Deserts

Dune | Official Main Trailer
Warner Bros. Pictures

I watched the movie Dune this week. This is the first of the pair of recent movies. I've read the book and I've seen an earlier movie version, but I'm watching this movie and it's nothing like I remember. Oh, I remember some of the characters, but I remember this story being a science fiction thriller, and this movie wasn't that at all. This time the thing that struck me is that the Atreides family packs up their entire company, including their army and their families and all their associated baggage and moves to the most hostile planet in the universe. Okay, on an absolute scale it's not all that hostile, it's got gravity similar to Earth and breathable air, but when you look at it using a human scale, the place is inimical to human life. It's covered with sand. The sun will fry you, the sandstorms will strip the flesh from your bones, and if that's not enough there are giant worms that will swallow you whole. Hell might be a better name for this planet than Arrakis. You would have to be a very loyal follower of the Emperor to accept an appointment to Dune.

But you think about it for a minute and Dune really sounds a whole lot Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Very hot, unpleasant places covered with sand, governed by tyrants, but we still have people willing to pack up everything and move there, and the reason is the same: money. On Dune, it's the spice. In the Mideast, it's oil.

Baiken Uranium Mine in Kazakhstan

Today I came across a story about how Kazakstan is a world leader in the uranium mining business. Above we have a picture of one of their uranium mines. Looks like a nice place with lots of green. On the edge of a desert, but still pretty nice. Then I look on the map:

Baiken Uranium Mine in Kazakhstan

and I see it's surrounded by a desert. Just how big is that desert? Big:

Baiken Uranium Mine in Kazakhstan

The area shown is about 900 miles across, so the mine is at the edge of the desert. The Caspian Sea is at the left hand side of the map and what used to be the Aral Sea is the greenish-white blob near the top center. The Baikonur Cosmodrome is about half way between the mine and the Aral Sea.

What I didn't find is whether the Kazatomprom (the Kazakhstan uranimum mining operation) is enriching uranium, which is what you need to do if you want to use the uranium for anything besides being dense. This led me to Wikipedia's page about Enriched uranium, which was a real eye-opener. Seems the whiz kids have busy cooking up any number of techniques for enriching uranium. There is gaseous diffusion that was used at Oak Ridge during WW2. Then we have second generation gaseous diffusion that uses high speed centrifuges that is many times more efficient. This is the one Iran was using when somebody (Israel?) hacked their centrifuges and caused them to speed up to the point where they destroyed themselves. And that's just the start. People are working on plethora of techniques involving chemistry, lasers and microstructures.

I've written several other posts about Dune over the years.

Amazon Zombies from Dune

Reading about the movie Dune, I come across Jodorowsky, who tried to make the movie, but ended up with a 9 hour screenplay before his effort collapsed. However, his effort has been credited with the inspiration for a whole bunch of Sci-Fi movies that followed. Personally, I think they ought to consider making it a mini-series. The thing is complicated enough that it might benefit from the extended format.


Jodorowsky's Dune (2014) - HD Trailer
     Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I find a movie called Jodorowsky's Dune. It's not a movie movie, it's a documentary about Jodorowsky's effort to make the movie, and some people recommend it. Can I see it? Netflix doesn't have it, but Amazon does. Amazon will sell you a digital copy for $10 or $15, which means that once you have purchased it you can stream it from their server anytime you want, and as many times as you want. Well, that's very nice, but I don't really want to buy it. We have a couple hundred DVD's here that I have watched once, and will probably never watch again. Is there any way to just rent it? Doesn't appear to be, but maybe that option will appear when I click the purchase button. Click, boom, you are now the proud owner of a Jodorowsky's Dune. Wait! No, cancel that! Sorry, this order cannot be cancelled as you have already started watching it. What? No, I haven't, you stupid machine. All I have it this stupid order page.
    I poke around a bit trying to find a number to call and a message pops up telling me this order has been denied because of a problem with my credit card. Well, thank heaven for having a little grit in the gears. Still, I call, or they call me, and the nice person I talk to tell's me no worries, the order is dead, it was denied, and that was that. It is not going to come back to life when you fix the credit card problem. Good.
    Then this morning I get an email from Amazon:

Amazon.com
4:01 PM (12 hours ago)
to me
Hi Charles C Pergiel,

Though your order has already been delivered, we couldn’t charge your account for your order (#D01-4627784-6900136), due to a problem with the payment method you provided.
We may attempt to reprocess payment for your order in a few days using the payment method you provided.

