Halloween

I'm taking a quick break from homework while it's still Halloween to make a quick post. I used to be a big fan of Halloween when I was a lot younger, since I got to pretend to be something I wasn't and get lots of candy, which in my family we would divide into ziplock bags to be snuck into movie theaters to avoid their ridiculous prices. Now I'm to the point where the candy isn't free, and instead I will soon be the one handing it out. I guess these days it's the idea of Halloween more than the practice of it that I like. I appreciate people who have cool or innovative costumes (a buddy of mine dressed as Hot Rod, and it was very funny; I need to see that movie now), but I want to puke on the puppy and fairy princess costumes, and all the cheap costumes parents buy their kids at the store. When did Halloween become so commercialized? Have we forgotten the true meaning of Halloween? Just kidding. But seriously, I want to puke on the fairy princesses.

As a little personal celebration of Halloween, I put on the Monsters vs. Mascots episode of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (MXC) in the background as I made a map and described rocks for my Stratigraphy/Sedimentology class, and I am sharing this episode with you guys who read my blog. For those of you uninitiated to MXC, it is a re-dub of a very strange Japanese game show called Takeshi's Castle. Rather than faithfully translate the dialogue and commentary into English, the writers of MXC have completely ignored what is being said and given their own interpretation of what is happening on-screen. They've made up teams, contestant names complete with back stories, and a whole new commentary that is hilarious and exactly my style of humor. In this particular episode, all the contestants are wearing outrageous costumes, so they aired it around Halloween a few years ago and made the teams Hollywood Monsters vs. Commercial Mascots. Just to warn you, it's very weird and a bit rude, but absolutely hilarious. I think so, anyway.

Enjoy:

Apocalyptica

Last Wednesday Kate and I got to go to Boise to see Apocalyptica live in concert. We don't go to a lot of concerts, but this was too good an opportunity to pass up.

Apocalyptica formed in 1993 when four cello players from Finland started playing Metallica songs at Sibelius Academy in Finland. They released an album of Metallica songs on cello, then branched off to cover other metal bands and recording original songs as well, but always remembering their roots with Metallica. They've grown in popularity over the past 15 years, collaborating with many other artists, opening a couple times for Metallica concerts, and even going on tour with Rammstein as backup musicians.

The concert was a lot of fun. Unfortunately one of the cellists, Perttu, was having technical difficulties of some sort and had to keep switching out his cello, but they're versatile enough performers that it didn't affect the sound or quality of the show; it just wasn't Perttu's best day ever. He was there when it was important, though, to do all his solos. The three permanent cello players in the band (Eicca, Perttu and Paavo) are all over the stage as they play, while the fourth guy (who is only a part-time member of the band) just sits the whole time looking cool in his sunglasses, the clean-cut contrast to the other guys and their metal look. Their drummer is amazing, too. Plus, the somewhat older ladies standing next to us were apparently real-life vampires, which was interesting.

Naturally Apocalyptica played several Metallica songs, including One, which is one of the best and works very well with cellos, but they also played several from their new album. Possibly the most fun was that they closed the concert with their cover of "the original black metal song" by Edward Grieg, In the Hall of the Mountain King, which they play at most of their concerts.

Rather than talk about this more, I have scoured YouTube looking for decent video of Apocalyptica (it's harder to find than I expected), and will share my finds here. First, I found an entire concert from their current tour, performed in Lisbon, Portugal. The sound is good, but still doesn't do justice to actually being there and experiencing how loud cellos can be. Then I have a few of my favorite of their music videos and a couple other good live performances.

If you're unfamiliar with Apocalyptica or Metallica or metal music in general, you still might like this. Apocalyptica was my bridge to Metallica and other similar bands. I recommend as you scroll down watching Bittersweet, In the Hall of the Mountain King, Nothing Else Matters, Faraway, Wie Weit/En Vie and The Unforgiven, as well as some of the Apocalyptica in my music playlist. You might be surprised.

