly!

Denmark

I flew in to Denmark on Sunday, together with my coauthor and collaborator Robert Wolpert, into the town of Aalborg. I gave my talk at the University of Aalborg today, but on Monday and Tuesday I was in Skagen on the north coast, where my host Jesper Møller has a house.

He showed us around in the morning before we got to work, and we visited an intriguing piece of the coastline where the oceans Skagerrak and Kattegat collide. There are two sets of waves moving in different directions colliding just a few meters off the shoreline. Very cool. (That's Jesper in the background of the picture below--he had wading boots, Robert and I did not!)


Yesterday we also saw the largest sand dune in Denmark, the Råbjerg Mile, a nice climb. Today we were at the University, meeting people and each of us gave a talk. The weather's been relatively kind to us, with the occasional rain storm, but also a lot of sun. Here's hoping that continues!

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Bleh.

Ok, sure, there are some nice action scenes in here, but they are wrapped around a plot that we already knew. Most of Wolverine's (movie) history comes from X-Men 2 and the taunts of Colonel Stryker. Origins fails to deliver much more in the way of background. Sure, it fills in the fine details of why Wolverine "volunteered" for the Weapon X program, but did anyone really think Wolverine entered because Stryker was such an upstanding guy?

No new characterization and no important revelations make this movie a nonstarter. Still the continuity was much better thought out then some other prequels (cough *Star Wars* cough) I could name.

In the end, the movie fails mainly because there is too much in it. There are too many mutants to give any one fight the attention it deserves, the outcome of each fight is predetermined early by the needs of the plot, and despite the fact that our hero is onscreen most of the time, we come away knowing very little more about Wolverine than when we started.

2 out of 5 stars

To boldly go

The new Star Trek move is out, and it is glorious!

I'm one of those fanboys who was full of misgivings about the new Star Trek. J.J. Abrams is one of my favorite entertainers: Alias slowly sunk under the weight of its mythos, but Lost has thrived even as the complexity grew. And Mission Impossible III gave me hope: it is the only one of the series that seems even tangentially related to the original ethos of its show.

Fortunately, Abrams has managed to capture the essence of the original Star Trek here. While the exterior of the Enterprise and interior are quite different from the original series, the only thing that really matters--the characters, are alive and well.

This isn't simple mimicry of the original actors, although a few choice maneuvers such as Kirk's "I'm thinking in my chair" command posture and Spock's raised left eyebrow have been brought along for the ride. More, it's an acknowledgment of the the fact that the Star Trek universe is the ultimate argument for multiculturalism. Kirk's bravado, Spock's logic, even Bones' grumpiness and Scotty's enthusiasm are by themselves not up to the task of solving anything. But put them together, and a team capable of saving the universe emerges.

Star Trek has always walked a fine line tackling bold topics. One of the funniest episodes of the original series, "The Trouble with Tribbles" was a thinly disguised allegory for Superpower politics in the developing world. Wrapping humor around serious plot lines is not easy, but is accomplished with skill in this newest film.

4 1/2 out of 5 stars

Day 6 in Scotland

My last day as a tourist I decided to go for the ocean. Specifically, I decided to take the ferry to the Isle of Bute. This was a great little trip--despite the wind that was kicking up on the top deck. (I think it was just me and a guy walking his dog up there--the rest of the ferrygoers had more sense.)

The island itself is compact, and consists of quite a few hotels with an ocean view along a winding road. But I was here to check out another castle within walking distance of the ferry landing: Rothesay castle. Rothesay is about 800 years old and a classic. Moat, check. Round towers at the corner, check. Imposing square gatehouse tower with drawbridge, check. Attacked by Vikings, check, check.

There's no audio tour, but some of the rooms inside have been turned into a museum, and there was more than enough information inside to get a sense of the history. This was built by the Steward to the king. The family name morphed to Stewart over the ages, and later became the Stewart line of kings. It was the lynchpin in the defense of Western Scotland against the Norse in the 13th century, and later on saw action during the Scottish Wars of Independence.

After seeing the castle and a chapel dating back to the first millenium, I returned on the ferry to the mainland. I drove south along the coast then to my final stop of the trip, Culzean Castle. Unfortunately, weather had caused some damage, and the castle was closed for the day. Still, there were great views of the ocean from the ramparts.

This was a much different castle than Rothesay. Culzean was built in the 1700's and was an extension of a manor house. So it lacked the primary focus on defense, and concentrated more on looking pretty. Which I have to say, it is lovely, even as the rain clouds rolled in and out.

That was my trip to Scotland! It's a great place-full of history and ruins, as well as breathtaking scenery. Plus you can drive from one end to the other in a day or two! Next stop, Denmark...

Day 5 in Scotland

The next day I took the bus back to the airport (very cheap from Ediburgh--about six pounds) and rented another car. This time I was heading to the lowlands, still hilly, but with a markedly different character than the area around Loch Ness.

First stop was Rosslyn Chapel, just south of Ediburgh. This is a small chapel covered with intricate carvings, many of which are linked to symbols from the Knights Templar. Very few tourist attractions can claim to have been transformed by a book. As the ending for the search for the Holy Grail in The Da Vinci Code, Rosslyn has become a bustling little landmark. The good news (according to the tour guide) is that they are five years ahead of their fundraising schedule due to the order of magnitude jump in visitors. The bad news is that the limestone carvings are in danger: unless the swell in tourists subsides, they might even have to limit the number of people coming into the chapel each year.

While heading to the south, I stopped at the Loch o' the Lowes to have some lunch. The area is far less green that the lochs farther north, but still a nice place to take a walk and admire the everpresent flocks of sheep.

The end of the day found me in the south of the country at Caerlaverock Castle. This castle dates back to the 13th century, and still has a water filled moat. On the grounds is also a working trebuchet. The castle belonged to a Catholic family, the Maxwells. Being on the border with England, it saw quite a bit of action, finally being abandoned in the 1600's after Protestant forces destroyed the south wall.

If touring the history of Scotland has taught me anything, it's an appreciation for the separation of church and state and the simple idea that multiple religions can exist peaceably in the same culture. For me that ranks pretty high on the list of good ideas that I wish would catch on worldwide.