Gunfight at the OK Corral

1957, classic Western.  Some how I got thru the 50's without seeing it in theaters.  So while surfing Netflix for something to watch, I clicked on it.  It's got Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday.  Douglas does the gambler/gunfighter role beautifully.  His suits are well tailored and pressed, he drinks too much, he mistreats his long suffering mistress.  Lancaster's role is plainer, he is just the principled lawman.
   Then it has DeForrest Kelly in a bit part. He isn't on screen very long before a Clanton shoots him dead. And we have Dennis Hopper as the youngest Clanton brother.  Burt Lancaster tries to talk him into giving over his gun, but he makes a sudden move and Kirk Douglas shoots him dead.  Both of these guys will have much better roles in coming years.
  It's long.  2 1/2 hours.  And somehow in all that screen time, the director fails to really show why the Earps, lawmen all,  band together to shoot down the Clantons.  Yes, the Clantons shoot some friends, and relatives of Wyatt's but the film doesn't really blacken the Clanton's rep and it doesn't really show why high principled Wyatt Earp gets into extra judicial killings.  And there are some scenes missing.  After Morgan Earp gets gunned down in the street, we don't see the funeral, with weeping friends and relatives, and we don't see Wyatt Earp with tears running down his cheeks swearing eternal vengeance on the Clantons.  In short, the director doesn't show motives and emotions behind the central conflict.
    Sets and costumes were first rate, nice score, a theme song and all.  The various western towns all had one helova lotta giant cactus growing on every street corner.  But now that I've seen, I can say I didn't really miss much by not seeing it in the '50s. 

Green Christmas

Two days ago I had a foot of new snow on the front lawn.  Today it's green grass (marred by snow plow scars) again.  Yesterday was terrible, rained all day, temperature right at the freezing point.  It made walking treacherous.  Today it's chilled down to 20.  Skiing at Cannon has suffered.  Coming back thru the Notch you could see a lotta grass coming up in the middle of the trails. 
  Forecast is for a hard freeze, down below zero, tonight.

Innumeracy on NHPR

NHPR ran a horrible story this morning.  About some frightful disease with a strange name (Crap A?) that I had never heard of before.  This disease causes dementia, blindness and death  It can be detected in infancy by some fancy bloodwork, and New York state now requires all newborns to be screened for this disease.  Fortunately the disease is very rare.  Unfortunately the test has a high rate of false positives, and the treatment is heroic, dangerous, and not very effective.  A case could be made that running these tests causes untold misery and suffering to the parents of the false positives, and does not save very many children, since many of them die under treatment.
   Saddest of all,  NHPR failed to report any of the numbers that would enable voters to reach a sound conclusion.  Such as number of newborns tested, number of true cases detected, number of false positive cases, number of children who survived treatment.  Numbers.  Newsies seldom report numbers because most of 'em have to take their shoes off the count higher than ten.

The Economist waxes lyrical over Bowhunting

This is the Christmas edition of the Economist, extra thick with lots of punditry.  They had a three page article on the joys of  bowhunting  in America.  They quoted Teddy Roosevelt, they talked about a hunting trip in Wisconsin, about legalizing cross bows.  Hunting is good for the ecology, helps cull excess deer, all sorts of good stuff. 
   But only if done with a bow.  Using a gun is unsportsmanly, crass, and bad for the environment.  Only the archer is a pure hunter.   I suppose this represents the anti gun opinions of the Economist. 

Fossil Fuels make the world greener

Click here to watch the original lecture on U Tube.    And if the link doesn't work you can just go here:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-nsU_DaIZE

Mr. Ridley's talk  outlines satellite observations of the whole earth showing the world is showing more green and less brown to the satellite cameras.  The increase in atmospheric CO2 is stimulating plant growth world wide.  And advances in agriculture are reducing the amount of land farmed, with  abandoned farms going back to woodland.  It's an interesting talk, showing things getting better and better, as opposed to the greenie legend of planetary desertification.  

Mars is hot

Radioactive that is.  Actually it's not uranium or thorium in the red sands of Mars, its cosmic radiation from deep space.  On Earth the magnetic field and the atmosphere shields us from it.  Out in interplanetary space it's more intense.  Mars has no magnetic field, so cosmic radiation on the surface of Mars is as bad as it is in space. 
  NASA using data from the Curiosity rover, found that astronauts on a 500 day round trip to Mars, would absorb a dose of one whole Sievert of radiation.  That's a lot.  A Sievert is a Euro unit invented in the 1980's and it's big.  One Sievert is 100 REM, the more usual US unit of radiation.  
   US safety standards call for not more than 5 REM per year for civilian workers.  NASA is more daring and permits the Shuttle astronauts to absorb 25 REM  in one shuttle trip.
   If memory serves, 300-400 REM is the 50% lethal dose, half the people exposed to that level of radiation die within weeks.  100 REM for a trip to Mars is scarily close.  NASA estimates that such a dose would increase the risk of cancer over a lifetime by 5%.  That sounds optimistic to me.
   However, I expect no shortage of volunteers to fly to Mars regardless of risk.  
   Shielding a space craft with lead probably does not work, the required shielding would weigh so much the space craft couldn't get off the ground.  An ingenious design might put the crew compartment in the middle, surrounded by the fuel tanks.  This might work on the way out, but on the way back with empty tanks, not so good.   Or the space craft might shield itself with a powerful magnetic field, created by neodymium super magnets, or a super conducting coil of wire.  The Earth's magnetic field isn't all that strong at the surface, but it is very deep.  My electromagnetic field theory is no longer strong enough to calculate  just how strong a magnet would be needed to give the same shielding effect as the Earth's field, but the number is computable.
      

NYPD, a force in international relations

Two years ago, NYPD arrested Dominique Strauss Kahn, a frenchman serving as chief of IMF, and a potential candidate for president of France.  The charges were later dropped, but that was the end of Strauss Kahn.  He resigned his IMF post and never ran for president of France.  In fact nobody has heard anything from him since.  Scratch one Frog.
  Yesterday they arrested a female Indian diplomat, and strip searched her.  Charges are obscure, by have something to do with her relationship, or wages or visa for a servant.  So much for diplomatic immunity.  All of India is hopping mad, threatening to storm the American embassy, break diplomatic relations, join the Russians, anything.  Scratch one promising international relationship. 
   NYPD is becoming a real international mover and shaker. 
   And every foreign tourist must be thinking about NOT visiting NYC.