Rock in Rio 2008, Lisbon, Portugal:

Refuse/Resist:

Grace:

I'm Not Jesus (this one usually has vocals, it's much better without):

Ion:

Fight Fire with Fire:

Beethoven's Symphony #5 Exerpt (somehow linked to an environmental message, I don't know how):

Betrayal:

Bittersweet (one of my favorites, again without vocals and better that way):

Last Hope:

Seek and Destroy:

Inquisition Symphony:

In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edward Grieg:

And some other live stuff:

Enter Sandman by Metallica:

Master of Puppets by Metallica:

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Metallica:

One by Metallica:

Mein Hertz Brennt (Apocalyptica performing with Rammstein):

Ohne Dich (Apocalyptica performing with Rammstein):

And some Music Videos:

Nothing Else Matters by Metallica:

Seemann by Rammstein ft. Nina Hagen:

Faraway:

Wie Weit:

En Vie (same song as Wie Weit, but in french):

The Unforgiven by Metallica:

And finally, a brief overview of the Apocalyptica in my playlist:

Bittersweet (Instrumental Version): This is one of my all-time favorite original Apocalyptica songs. There's a vocal part, but I don't really care for the voices and lyrics, so this instrumental version is better, I think.

En Vie: They wrote an instrumental song called Quutamo, and then recorded three versions with vocals in different languages. How Far (English) and Wie Weit (German) are sung by Marta Jandova, and En Vie (french) is sung by Emmanuelle Monet. Ordinarilly I would want to vomit at anything french, but in this case Monet is the better singer, and she doesn't sing very nasally at all, so rather than make me cringe this is my favorite version of the song. All three vocal versions have the same video, just with different singers.

Faraway: This is the instrumental version of the song in the video above.

Helden: This is the German version of Heroes by David Bowie. The vocals are by Till Lindemann of Rammstein.

Nothing Else Matters: This is a cover of one of my favorite Metallica songs, one of the first Metallica songs I ever liked.

One: One of the best Metallica songs ever, and really works well to show that Apocalyptica really is made up of skilled cello players, and it's not just a fun gimmick to play Metallica on cellos.

Peace: An original Apocalyptica song from their most recent album.

Pray!: An older original Apocalyptica piece, one of the first to feature drums.

Seemann: Probably my favorite Apocalyptica performance. The song is by Rammstein, and Nina Hagen is the singer. Nina Hagen is incredibly talented, but very weird, weird enough to make Björk look ordinary. Rammstein was impressed enough with this cover that they invited Apocalyptica on tour with them, and then got together to record Helden for their most recent album. I like this version a lot more than the Rammstein version.

Worlds Collide: Very cool original Apocalyptica song from the most recent album, and the album is named for this song.

And finally, since they didn't allow cameras in the concert, but everyone else was taking pictures with their phone, I managed to snap a couple with my phone:

Happy Birthday, Earth!

As I head out to come back home to Rexburg and mountains of late homework after an awesome concert by Apocalyptica (which I'll post about soon!), I'd like to say a quick Happy 6012th Birthday to Earth.

About 400 years ago, a man named James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, published a timeline for Earth's history including a date for its creation. He did this by careful study of the Old Testament and some tricky calculations. When was the Earth created? The night preceding October 23, 4004BC. So let's blow out 6012 candles!

Historical Geology Field Trip

The past few days I had the opportunity to go on a field trip with Dr. Gahn's Historical Geology class. This was especially cool since I've been on this field trip before as a student, and this time I got to repeat the experience as a teacher's assistant. A quick note about the class, it is essentially a history class that applies geological principles and covers 4.6 billion years of history. In fact, Dr. Gahn makes his class worth 4.6 billion points, meaning each of his four tests is worth about 1,000,000,000 points. Since most of Earth's history is recorded through sedimentary rocks and fossils, the highlight of this field trip was to dig for real fossils in southern Utah.

The first stop on the trip was a behind-the-scenes tour of the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point near Salt Lake City, which has the largest collection of mounted dinosaur skeletons in the world. Sadly, they don't have the Dracorex Hogwartsia; that one is in the Children's Museum of Indianapolis. They also make fun claymation movies for kids, which apparently involves eight hours of work to produce about six seconds of film. Anyway, here are pictures:

A mural on the outside of the museum building.