. . . blah, blah, blah . . .

If we don't receive payment from you within the next 30 day(s), your order will be cancelled.

. . . etc, etc, etc . . .

Just what I need a Zombie order. THIS DOES NOT INSPIRE CONFIDENCE.

Update April 2016. Replace Amazon links.

Science Fiction Plot Device

Dune - The Art of Navigation
I started watching this clip and this idea popped into my head. Imagine we have a civilization that has learned how to travel between stars. They have giant spaceships and mysterious techniques, but it takes all their talent and energy and consumes all their interest in making these trips happen. Their work is so involved and so esoteric that they have no time to bother with planetary concerns, but planet dwellers want to travel to other planets, which are necessarily located near other stars, which is problematic for them, since they don't have the means of executing the trip. So the planet dwellers pay the star travelers for transportation. Or maybe that's just what Dune is all about.


DUNE SPECIAL EDITION : Showreel March 2010
Since we're talking about Dune... seems other people have some interest in the film.

Ornithopters

An ornithopter is a machine that flies by flapping its wings. The concept has been around for a long time, but no one has had much success, as witnessed by these two samples. We start small, bird size, since that is what we are imitating.

Ornithopter - Rubber Band Wing Flapping Flying Machine
Here is a much bigger one, about a hundred times bigger.


World's First Human-Powered Ornithopter
Here's someone's Sci-Fi fantasy. Don't quite see how this could work being as all the weight is at one end and all the flapping is at the other, but we are talking fantasy here, so for a movie, sure, go on ahead.


DUNE "Spotter" Ornithopter - Animation Test
In the Science Fiction Novel Dune, Ornithopters are the primary technical means for getting around on the planet Arrakis. Descriptions are brief. I found some drawings that give a good portrayal of what one might look like. There seem to be several different schools of thought. There are the ones that are unbalanced or have tiny wings, too tiny to do any good. I call these Type B. Then there are the rigid looking ones, they look like they are made of Legos. Some of them are. Lastly we have the birds and the bugs, the only ones that look to me like they could work. Here's a couple of samples.

Ornithopter for “Jodorowsky’s Dune”

Ornithopter Concept

Dune ornithopter concept, Rainer Nowak

I can see how having wings that can be manipulated could be very useful, especially when taking off or landing. If a couple of good beats of your wings could get you a few feet off the ground like a bird, that might be enough that your jet engines could launch you into forward flight without needing any kind of runway.  And if you could swivel your wings so they could act as airbrakes, like a bird coming in for a landing, you could likewise land without needing a runway. In short, you could operate like a helicopter but without having to power your wings all the time. In order to build such a craft that could carry any kind of real world weight, those wings would need to be very strong, and I don't think we have any materials that are up to the task. We're not even going to talk about what kind of very powerful but very light weight machine you could use to drive them.

Dune

Stilgar
Illustration by Sam Weber for Folio Society’s 50th anniversary edition of Frank Herbert’s Dune.

Heavy Metal has several spectacular paintings on the net. The Folio Society is selling fancy copy of the book, complete with all the pics .

It's been a long time since I read Dune, so long that I don't remember the character's names, not even Stilgar, but I remember a great many bits and pieces of it. I also remember it was really long and parts of were kind of dull and boring. I think we have a copy lying around here somewhere. I may have to pick it up and give it a go.

