Martian Media

This final weekend of January 2010, we have enjoyed a so-called Wolf Moon. This occurs when the moon is at perigee – its closest approach to earth in its elliptical orbit – and is full at the same time. It usually happens once a year. Sometimes it happens twice. This weekend, Mars also is easier than usual to spot, since it shines brightly and ruddily just to the left of the moon.

Looking at the objects Friday reminded me of the Phoenix Lander, which NASA has been trying to wake up for a couple weeks. Phoenix sits near the north pole of Mars where it has conducted geologic (areologic?) studies for the past two earth years. With the arrival of the Martian winter 5 months ago, the lander’s operations were shut down. Phoenix wasn’t expected to survive the winter, and apparently it hasn’t. NASA will continue to send instructions for a while.

The craft did the field work for which it was designed. What is more, it took the opportunity to say “Hi” to the Martians. Yes really. On the photo of the lander, what is the object to the left of the little flag that looks like a DVD? It is a DVD. It contains science fiction stories and artwork with Martian themes, as well as the names of a quarter million humans (without their cell phone numbers, which seems to me an oversight.)

One only can guess what the Martians will make of their depiction in the Terran media. Let’s hope they’re more amused than insulted. Perhaps the next DVD we send (high def, of course) should be more about earth. I wouldn't advise including any cheesecake photos though. I saw Mars Needs Women (1967) and know what can happen.

Expired Futures

In every January of the twentieth century for which I was present, my casual awareness of the of the new year’s number was shaky. Accordingly, when paying bills, I often dated checks the previous year. Sometimes I would catch the error and try to re-tweak the date. Changing with a pen stroke 1985 to 1986, for example, was inelegant but possible. Changing a 6 to a 7, on the other hand was so much messier that in 1987 (and other 7 years) I tore up a lot of checks and started over. I have no idea how many misdated checks went out uncaught and unedited. None ever came back for that reason, so I presume banks make allowances for that error. By February I always was fully adjusted to the year.

Since the turn of the millennium, the annual transition has been much smoother, and my checks so far this year remain untweaked – yes, I still write them by hand rather than on some computer bookkeeping program. This is not because my day-to-day awareness has grown sharper in any way. Rather, it is because all twenty-first century dates seem equally unlikely to me. 2009 looked just as surreal to me as 2010. The former never looked quite right, so writing it never became a habit. I've hesitated before writing any date in the past 10 years. All of them seem to belong to a faraway future.

I remember sitting in a Boston theater watching 2001, A Space Odyssey during its first release; being 1968, the marquee outside actually said, "For Stoned Audiences." I didn't question the film's suppositions that by 2001 we would have true AI computers, passenger flights to moon bases, and manned flights to Jupiter. For all the hot wars, cold wars, and turmoil of the time, it was an optimistic era.

Visions of the future always say more about the time in which they are made than about the future itself. Take the classic film version of HG Wells' Things to Come (1936). The movie was right about upcoming global war, of course, though perhaps in 1936 one didn't need to be a science fiction writer to foresee that. The film’s postulated post-war (in the context of the movie, utopian) recovery, however, was disturbingly authoritarian, which was very much a 1930s way of looking at things. Try another Wells adaptation, The Time Machine (the 1960, not the 2002 version). The ambiguous anti-war message (ambiguous because Rod Taylor’s character takes on the Morlocks) is a little less disturbing, but still very 1960. The actual 1895 novel, of course, is not about war at all but about class cleavage, a theme reflecting the industrial politics of the day.

What does twenty-first century scifi say about us – The Matrix Reloaded, Aeon Flux, Ultraviolet, et al -- other than that we expect the future to be rife with experts in martial arts? By and large, the visions are darker than in earlier years. Compare the 1970s Battlestar Galactica with the 2000s one. Perhaps it is reassuring that scifi dates quickly. Our gloom may yet prove to be as misplaced as the cheeriness of 1968.

The Luck of Myshkin

I just tossed away yesterday’s losing Pick-6 ticket. Yes, I buy a state lottery ticket every week or so (though I often forget to do so) for no real reason other than that the fantasy of winning is worth a buck. It’s not worth more than a buck per week, however, because winning a lottery (to mix gaming metaphors) is not in my cards. Correction: in the draft lottery my first year of college, I scored “31,” which was a winning number that carried a prize of an all-expenses paid tour of Vietnam, but I opted to keep my student deferment rather than cash in on it immediately; by the time I graduated in 1974 the prize had expired. So, I’m not unlucky by any means. Things sometimes break my way. Yet, four leaf clovers don’t bloom in my yard either. I roll sevens exactly the percentage of times statistical theory predicts, and turn up snake eyes with equal fidelity to the odds. I’m the rule, rather than the exception, just as, by definition, most of us necessarily are. So, New Jersey collects an extra $50 from me per year, and the chance that lottery cash will flow the other way is less than getting struck by lightning.