Two small complete dinosaurs not yet on display.

Dr. Gahn talking to one of the museum workers.

 

Dinosaur bones being recovered from rock.

A recovered skeleton mounted with the rock.

And in the museum itself:

Crinoids.

A big fish above a rock full of Dactylioceras Ammonoids.

Utahraptor. The real velociraptor is only three feet tall, but they made it bigger just for the movie Jurassic Park. Right after they made Jurassic Park, they discovered Utahraptor, which was exactly the size of the raptors in the movie. Also, it was recently discovered that velociraptor had feathers; not for flying, but probably for insulation or maybe to help maneuver when running.

Bugs in amber!

Triceratops has always been one of my favorites.

I forget what these guys are called, but anything that fights by ramming stuff with its head is cool.

This guy is a small Tyrannosaur.

A huge prehistoric sea turtle.

I really like this fish. I have one that isn't nearly so nice, but it's cool because my fish bloated in the sun and exploded in a big mess before being fossilized. There are scales all over.

Help me!

That night we camped at the sand dunes at Little Sahara in Millard County, Utah. Local schools were out, so there were a lot of noisy people camping and riding their dune buggies and four-wheelers up and down the dunes all night. It was loud, but I got this cool picture:

The next morning we went to study the sand dunes, and I discovered that if you dig a bit, the sand will flow and form canyons that look quite a bit like Bryce Canyon:

Then the highlight of the trip: digging for trilobites at U-Dig Trilobite Quarry near Delta, Utah.

Trilobites are ancient marine ancestors to modern crustaceans and insects. There are other things in these rocks, but trilobites are the most common and cool. I don't have photos of the ones I found yet, but these three are the common trilobites found in this quarry:

Elrathia kingi

Asaphiscus wheeleri

Peronopsis interstricta (much larger than life)

On the way to the next stop I completely shredded a tire:

We changed the tire and looked at contact metamorphism at Fossil Mountain:

Fossil Mountain

Nice sunset view from Fossil Mountain

The next and final day we hiked partway up a canyon on Fossil Mountain, looking for fossils and following rock units.

We found a Bull Snake and took pictures, then later a rattlesnake and stayed away.

Trace fossils (burrows)

A spectacular angular unconformity.

Dr. Gahn lecturing.

The last stop was a playa lake in Utah, where we looked at algae similar to the algae that formed ancient mounds and converted Earth's atmosphere to one we can breathe. 

Scenic photo of the playa lake.

Mud cracks.

Playing in the mud, digging up algal mats.

Look what I found!

Impressions left by ice crystals.

Then it was an eight hour drive back to Rexburg, and now I'm behinder than ever on homework....

But the good news is that I get to go see Apocalyptica live tonight!

Police Chase

So, I'm back from my field trip, and will post pictures and a summary soon. Meanwhile, while I was down in Southern Utah, apparently at the exact same time I was getting into some trouble with the law here in Rexburg, Idaho (click for larger image):

I guess there's an impostor Daniel Little in Rexburg! Of course, the middle initial is wrong, and so is the age (I'm four years older than that), but hey. I replaced the mug shot with a very low resolution photo of myself from my BYU-Idaho ID, which looks like a mug shot. So that's really my picture (a crappy one), not a photo of the actual guy that got arrested. It sure is interesting to come home from a field trip and find out I'd been in a high-speed chase while I was gone....

Save the Whales

Today I'm leaving on a three-day field trip with the Historical Geology class. I took this class a couple years ago and went on this same field trip, but this time I'm a TA, and I get to drive one of the vans. I'll write more when I get back, but just so the world doesn't end because there's nothing to read while I'm gone, here's some entertainment:

That's a true story! Kind of like this one in Japan, where they were transporting a dead whale somewhere for study, and the gasses that had been building up in its bowels caused it to explode under its own power all over the street:

And that's why it's unhealthy to hold in your farts.

