Movie Review: Young Washington

Last Friday I went to see Young Washington in the theater. I haven't seen a movie in the theater since I saw Oppenheimer in 2023.

George Washington is my favorite Founding Father so I had to see this movie. 

The movie was reasonably historically accurate but the climax was a bit over the top as he survived an onslaught of musket fire. Yes, he did have two horses shot out underneath him and did have bullet holes in his jacket and hat yet survived. Yes, he rallied the troops to make a fighting retreat in the lost Battle of Monongahela. That is historically accurate. He later attributed his survival to "divine providence." Or he was an alien.

It wasn't all hagiographic. They showed his mistakes (and there were many) at the battle of Fort Necessity where he was forced to surrender to the reviled French. One mistake he made was he thought the French would fight "honorably." They didn't.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie. There was enough action to keep modern viewers interested. They did (accurately) portray Washington as an ambitious young man. I'm not sure about the part where 11-year-old George tries to go to school and is refused due to his "station." That is, he wasn't born into the right family. And the part about him wanting to read all the classical books his half-brother Lawrence recommended I've never heard about. If so, he had a singular thirst for knowledge.

If you get a chance, I would recommend seeing Young Washington.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

America's 250th Birthday

On Saturday, we celebrate the United States's 250th birthday, or Semiquincentennial.

That is because on July 4th, 1776, 250 years ago, the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence. 

The American Revolution had already been raging for over a year since the battles of Lexington and Concord. Adopting and releasing the Declaration was as rebellious an act as the residents of Massachusetts firing on the Red Coats. For in that document it stated that "All men are created equal." That was a revolutionary statement in a time of kings with near unlimited power over their subjects. It went on to state that those men were "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." This was radical stuff, that rights came from God, not the benevolence of a king. People had rights simply for being people.

Signing the Declaration of Independence was a literal act of "high treason" against the British Crown. By formally denouncing the authority of King George III and initiating war, the fifty-six delegates faced the ultimate penalty: execution by hanging, drawing, and quartering.

Yes, some of those fifty-six delegates owned slaves. But the U.S. was one of the first countries to outlaw slavery that had been ubiquitous since time immemorial. Yes, women couldn't vote at first but that was fixed too. The U.S. has survived despite its problems.

Now we are celebrating 250 years of the country those men formed. And America is still something special where rights come from not government, but God. We've survived wars, including a bloody Civil War and two brutal World Wars, malfeasance by some of our leaders, two pandemics, and multiple natural disasters. Yet the nation those men in Philadelphia started still persists, still is free, still is prosperous. 

People from all over the planet come here to chase the American Dream of prosperity. Many of them achieve it, rising out of the crushing poverty of their home nations thanks to America's unique combination of freedom and economic opportunity.

America is still here. That is very much worth celebrating.

The Worst Line in Science Fiction... Ever

 

I've read a lot of science fiction books and seen a lot of science fiction movies over the years. And in all that content, one line sticks out to me as the worst line in science fiction. If there's a worse line, I don't know about it. 

It come in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (or as some call it, "The Slow-Motion Picture"). 

Star Trek: TMP has a lot of problems. It was directed by Robert Wise who direct The Day the Earth Stood Still in 1951. Which is a good movie, for a 1950s science fiction film.  However, he also directed The Sound of Music and West Side Story, two musicals. In The Sound of Music, he almost spends as much time on the Alps as he does on the Von Trapp children. 

The other science fiction movie he directed before ST:TMP was The Andromeda Strain in 1971. That movie was mostly confined to a laboratory. Not really suited for a big-screen adaptation of Star Trek. 

In ST: TMP, the story moves so slow and there's little action. I remember when I saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in the theater (opening night) and when the Klingon ships came on the screen, everyone cheered because finally there'd be some action.

According to the Internet Movie Database, the screenplay of ST:TMP was written by Harold Livingston (never heard of him) and the story was by Alan Dean Foster. I've read some books by Foster and I've never been impressed. So I don't know if Foster or Livingston are responsible for that awful line.

SPOILERS if you haven't seen ST:TMP.

Toward the end of the movie, they discover V'Ger is actually a Voyager spacecraft launched from Earth. And Commander Decker says, "It fell into what they used to call a black hole."

(Aside: How close was that black hole to Earth? Voyager 1, launched in 1977, 49 years ago, is now less than a light day away from Earth. It'll take it another 1,765 years to be one-tenth of a light year from the Sun. ST:TNG is set 246 years in the future. And how did he know it fell into a black hole if no information gets out of a black hole?)

The "what they used to call a black hole" just makes me crazy. You wouldn't say "He drove to town in what they used to call a horseless carriage." And why would the term for a black hole be changed? 

I don't know who wrote that line (Livingston or Foster), but it is, in my opinion, the worst line in science fiction history.

Do you know of a worse line in science fiction? Let me know in the comments below.

