Posts Made By: jess tauber

Looks like I dropped my first post about using green tektites for telescope optics into the wrong meteor-x (x=s or ites) forum. Ooops. Now I know how the dinosaur killer must have felt! Yucatan indeed!

OK let me try again- are there any species of green impact glasses out there that when melted and then annealed won't convert to something like a gummy worm? Or could different impact glasses be mixed to give the desired qualities for a reflector mirror (and be a) readily available and b) inexpensive enough to make the project doable without being the founder of Microsoft)?

Jess Tauber

Aside from people dressed in funny clothes and weird makeup, there was this movie from the 50's whose name I don't remember, where the alien was from Venus, had contacted a human who was helping him find his way here- but the guy wanted to take over using these little bat things that stuck antennae into your neck and allowed him to control you.

In the last moments of the movie the alien comes out of his cave and looks like an inverted rutabaga with old Wolfman teeth sticking up from his lower jaw.

Kinda like the evil twin of Mr. Potato Head.

Jess Tauber

See http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/01/15/pope.protest/

The more things change, the more they stay the same. With the 400th anniversary of the first astronomical use of the telescope, *could* things get any more interesting? Isn't this guy infallible?

Galileo must be spinning in his grave, in a slightly elliptical motion.... 8)

Jess Tauber

See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080115/sc_nm/nano_black_dc

Jess Tauber

Doesn't have to be TV or movies. My vote is for the Shrike, and his Tree of Pain

Jess Tauber

Most- Hitchhiker's Guide- to make way for a road, though its not *really* an invasion per se. Least- 'To Serve Man'- though the linguistic angle was interesting.

Jess Tauber

Ok, so the alien mother ship is 550km in diameter (length, height?) and one quarter the mass of the Moon. And our little nuke blows it to (will) smithereens? Unless there was some sort of backfire as in the attack on the 15 mile diameter destroyers, I don't think so. Maybe it would blow a hole in it, but complete destruction? What are the aliens carrying, nitroglycerine?

And this ship is in close orbit around Earth- wouldn't it affect tides? We blow it up, and the pieces start raining down. Aside from the increase in gravity here on the planet, wouldn't all that stuff increase the temperature of the atmosphere to char-broil? The oceans would vaporize.

The burning up of the destroyers doesn't help global warming either- or weather patterns, or local geological isostasy. It as also convenient that the ship over Area 51 didn't just settle there (how would you dig yourself out, assuming the fires didn't fuse the local rocks?). And don't get me started on air pollution!

When Captain Hillis and David Levinson fly into the mother ship the latter says 'Oh my God'- why? All the audience gets to see is a bunch of fog and lighted twisted pillars all over the place- a curiosity no doubt but why the comment? The hornet-nest shaped military complex/shipyard is much more interesting.

In the movie there are two very quick scenes (one or two seconds) that show the alien's own control room, very similar to what humans are using in Area 51- personal screens and big ones on the walls, technical staff all about. It would have been interesting to see more of all this- but we are left mostly in the dark about their social organization and way of life. In another scene when the missile is released, it plows through the complex and unless you catch it from the corner of your eye, you'll miss that it actually knocks one of the aliens over (maybe one of the leaders) on its way toward where it finally counts down to zero. Attempted humor? Too short to catch, though.

And all the aliens do is grunt and groan (how, without vocal cords, though, is a mystery)- there is no subtitling so we have to infer what they mean, but based on repeated motifs in the movie over different characters (such as 'kinda got hung up back there') one may imagine that the last alien is saying something similar to Harvey Firestein's last words 'Oh, c..p' (or variants depending on editing for different audiences).

When various personnel yelled 'fire at will, fire at will' I always had in the back of my mind visual imagery of Will Smith getting shot. Same feeling every time I saw Will Riker (or Will Wheaton) on STTNG. Darn- nobody ever used it in a plot- woulda been funny as heck.

After the President says 'Let's nuke 'em' the plane that releases the missile near Houston visibly veers off to the left, which is interesting because the radar at Area 51 clearly shows it going to the RIGHT. No wonder the missile had no effect.

Finally, the timing of the aliens arrival and their initial coordinated attack still has me scratching my head after 11 years- it just doesn't mesh day and night scenes too well here- its July and dusk is pretty late, but the alien countdown is going to end in 6 or 7 hours??? Then in the hills over L.A. where the cropduster lives its night too! Not to mention that this whole cockamamie sequence has the President's wife in a hotel with sunlight streaming through the windows AFTER the alien destroyer hovers overhead for 7 miles in every direction.

Oh, well- the movie made a bundle, but all their plans for sequels fell through. AND WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SMELL????!!!!

Jess Tauber

Anyone see the reports about claims that your liberal or conservative comes to his/her conclusions not through careful thought or consideration, but through inborn personality characters?

I caught this (genetically induced) opinion: http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20080211/cm_huffpost/085898

It has me thinking that if valid, then we really need to divide the planet in two and build a wall- conservatives would grumble about the liberal side and try to take over....

Jess Tauber

Or at least for jawed vertebrates....

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080211172609.htm

When I saw this photo in the article the first thing I thought of was caroling. All they need are little books and cold weather outfits, including scarf, to complete the picture.

We FISH you a Merry Christmas- hope this hits the right (noto)chord.

Jess Tauber

I know about designs that send the photons flying off to the side- what I want to hear about is whether any ATMs have ever made a double folded (otherwise classic Cass or Gregorian- that is, with an in-line tertiary mirror that sends light back through a hole in the primary. How would such a thing affect detail of images?

Can this even be done?

Thanks,
Jess Tauber