Is there really such a thing as being born lucky? Yes, I think so. I don’t ascribe anything paranormal to it. The Bell Curve requires outliers in each direction. Purely randomly, some people just are just flukes.

You surely know someone like this. Let’s call him Lucky Chucky. His investments always are perfectly timed. He wins the best jobs and the best dates without apparent effort, just by being in the right place at the right time. He never gains weight during the holidays despite a voracious appetite. Even when his luck seems to desert him, it turns out for the best after all: the flight he misses because he is stuck in traffic has double engine failure on take-off and splashes in the Hudson; a bank error freezes his accounts for 48 hours, preventing him from buying the stocks he wants, the day before the market crashes; that sort of thing.

Then there are the Gloomy Glendas who seem hounded by fate. My favorite example is the winner of a Dubious Achievement Award by Esquire some years ago. The fellow drove off a road in Italy and was seriously injured, but he hung on by a slender thread. An ambulance picked him up, but hit another car on the way to the hospital. The patient hung on. A second ambulance took him, but drove off the road. The man survived. A police car showed up, put the man in the back, and sped off toward the hospital. The police car had an accident with another vehicle. That one killed him. Then there was a British mariner in World War One who had three ships sunk under him by U Boats in one hour, a record which holds to this day. The sailors who pulled him out of the drink the third time showed daring under the circumstances.

Lucky Chucky typically dismisses the awe of onlookers with the smug comment, “People make their own luck.” Annoyingly, there is some evidence of this. Belief that you are unlucky is deleterious. Friday the 13th, for example, really is hazardous for those who think it is. A nationwide Finnish study of hospital records by Simo Nayha covering accident fatalities between 1971 and 1997 showed significant spikes (from 5% to as high as 38%) on Fridays numbered 13 compared to other Fridays. This looks suspiciously like dangerous overcompensation, especially since it is purely a Western phenomenon. Among Chinese, not 13 but the number 4 is traditionally inauspicious. Sociologist David Phillips found a 7 percent higher mortality from cardiac arrest among Chinese Americans on the 4th day of each month; no such correlation exists among non-Asian Americans. The effect again probably involves stress and overcompensation. We all know how counterproductive it can be to try too hard to avoid a bad outcome; in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, Prince Myshkin is so determined not to break his hostess’ vase that he accidentally smashes it.

It cuts both ways. In a study by Richard Wiseman, volunteers were asked to rate themselves as lucky or unlucky. They then were given a newspaper and were asked to count the photographs. Inside the paper was a half-page ad that read “Win 100 pounds by telling the experimenter you have seen this.” Far more of the self-described lucky people than unlucky ones spotted the ad. By focusing on counting photos – in other words, on not making a mistake -- the unlucky ones missed the opportunity.

There are limits to making your own luck, of course. No amount of positive attitude will alter the odds on a throw of the dice. There is not much to do about the truly random vagaries of fortune but bear with them. Jim Croce: “Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.” The universe is disinterested, but (unlike some people) it is not actually malicious, however much it sometimes seems to be. And yes, lottery results are covered by the limits to making your own luck – short of rigging the draw, that is. Self-described “lucky” and “unlucky” people show no statistical difference whatsoever in lottery results. They are equally unlikely to win.

Giving Blockbusters a Good Name

I’m not normally greatly impressed by fx. Give me a good script and cheesy fx over the reverse any day -- any day but yesterday when I caught Avatar.

Avatar’s cgi animation achievement (in 3D) is so over-the-top that it deserves to seen just as a spectacle. See it in the theater no matter how big your plasma or LCD screen may be. This needs a really big screen. The script? Well, there is a certain irony to a film that relies so heavily on advanced industrial technology carrying an anti-high-tech-industry message. The whole Noble Savage thing may be a bit overdone (in the way that a Caterpillar D10 is a trifle large for a tractor). For all that, it is well-plotted, well-written, and well-paced – so much so that the 162 minutes passed quickly. In this it is unlike Cameron’s earlier film Titanic which seemed to me interminable – I know it was a hit, but by an hour into it I was rooting heartily for the iceberg. The villains in Avatar are villainous, the heroes heroic, and their clash makes for a rousing drama. This kind of thing could give blockbusters a good name.