No Fate But What We Make

I'm a big fan of science fiction, but a truly good science fiction show is hard to come by. I grew up watching Star Trek, but aside from half of the movies and a couple dozen episodes, it's really hard to re-watch (except the original series, which is very funny). I never could get into Babylon 5, or Stargate SG1. I'm curious to watch the old original Battlestar Galactica, after which I might give the new one a shot. There have been a few other shows I tried to watch, but they were so bad and so long ago that I don't even remember what they were called, and now I don't watch Sci-Fi Channel any more. Then a few years ago Firefly came and went (and the movie made from the show, Serenity), and I didn't even hear about it until it was mentioned by Orson Scott Card. Now it's my favorite show, but that will be the topic for another post.

Lately I've been attempting to satisfy my appetite for good sci-fi by watching a fairly new show called Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. To be honest, other than starving for sci-fi, there are only two real reasons I started watching this show: morbid curiosity (what are they doing to one of my favorite movies?) and Summer Glau (excellent actress who played River in Firefly). I fully expected this show to suck. To properly review this, though, I need to start at the beginning.

Spoiler Alert!

Major and minor plot spoilers follow, but I wouldn't worry about it; it doesn't really matter. Read on!

Terminator was a low-budget surprise hit in 1984, the first film with Arnold Schwarzenegger after he became a popular actor with Conan the Barbarian. For those of you not familiar with Terminator, the idea is that the human race has become so automated that in 1997 the computer defense systems of the world decide that all humans are threats, and initiate a nuclear annihilation that nearly destroys the human race (don't you remember 11 years ago when that happened?). Unfortunately for the machines that now rule the world, the humans form a resistance and are on the verge of taking back the world. At the last minute the machines send a machine that looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time to kill Sarah Connor, who is the future mother of John Connor, the leader of the human resistance. The humans send one man back as well, and the movie is a chase between the human and the Terminator robot to find and kill/save Sarah Connor.

The story is good, and so is the action, but this movie really suffers from its low budget. To show damage to the Terminator they give him a prosthetic head that looks awful, and during the final showdown the Terminator's skin has been burned off revealing the metal underneath, and they use distracting stop motion animation to show him walking. It made me think of Jason and the Argonauts, which used the same technique but was more impressive (especially having been made 21 years earlier in 1963). Still, it succeeded at the box office, so seven years later they made a sequel.

Terminator 2 (1991) is completely brilliant, one of my favorite movies. I'm very glad I saw this one before I saw the first one. One thing I appreciate about this movie is that beyond a quick bit of monologue at the beginning is that other than a very brief introductory monologue in the beginning, all of the background material you need from the first Terminator to not be lost in this movie is provided seamlessly in context. Many writers could take a cue from this; even good ones like Rowling and Jordan. You can start with this movie, as I did, and not miss anything.

Speaking of the beginning, the opening shots of this movie are practically a remake of the first movie, but this time with a good budget (most expensive film shot at the time at $100,000,000). James Cameron even plays some fun mind games with those who are familiar with the first. This time Schwarzenegger is the good guy (but still a robot), and the bad guy is an even better, cooler robot who can change form to look like anyone. There's a bit in the first movie where Arnold punches a guy in the chest and literally rips his heart out; in T2 he reaches at a biker the same way but this time just takes his sunglasses from his pocket.

John Connor is 10 years old now, and we learn that Sarah got busted trying to destroy a computer factory in an attempt to prevent technology from taking over and is now in a maximum security psycho ward while John is with loser foster parents, believing his mother is insane. James Cameron plays a bigger game now, with both Terminators chasing John, and only when there's no escape revealing that Arnold is the good guy. Then there's one of the coolest car chases ever: bad Terminator in a semi, John on a motorbike, and Arnold saving the day with his cool sunglasses and awesome shotgun on a motorcycle.

John Connor and Arnold Terminator then go to rescue Sarah from the psycho ward in what is one of the most beautifully crafted scenes in movie history, and I mean that. (More spoilers!) Sarah knows her son is missing and Arnold is on the loose again, but she doesn't know arnold is the good guy. She makes a brilliant, desperate escape attempt (and a plausible one; Cameron payed close attention to detail), and just as she is successful and about to make a clean break, Arnold comes around the corner and she is convinced she's too late. This is one of my top ten movie moments of all time, because it is so thoroughly effective.