Dune

Dune (2/9) Movie CLIP - Shield Practice (1984) HD I found these shields the most interesting bit of technology in the movie.
I just found out that David Lynch directed Dune. Then I pull up this clip and who's the bald dude? None other than Captain Picard. Who else was in this film? Perusing the IMDB listing I picked out the ones I recognized.

• Linda Hunt - Shadout Mapes 
• Patrick Stewart - Gurney Halleck 
• Sting - Feyd Rautha 
• Dean Stockwell - Doctor Wellington Yueh 
• Max Von Sydow - Doctor Kynes 
• David Lynch - Spice Worker (uncredited)

So David not only directed it, he was also in it. I've seen several of his movies:

•  2006 Inland Empire - Worst movie in the world
•  2001 Mulholland Drive - Good & Weird
•  1986 Blue Velvet - Excellent
•  1980 The Elephant Man -  Good but unpleasant

He's most famous for Twin Peaks and Eraserhead, neither of which I've seen.

Post Hip Obscurity / Quote of the Day

From The Oregonian, Tuesday, April 28th, 1942, via Scott. Caption:

The Oregon Bushwhackers were practicing up Monday night, that practicing being trigger snap for invading Jap. The defense volunteer organization will apply for induction into the state guard. Maynard Cole, left, president of the organization; figures that Zenas Meyer; right, is mighty handy with rifle. Meyer spent nine years in taking pot shots at the varmints in the Colorado mountains. He now classifies any Jap as a varmint. Story on page 13.

Class, for today's lesson compare and contrast the above paragraph with this scene from Three Kings,

[Conrad retrieved a map from an Iraqi's soldier's butt] 
Sgt. Troy Barlow: Conrad, you've washed your hands like ten times. 
Conrad Vig: Lord knows what kind of vermin live in the butt of a dune coon. 
Chief Elgin: Why do you let this cracker hang around with you, man? 
Sgt. Troy Barlow: He's all right, man. He's from a group home in Dallas. He's got no high school. 
Conrad Vig: Don't tell people that. 
Chief Elgin: I don't care if he's from Johannesburg. I don't want to hear "dune coon" or "sand nigger" from him or anybody else. 
Conrad Vig: Captain uses those terms. 
Sgt. Troy Barlow: That's not the point, Conrad. The point is that "towelhead" and "camel jockey" are perfectly good substitutes. 
Chief Elgin: Exactly! 

Where:
  Mark Wahlberg ... Troy Barlow
  Ice Cube          ... Chief Elgin
  Spike Jonze ... Conrad Vig

Family

Dune

I've been reading Dune for last couple of weeks and it's pretty great. It must be, I am nearly finished with it, unlike the stack of books on my table that I haven't finished.

Anyway, I am nearing the end of this 500 page Science Fiction thriller when I encounter this bit of dialog between Paul, the hero, Jessica, his mother, and Chani, his wife.

In that instant, she [Jessica] knew.
"You drank the sacred water!" she blurted.
"One drop of it," Paul said. "So small . . . one drop."
"How could you do such a foolish thing?" she demanded.
"He is your son," Chani said.
Jessica glared at her.

I howled. I dunno, maybe you had to be there.

I read the book once before, likely 50 years ago when it was new. I remember quite a bit of the story, but then I also saw the movie, so many of my memories are visual ones from the film. The only thing I am sure I remember from the book is the evil Baron unplugging the heartplug of one of his minions,  but like I said, I am almost done with the book and there has been no mention of any heartplugs, which means I must have got it from the movie. So much for eyewitness testimony.

The copy I am reading is the 50th Anniversary Edition (paperback). The closest thing available from Amazon is the 40th Anniversary Edition. Odd, don't you think?

Heart Plug

Remember the Jarvik artificial heart? It worked off of compressed air and required that the patient/victim be hooked up to this big noisy machine. That was back when everyone thought that a pulse was a requirement. Surely a body that has been evolving for zillions of years would have gotten used to having a pulse and would even require it for some unknown function. Maybe we still do, but whatever function it serves, besides pumping your blood around has become less obvious since the advent of the turbo-encabulator artificial heart (the link goes to a really good Popular Science story).