Now if I only could get my hands on some Un-obtainium. I'm guessing that’s the stuff that makes the mountains float in the air on the moon Pandora.

Rebel without a Van

I was stopped by a patrol car a couple weeks ago, ostensibly for not using my turn signal. (I did signal: I had spotted the police vehicle while approaching the traffic light and made a point of signaling.) The real reason was that it was Saturday night and there are lots of bars along the road off of which I just had turned. It was obvious to the officer that I had not been drinking (I haven’t been buzzed, much less drunk, in about 25 years), so after the customary license and registration check, I was let off with a warning. That’s OK. I’d put the odds at about 25% that a random driver turning off that road at that hour on that night had good reason to fear a breathalyzer, so I don’t mind the dubious basis for the stop. Hazardous drivers really were out and about, and I suspect the officer got to meet one or more of them before the night ended.

Draconian laws against drinking and driving haven’t ended the practice of mixing the two, though they influence the rates. This is a violation, however, which most people understand puts others at serious risk. Hence, even people who might get caught themselves (what percentage of drinkers – who are more than 80% of the total population – at some time or other drive when they shouldn’t?) by and large favor tough laws and enforcement.

The situation is different with laws and regulations that simply seem bothersome – at least for us. (Hey, other people may not be able to talk on a cell phone and drive at the same time, for example, but you and I can do it safely, right?) There is a sometimes dangerous but very human tendency for people to ignore such rules that are difficult or irksome to obey. So, they leave safety doors jammed open in factories rather than fumble with locks twenty times a day. They remove batteries from smoke detectors that go off from shower steam. They mix their 2 and 4 plastics together. They drive 9 mph over the speed limit hoping police really live by the rhyme, "9 you're fine, 10 you're mine." (Don't count on this one.) What these kinds of rules have in common is that they seem arbitrary. Thus, they are not really a matter of ethics, in the way that theft and assault are ethical violations. A sign that says "one hour parking" is an arbitrary regulation that just as easily could have said “two hour parking” if some municipal bureaucrat had felt so inclined, so few people feel they have done anything inherently wrong if they leave a car parked under it for 80 minutes.

Oddly, it seems there is one class of people especially likely to violate petty and arbitrary rules of all sorts: female drivers of soccer vans. Huh? Yes, really. Dr. Wiseman in his book Quirkology refers to various studies by Professor John Trinkhaus of CUNY, who stumbled on the pattern by accident. Trinkhaus and his student aides studied express checkout counters in supermarkets in 1993 and again in 2002. For demographic information, they checked the cars in the parking lot of those customers who took more than the prescribed 10 items through the express lane. They were surprised to discover fully 80% were female van drivers. Intrigued, they counted cars that parked illegally in the supermarket fire zones; 35% were put there by female van drivers, far more than their proportion of drivers in the lot. They went on to record violators of the speed limit in school zones. All groups of drivers were bad at this – 86% of men violated it, for example – but the female van drivers were the worst: 96% violated the limit. Next, Trinkhaus’ team spent 32 hours at boxed intersections recording which vehicles failed to keep clear of the box during red lights. 40% of all violators, a very disproportionate amount, were female van drivers. Stop signs yielded similar results. The least compliant drivers were female van drivers, 99% of whom failed to stop at stop signs.

I mentioned this curiosity to my friend Ken and said I could see no reason why female van drivers should be such a particular menace, at least with regard to arbitrary rules. Unlike myself, Ken has raised a family. He said, "I understand it. Drive around with a van full of kids for a week, and you’ll understand it, too. They drive you crazy." I'll take his word for it.

The Zen of Kitchen Remodeling

A friend is considering selling a property “when the market recovers,” whenever that may be. I don’t expect to list it anytime soon. For most of the past year we have been treated to weekly news stories telling us the real estate market has “bottomed out.” True enough. So has the Titanic. It is still a long way back to the surface.

Anyway, she asked advice about installing upgrades to the house in the meantime. Many real estate brokers encourage this, of course, since we all prefer to market sparkly homes with all the bells and whistles. They frequently point to enthusiastic articles in magazines aimed at homeowners. For example, "The Cost vs. Value Report" article in a recent Remodeling Magazine issue gushes that a seller commonly can recover “86% of the cost” of sensible remodels of kitchens and baths through a higher sale price. I’m an odd broker who rarely recommends anything more than cosmetic spit and polish. The reason should be obvious: 86% is not 100%. I may not be a math wizard but I can do simple sums. If a higher sale price doesn’t cover the cost of the upgrade, there isn’t much point in it.

