August 2008 – Astrocave

Back catalogue

OK, so I’m slowly getting this site back together. My comics are coming back online one by one, but I’m also putting up some information on my short films. Just in case, you know, anyone cares.

Of course that’s also a fantastic excuse for a self-indulgent trawl through my old work. Ah, the days when I didn’t know the difference between a best boy and a key grip. Actually, I still get confused with that sort of thing. But at least now I know why they call it gaffer tape.

Anyway, my very first film was based on a script I submitted to the Next Laugh Screenplay Competition at the National Screenwriters Conference 2004. It’s the story of a serial killer – well, a guy who fancies himself a serial killer but hasn’t actually gotten around to murdering anyone yet – and his search for love. With the deliberately grand sounding title Psycho Killer: Qu’est-que-c’est.

Yes, before Dexter (although he actually debuted in Darkly Dreaming Dexter in 2004, so it’s more of a photo finish), Harvey charmed audiences as a serial killer you could identify with. Well, he made the audience laugh when the script was performed in the finals, but he didn’t actually win.

Fortunately my friend and collaborator, Andrew Saunders, was at the performance and offered to help make it into a film. The result was submitted to Tropfest in 2005, but failed to make the selection. Possibly because of the very low production values, possibly because we didn’t really know what we were doing and made it up as we went along, and possibly because the world just wasn’t ready for it. Ahem.

But it did start Squeeze-Brie Productions and led to a series of other films. And now, 3 years later, with the aforementioned rip-off winning hearts and minds, the world might finally be ready. Judge for yourself:

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. Random blog comments, after all, are the sincerest form of validation.

That’s what they want you to think

Just to follow up on Thursday’s post about voodoo science, and the seven signs thereof, the big one is that “the discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work”.

On that theme, what do you think are the chances that the 9/11 Truth people will accept the results of the latest study about the collapse of building 7? Slim? Non-existent?

Ah, conspiracy theories, you just can’t beat ’em. Any evidence to the contrary is of course a conspiracy itself. Or, even better, that there’s a deeper conspiracy at work, and that they’re just humouring our conspiracy theories to stop us stumbling upon the real truth. So what is that real truth they’re trying to hide? Welcome to the neverending induction of conspiracy theory…

Of course, all right-thinking people know that 9/11 was really caused by flying reptiles. Keep watching the skies!

Climate voodoo

Thanks to Thinking is Dangerous, I recently learned of Bob Park’s 7 warning signs of bogus science. These are basically a set of features that most pseudoscience, flim-flam, gobbledy-gook, wibble-wobble, whatever, has in common:

The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.
The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.
The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
The discoverer has worked in isolation.
The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.

If you try them against such phenomena as, say, homeopathy, dowsing or bigfoot, you’ll find them remarkably accurate. But how about something more substantial like… climate change denial?

Continue reading “Climate voodoo” →

The Higgs Boson: God particle or Tory rumour?

So, to continue my recent theme, what are Higgs Bosons anyway? The people want to know.

The best explanation I’ve ever heard (and thanks for the reminder, Alison) is that by Professor David J. Miller of University College, London. So best, in fact, that in 1993 it won him the grand prize of a bottle of champagne in a challenge by the then British Science Minister, William Waldegrave, Baron Waldegrave of North Hill.

The prize was for the best one-page explanation of what the Higgs Boson is. Now, I encourage you to read Professor Miller’s full explanation (with cartoons!), but if your’re a busy professional who needs a slightly shorter version that doesn’t talk about “a lattice of positively charged crystal atoms”, here’s how it was told to me:

Imagine a room filled wall-to-wall with members of the British Conservative Party. They represent the Higgs field, which fills the universe wall-to-wall in the same way.

Next, imagine Margaret Thatcher enters the room. She is soon surrounded by party members, all wanting to ask her questions. They impede her progress, slowing her considerably as she tries to move through the room. This is how the Higgs field adds mass to particles and slows them down as they move through the universe.

Now, what if instead someone starts a rumour that she’s about to enter the room? The rumour itself moves from person to person, visible as little knots of Conservative Party members talking excitedly. These are Higgs Bosons – they’re just excitations of the Higgs field.

So really, at the Large Hadron Collider they’re looking for nothing more than a rumour. About Margaret Thatcher. Your homework now is to discuss what would happen if she were to turn up herself…

Slappin’ all over the world

Just a quick one today, to let you know that Slapping Christie has been accepted into yet another competition, the Festival Internacional de Cine de Marbella. Otherwise known as the Marbella International Film Festival. And after a bit of fretting about translating puns for the Spanish subtitles, it’s on its way to be screened sometime between 2 and 5 October. Once again, if you’re one of my Andalusian readers I strongly recommend you attend.

If you’re thinking you won’t bother, then take a look at this review of Christie’s Seattle screening over at Rotten Tomatoes. It may well change your mind.

Souvenirs of the apocalypse

For posterity’s sake, and because I’m sure no one believes me (see previous post), here is the photographic evidence:

SPC Y2K sixpack of tinned tomatoes

Yes, back when the year 2000 was the scary, scary future – i.e. before it became the innocent, carefree pre-9/11 – the good folks at the Shepparton Processing Company helped us in our disaster planning. If you’re going to head to the hills and barricade yourself in a tiny shack with only a shotgun and a handful of unabombs to protect you from the hordes of mutants that weren’t smart enough to head to the hills etc., make sure you at least have the ingredients for a good lasagne.

Actually, they had sixpacks of spaghetti too, but I thought the tomatoes were funnier. And actually actually I bought these after the big date, because then for some reason they were on special. (No, not because before Y2K I was cowering under my bed with a tinfoil hat, I don’t know why you’d think that…)

End of the world postponed again

Those who have been following the Large Hadron Collider Countdown (yes I know, the link to the normally excellent www.lhcountdown.com site is currently broken – what are they trying to hide?) have probably noticed that the world failed to end on schedule last Thursday. Does that mean we’re all safe? That we’re not going to spontaneously collapse into a gravity well of strangelets?

Maybe not, because it’s just been delayed again. According to the official LHC commissioning page, the big switch-on won’t happen until September, then there’ll be another couple of months until the first collisions start. But it won’t be until next year, following the “winter shutdown”, that it finally gets up to full speed (for a more digestible version, see this article at The Register. Or Wikipedia, I don’t care.)

How long must we wait for the apocalypse? At least I still have my precautionary SPC sixpack of tinned tomatoes, which they released for the last big scare of Y2K. So I don’t know about you, but I’m prepared.

But, you ask, what if the world doesn’t end? Then how will we know the LHC is switched on? Will Higgs Bosons start popping up all over the place? How will we recognise them? What do they look like? *

Fortunately, the good folks at the Particle Zoo have prepared a sample that we can all study ahead of time to know what to expect:

The only inaccuracy I can find is that the real thing costs quite a bit more than $9.75… Although maybe the additional $6 billion is in the shipping cost.

(* These are actual questions I’ve been asked. The people want to know!)

Month: August 2008