Most of the mechanical pumps we use everyday are rotary pumps. They have an impeller, or propeller or something that sits on the end of the shaft of an electric motor and spins at high speed (thousands of revolutions per minute (RPM)). There might be pulsations in the fluid being pumped due to the impact of a blade of the impeller, but they are minuscule in amplitude and much higher in frequency than the kind of pulsations you get from any kind of reciprocating pump, or a biological heart.

Now there is an artificial heart in development that has more in common with everyday rotary pumps and not much in common with a heart. There were two concerns about using a rotary pump. One is the lack of a pulse, and the other is damage to the blood cells caused by the blades whirling around. Turns out neither one seems to be much of an issue.

This new, and so far experimental, heart requires power, but it only needs a little electricity and that can easily be supplied by a battery similar to one from a laptop computer. It's small enough you can carry it around with you.

Now we're getting into the realm of science fiction. This reminds me of Dune where the bad guy had heart plugs installed in all his minions. If one of his people displeased his, the baddy could kill him by simply pulling his plug. Of course, we have lot's of ways to kill people, and some of them aren't any more difficult than flipping a switch. Pulling the plug, I dunno, that just seems kind of slippery to me.

From the PopSci story:

"As many as five million Americans suffer some form of heart failure, but only about 2,000 hearts a year become available for transplant."

I kind of doubt that all five million are candidates for an artificial heart, but there is certainly a market for thousands per year.

Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey

Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey

This is volume 4 of a series. I read the first three and they were pretty good, but I had a problem with this one. We have a space expedition, and on this expedition we have a security chief, and I don't think I have ever taken a dislike to anyone faster or with less evidence. I got about half way through this book and I'm wondering why doesn't somebody just shoot this guy already? He is just loathsome. It got so bad I had to put the book down.
    A couple of months ago I started using the treadmill at The Zoo. That worked okay for a bit but then one day I come in and they are all occupied, so I look around for something else to do and notice that a recumbent exercise bike is available. I 've been using it ever since.
    Exercise machines like treadmills and bicycles are inherently boring. All this work and you are still stuck in the same place. Many people use music to combat this, but that requires earphones of some sort, some kind of magic box to hold your tunes, and a bunch of tunes to listen to. The first two are simple mechanical problems. Compiling a list of tunes would be a bit of a chore for me. Make that dang near impossible. I just don't see it happening.
     So I read. Reading while cycling takes a bit of concentration, but it seems to be working okay for me, and it doesn't have to be a great book, even medium books are tolerable in this environment. So a couple of weeks ago I picked up Cibola Burn and resumed reading it.
     Security Chief Murtry isn't any less loathsome now, but he doesn't get as much of my attention since I have to keep pushing on these pedals and so he is not as annoying. The worst part of this is that for most of the book Murtry isn't doing anything wrong. He's the security chief and he's charged with the safety of a group of people. There are other people in the arena and some of them are not playing very nice, so Murtry has reason for his hard line attitude. What amazed me, and still does, is that it didn't take very many words to make me hate Murtry. What does that say about the reports we get from mass media, AKA 'the news'?
    Towards the end of the book there is a big fight scene. It reads like a script for an action-thriller movie. We've got the good-guy / hero embarking on a perilous journey to save the world, we've got a couple of cute girl scientists wandering into the scene, we've got a good guy thug doing his best to stop the evil villain, and naturally this all plays out in spectacular setting. That would be okay, except that the hero got there by traveling for hours on a high speed mag lev train and everyone else got there by driving dune buggies overland. And they caught up to the hero. You'd think people who could navigate spaceships would be able to see the problem with this scenario, but nobody does.
    All in all, pretty good. Except for Murtry. I still hate him. And he's still alive. Have we got some ethicist watching the outcomes of our fictional police actions? I would feel a lot better if these patently evil characters were executed before the end of the story.

Quote of the Day

When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late. - Frank Herbert, Dune