Things are a bit different for one’s own home than for an investment property. At home, a remodel may still be a luxury expense, but we all treat ourselves to a few luxuries. It makes some sense to enjoy new cabinets, ovens, and tubs yourself, rather just handing them unused to the next owner. If you eventually recover 86% of the cost, so much the better.

The folks I find fascinating, though, are the serial remodelers. You know the ones. The construction never quite stops because the house is never quite right. They seem to believe they’ll finally find happiness if they just can find and install the right granite countertops and oven ranges. It seems unlikely to me, but who knows? Perhaps they are right.

The Half-Baked and the Dead

Gore Vidal once remarked to an interviewer that he was once a famous novelist. When assured he still was, Vidal argued that the term had lost meaning. The adjective doesn’t fit the noun. He himself might well be famous simply as a celebrity, but not as a novelist, for novels no longer occupy a central place in the culture. They are not “discussed in the agora” as they once were. Books have been replaced there by movies and other media. Speak of books in public, and the conversation will be one-sided, or, at best, limited to a small splinter set. Speak of the movies and ears perk up all around while opinions fly. As a screenwriter as well as a novelist, Gore was complaining less than observing.

His eyesight was keen enough. Yet, novels retain value, even when discussed in the alleyway instead of the marketplace.

Vidal’s occasional nemesis Norman Mailer is another formerly famous novelist. He has a better excuse for the “formerly” than Gore. He died two years ago. However, even when alive, he underscored Vidal’s point by being more known than read despite repeated appearances on the New York Times best seller list. Outside of schools and colleges, where students are forced to read, readers of novels (Harry Potter and Twilight notwithstanding) are a minority of the population. Readers of (dreaded word) “serious” fiction are a minority within a minority. Accordingly, a typical “bestseller” is read only by a tiny fraction of the public. The more literary the novel, the tinier the fraction will be. Yet, pretty much everyone has heard of Norman Mailer.

Mailer’s celebrity is unsurprising. He was a tabloid writer’s dream: public feuds, outrageous comments, six marriages, a knife assault on one of the wives, and that disastrous business with Jack Abbott, author of In the Belly of the Beast, who committed murder a month after a parole which Mailer championed.

Put all that aside for a moment. Mailer’s work alone is worth a few words. I won’t even mention the (apparently apocryphal) Tallulah Bankhead story.

Students of 20th century American literature cannot afford to ignore Norman Mailer. Starting with the war novel The Naked and the Dead, his books were too much too significant a part of the times he lived. He is not one of my favorites of the period, though. His novels mix brilliance with carelessness in a way that is downright annoying. His prose is off-putting and captivating on the same page -- sometimes in the same sentence. A good example is Ancient Evenings, a historical novel set in Egypt. The research is solid, the descriptions are superb, and the battle scenes are breathtakingly presented (these are hard to write – try it). The wooden characters and hack dialogue are all the more jarring on this account. “Norman,” I recall thinking while reading the book 25 years ago, “you don’t have the right to write tripe. You can do better.” That thought (from someone who has earned fame neither as novelist nor a celebrity) was exceedingly ungenerous, but read the book for yourself and see if you don’t think the same thing.

Mailer’s non-fiction is excellent, but, being largely journalistic, it suffers the fate of all old news. Historians may delight, but other readers may no longer be interested except, perhaps, in the quirky stuff, such as his infatuated prose about Marilyn Monroe.

With a nod to the contemporary agora, I recommend the movie Tough Guys Don’t Dance, written and directed by Mailer. Based on his 1984 novel of the same name, it is a tale of intrigue and murder on Cape Cod. It shows everything that is right and wrong about the man and his works. The script shows flashes of brilliance and the dark humor is enormously funny, but the movie is mindlessly hung-up sexually – bizarrely homophobic – and much of the dialogue sounds like a bad soap opera. The characters are drawn with mixed success. The nouveau-riche trash Patty Lareine is on target (I’ve met her first cousin), yet the Southern WASP patrician Wardley Meeks III is a wild miss. The movie is worth seeing, yet it could have – should have – been better.

All the same, an intermittent brilliance is to be preferred to a constant dim light, so I miss Norman. I would have liked the chance to be annoyed one more time.