After a showdown between Arnold and Bad Terminator (T-1000), they escape and decide to prevent the evil computer network, SkyNet, from being created. Here another switch is pulled. John has been trying to teach Arnold Terminator to be more human (Arnold is the first father figure John has ever really had), while Sarah, plagued by nightmares of nuclear annihilation, becomes herself a Terminator, and moves to kill the man who develops the SkyNet technology. We are presented here with a serious moral dilemma: Is it acceptable to kill a good, innocent man if it means saving 3 billion lives? The movie's answer is no; my answer is yes, only if there is no other way.

The movie's message is that there is that "the future's not set, there's no fate but what we make for ourselves," and that there's still time to figure things out before the situation can't be recovered. There is quite a lot of violence in this movie, but none of it is gratuitous; in fact through the whole thing, John works to convince Arnold Terminator that killing is a last resort. While it is one of the best sci-fi and action movies ever made, it is the character interactions that drive the movie and give it lasting value.

Then Terminator 3 came along and said, "no, just kidding; there's no escaping fate because we want to show lots of nuclear explosions." Don't ever watch Terminator 3. Watching Terminator 1 is optional. Terminator 2 is on my imaginary list of essential movies that everyone should watch. If you're wary of R-rated movies, find a Cleanflicks or TV version with the language removed, you won't lose anything from these movies. The message still survives, and Arnold is still just as muscular and cool with his sunglasses. They don't edit out the sunglasses.

They're going to make another Terminator trilogy, with Christian Bale, about the future war against the machines. I really wish they wouldn't, but I will watch anyway, and hope they're good. I doubt this is how they'll play out, but they can still do these and keep with the T2 "No Fate" philosophy, but they have to make them prequels, in the future. Yep. They can play out the war, and at the end the final move is to send Arnold back in time. Unfortunately, then they'd have to show the landscape transform from post-apocalyptic to pristine and peaceful, and there's no way to make that not suck. Oh, well.

On the bright side, back to the beginning of this post, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has turned out not too bad. I had Reservations about Lina Heady playing Sarah, because she's not rugged-looking enough, but she's not bad. Thomas Dekker is really good as John, and naturally Summer Glau is brilliant as the new "good" Terminator, Cameron:

Sarah Connor, John Connor, and Cameron the Good Terminator

The show had a rough start: since the nuclear apocalypse happened in 1997, and this show aired first in 2007, they had to make a convenient little time jump to the present, in which Sarah's and John's actions had delayed but not prevented SkyNet. The show improved from there, though, following suit with T2 in exploring moral dilemmas, and does a decent but not awesome job with the character development, enough to be worth watching. Oh, and Summer Glau is in it.

While it is turning out to be a good, adequate fix for my sci-fi urges, there are some possibly troublesome developments. First, it's produced by Fox. The same Fox that cancelled the awesome Futurama for the train wreck called Family Guy. The same Fox that unforgivably cancelled Firefly before its first and only season was even finished (Summer Glau is in that one, too, plus it's the best show ever, so you should watch it). They're really trying to make Prison Break stay successful, and Terminator barely got renewed for season 2, and may not make it to season 3. The other possibly troublesome development is that they have a stereotype new villain (a T-1001) who is played by Shirley Manson from Garbage. She may turn out cool, but who knows.

Speaking of singers, the show ended its first season with a really cool scene shot with no sound, but set to When the Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash, as a dozen FBI agents storm a Terminator's hideout not realizing what they're up against:

And they began their second season with something even better, an original song "Sampson & Delilah" by Shirley Manson of Garbage (they introduce Manson's new character at the end of this episode). Major Spoilers! Good Terminator Cameron (Summer Glau) just got car bombed by some thugs looking for some technology Sarah and John had stolen, and now she's malfunctioning. This is cool, but only watch it if you're ready for a spoiler! By the way, this clip has a lot of Summer Glau in it:

That's enough for now; in the near future I will probably post more about the topic of time travel and robots in various movies, since I've thought a lot about these (especially the time travel) and the interesting paradoxes they pose.