Original Ideas

Not long ago I posted this on X (formerly Twitter):

I thought it was a pretty original idea. (Plus only two people saw it when I have over 19,000 followers, what's up with that?)

Then someone posted this in response:

(I assume they mean the television show Person of Interest.)

I thought it was a pretty original idea. But I guess not.

As a writer, you try to come up with new, original stories. But it's hard or nearly impossible. You can't read all books (or even all science fiction books). You can't watch every television show and movies. How do you know the brilliant idea you came up with wasn't written about 80 years ago in Astounding Science Fiction magazine.

One time I was coming up with an idea for a story. And it was coming together nicely in my head. Then I realized it was the plot of the movie Forbidden Planet, which was based of Shakespeare's The Tempest. And The Tempest was written 400 years ago.

I thought my Adept series of books (First book Hammer of Thor) was pretty unique. Then someone said they reminded them of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, first published in 2000. Hammer of Thor was published in 2011. 

The weapon my main character, Rick Bailey, carries in Treasure of the Black Hole (and subsequent novels) I think is pretty unique. It reacts to his thoughts and has a distinctive aiming system. So far, no one has told me that it reminds them of something else they've read or seen. (He first uses the weapon in his timeline in The Smugglers of Mars.)

I doubt any idea is 100% unique. But you can take a unique angle on it, maybe. 

Do you think there's any new ideas in the world? Let me know in the comments below.

Two Tutus to Tie Dye

A tutu

The power of the internet!

For about five decades I've had this phrase in my head: "Two tutus to tie dye."

I knew I'd heard it somewhere when I was a teenager (actually younger I found out) and found it hilarious. But I had no idea where it came from

So one day recently, I googled "Two tutus to tie dye." And I found it. 

Someone in this group said it's from 1972's "Rock and Roll Classroom" (So I was 11 or 12, not quite a teenager). I had a title. So I searched for "Rock and Roll Classroom" on YouTube. And I found it! Had to scroll through a lot of stuff but eventually I came to the whole thing. The part about tie dying starts at 3:22. "Two tutus to tie dye" is said at 4:13. The whole thing is 4:41 long.

I'm thinking it was played on the radio. How else would I have heard it in 1972?

I'm not sure how you would tie dye a tutu since they are made of tulle (usually) which is basically fine netting. But it's a joke about tie dyeing a tutu so that's okay. 

Have you had a phrase stuck in your head for years that you don't remember where it came from? Let me know in the comments below.

Temperature

I was watching The Fifth Element the other day. Don't ask me why. It's not a great film and the Chris Tucker part stops the narration dead. For more about that, see here.

There's a scene early in the movie when a military spaceship is confronting an object. And someone says their instruments are registering -5,000 degrees. I don't know what units of measure they are using, but in no existing temperature system can you get a reading of -5,000 degrees.

Anyone who knows much science knows that the lowest temperature something can be is 0 Kelvin (-273.15 C or -457.87 F) or absolute zero. While temperatures can go into the trillions of degrees (Quasar 3C 273, powered by feeding supermassive black holes, their intense gravitational pull and friction heat their surrounding accretion disks to an astounding 10 trillion degrees Celsius), cold can only go until there is no heat any more. 

Cold is simply the absence of heat (as dark is the absence of light). You can add heat all you want but you can only take away heat until there is no more. Reaching absolute zero (no heat) takes infinite energy. The coldest natural place is the Boomerang Nebula. It is roughly 5,000 light-years away in the Centaurus constellation. With a staggering temperature of 1 degree kelvin, it is colder then the 3 degree background radiation of the universe. Humans have made things colder.  A cloud of chilled rubidium atoms was cooled to 38 picokelvin (38 trillionths of a degree above absolute zero).

So, nothing can be -5,000 degrees. In defense of the movie, they didn't say the object was -5,000 degrees, they said their instruments were reading that temperature. So maybe it isn't that bad.

Purring

The other day I was giving our cat, Lily, scritches behind the ears and she was purring, which I took as a sign that she liked the attention. 

When Lily first came to us (rescued from an animal shelter) almost nine years ago, she purred nearly constantly. I have videos of her purring such as this one:

I got to thinking... do cats intentionally purr? So, of course, I googled it. This was before Google AI but here's what Google AI says now:

Yes, cats purr both involuntarily and voluntarily. While often linked to contentment, purring is largely an involuntary reflex used for self-soothing when stressed, injured, or in pain. It can also be a voluntary behavior to communicate needs, such as demanding food or attention from humans.

That made me wonder if she was stressed, being in a new home, and that's why she purred a lot. 

Not long after we got her, I was watching TV and Lily came into the family room purring loudly. And I wondered why she was purring so much until I remembered I forgot to feed her her second meal. She was hungry and/or wanted my attention. 

She doesn't purr as much now, but she will when she's content. Like when I'm scratching behind her ears.

Here's a recent picture of Lily just because. She turns 9 next month: