/* ** ************************************************************************* ** ************************************************************************* ** The Non-Sequitur Express ** Published at random intervals by Phillip Thorne ** Volume 3, Issue 14: Wednesday, 14 November 2001 ** http://nsx.underbase.org/ ** ** "Wet and cool, like a chilled strand of fettucine ... it's like ** a cross between a slimy slug and a Velcro barracuda." [*] ** ************************************************************************* ** ************************************************************************* */ OBSERVATIONS & C: Anthrax pranks, eyelashes, why air?, why prey?, tiny CD-Rs. ERRATA & O+A+A: Missed TV. TOY OVERVIEW: MechWarrior K'nex, LOTR bricks, Star Wars and Harry LEGO. UPCOMING: "War in the Pocket", "ReBoot", "Justice League", movies. plus Legalese, acknowledgements and opt-in/out instructions. http://nsx.underbase.org/ - back issues http://nsx.underbase.org/index_plus.htm - synopses, reviews, analyses, etc. http://nsx.underbase.org/tv/ - Philadelphia and network TV listings mailto://nsx-discuss-l@underbase.org - post on this issue (if subscribed) http://www.underbase.org/ - additional databases /* *************************************************************************** ** OBSERVATIONS & COGITATIONS ** Anthrax pranks --why? ** Eyelashes ** How'd they not know that? --Air as a fluid ** Conventional wisdom --"What species wars upon its own kind?" ** Mini CD-Rs reach stores ** ************************************************************************ */ Subject: Americans who've decided to conduct anthrax pranks on coworkers: to quote "Full Metal Jacket" (1987), "What is your malfunction?" Where is their judgment, their good sense? *Mailing* white powder in an anonymous envelope at least shows a reasonable prudence against detection, but *these* pranksters commit their caprices where they can be *caught*. Are they merely incorrigible, the clowns who've bought whoopie cushions and Can O' Springy Snake since grade school? Has a confluence of terrorism anxiety and workplace pressure caused them to snap? Or are they merely the froth atop the statistical ocean of human behavior, with no specific *reason* for their behavior? --chance requires *somebody* be this stupid, and they're doubly unlucky to have a national media ready to trumpet their idiocy to the five corners of the continent. The anthrax-pranksters don't quite qualify for the Darwin Awards, which celebrate those persons considerate enough to *remove* themselves from the gene pool by acts of egregious and superlative stupidity: [ www.darwinawards.com ]. *** Eyelashes. They get bent and rub against the surface of your eyeball. They fall out and climb under your eyelid. The upper and lower sets gleefully tangle themselves and fasten your eye shut. Don't you just hate that? And miniscule droplets of mucus that crawl out of your tear duct and float across your cornea, then bunch up against your eyelid when you blink -- those are a bother, too. *** How'd they not know that? --Air as a fluid. Consider: the wind that propels your ship or impedes your stroll, the breeze produced by waving a palm frond fan; they should be obvious analogs to flows of water. But if so, why did natural philosophers think the transparency surrounding us was some sort of vacuum, until the existence of air pressure was demonstrated? Perhaps there were insufficient examples. Our hypothetical ancient observer (perhaps Greek, they were always standing and walking, I mean, thinking) probably had access to the following fluids: freshwater, saltwater, muddy water, vegetable oil, grape juice, honey, blood, and urine; but those differ little in volatility; there's no obvious connection to something as vaporous as *air*. And vapor: he might have seen ice melt to water, and water boiled away to nothing; but he didn't have access to the extremes of temperature to follow the full phase changes of any other material. Moreover, most of those liquids aren't *transparent*: without pure alcohols, mineral oil, petroleum distillates (gasoline, kerosene, turpentine, etc.), benzene, or ether, he might have been unable to generalize the concept of "transparent liquid". Without the concepts of "visible liquid to invisible vapor", "liquid flows, vapor flows", and "transparent liquid", the final leap to the notion of "air as fluid" -- that the invisible-but-sometimes-resistant nothing-something around us is *also* a thing that flows -- would be, perhaps, impossible. *** Challenging conventional wisdom! The scathing sentiment, "what sort of species wars upon its own kind?", is frequently delivered by supercilious aliens to primitive humans, in both written and filmed SF. This is, of course, a reflection of the ethical stance of the writers; but nonetheless, the response of the human characters should be, "On our planet, most of them!" First, competition for resources is just as applicable within a species as between: scuffles for mates, disputes over territory, hungry parents accidentally eating their own numerous young -- the animal kingdom is replete with examples. "Soldier ants", anyone? Second, "they're *not* our kind!" As intelligent beings, humans are able to formulate sophisticated reasons for conflict, such as "us versus them", the idea that the other side is *unworthy* to share resources, even if they're available. (There's also the small matter of, What is a species? Is it the collection of all creatures that *could* mate to produce fertile offspring, or only those that regularly *do so*? Interfertile populations are regularly divided by geography, anatomy, and courtship instincts.) As an allegory on racism, TOS-314:"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" asks the question from the other side. The natives of the planet Cheron have parti-colored faces, jet black on one side, bone white on the other -- but they're a chiral mix; both mirrored versions exist. Lokai and Bele, the last survivors of the planet Cheron, have pursued and fought for fifty millenia because their chiralities differ. The _Enterprise_ crew doesn't understand the fuss, and is merely aggravated by the Cherons' "X-Men"-like powers. (There's also that Dr.Seuss book with the star-bellied creatures. The book ends well. The "Trek" episode does not.) *** CD-R technology is now available in several sizes ("form factors"): the original 5.5-inch discs with 640- and 700-MB capacity, 80-mm 185-MB discs, rectangular- and pill-shaped "business cards". For a while, the smaller scales have only been available in catalogs (eg www.cyberguys.com), but Staples is finally stocking them alongside their other recordable media; on bulk spindles, next to packs of appropriately-sized jewel cases. *** [*] Today's masthead quote is from the leech-themed article "Blood Suckers" in the dec-2001 issue of _Discover_ magazine. [ www.discover.com ] /* *************************************************************************** ** ERRATA & OMISSIONS, ADDENDA & ADMISSIONS ** Missed TV ** ************************************************************************ */ Missed TV: tue-16-oct-21:00 WB, "Smallville" premiere runs several minutes over. fri-19-oct-17:00 TCN, "ReBoot" season 4 begins airing weekly. mon-22-oct-16:30 TCN, "Zoids" (cel+cgi animé) premieres. mon-29-oct to fri-02-nov-19:00 29, "Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror" week (repeats). mon-05-nov-17:00 TCN, "Zoids" moves into this slot. tue-06-nov-00:30 TCN, "Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket" (animé) premieres. tue-06-nov-20:00 UPN, "Buffy: the Musical" is displaced to Saturday. tue-06-nov-20:30 Fox, "Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror XII" (new). thu-08-nov-20:30 Fox, "The Tick" premieres. sat-10-nov-19:00 UPN, "Buffy: the Musical" runs 70 minutes. /* *************************************************************************** ** TOY OVERVIEW ** P.O.X., M.A.G.S., Skannerz ** K'Nex: "MechWarrior" and NASA ** Playmates Intelli-Blox: "Lord of the Rings" ** Mega-Bloks: US Navy ** LEGO: dinosaurs, "Harry Potter", "Star Wars" ** ************************************************************************ */ HASBRO P.O.X.(tm) ... First there were standalone Pocket Monsters (and Giga-Pets, and Nano-Babies), electronic critters that frolicked behind the lo-res LCD screen of a keychain-sized device. Then the devices gained interconnects, so you could engage your creature in combat against your neighbor's. The new P.O.X. handheld games communicate by short-range RF, so your creature fights anyone in the vicinity, autonomously. Three models: Cycro (speed), Plasmo (deception), Spino (strength). (Not to be confused with "Pogs", those cardboard flipping disks derived from the lid of a Hawaiian fruit juice bottle.) HASBRO M.A.G.S. (MUSIC ACTIVATED GAME SYSTEM) ... Music is transformed to pulsating targets for you to shoot at. Screen consists of a fixed set of LEDs (red, amber, green). Packed with audio input cable. Can be linked to a second unit so friends can compete against the same music. RADICA SKANNERZ ... Handheld electronic game; scan the barcodes on ordinary products to acquire monsters, potions, and powers. Each packed with a comic book. Three models: Pataak, Zendra, Ujalu. [ www.hasbro.com ] [ www.radicagames.com ] [ www.skannerz.com ] *** K'NEX MECHWARRIOR(R) and MISSIONS IN SPACE sets ... K'NEX is a modular building system in the "Tinkertoys" phylum of rods-and-hubs (rather than "Meccano" plates-and-screws, or "Lego" bricks). Like Lego(tm), they seem to be licensing popular properties to create themed sets: the giant robotic war machines of "MechWarrior" ("from the hit PC game series" -- no mention of the RPG or books) and vehicles of NASA. Each MechWarrior set contains instructions for two Mechs. (Connosieurs will recognize these as some of the more popular, distinctive designs.) [ www.knex.com ] [ http://mech.knex.com ] [ http://mis.knex.com ] [ www.fasa.com/BattleTech/ ] 12531 Shadow Cat/Sunder (355 pieces) 12533 Cauldron-Born/Owens (423) 14140 Mad Cat/Avatar (590) 13147 Apollo Lunar Lander (501) 15118 International Space Station (915) 15122 Saturn V (934) *** PLAYMATES INTELLI-BLOX(tm) CONSTRUCTION SYSTEM and LORD OF THE RINGS ... This Lego-compatible building system features figurines and playsets from the upcoming film adaptation of J.R.R.Tolkein's books. When used with the battery-powered "Mines of Mordor" playset, the figures use "Intelli-tronic(tm) Voice Activation" to spout appropriate clips from the movie. (Remember the "Star Wars" figures with accompanying voice chips?) [ www.playmatestoys.com/html/sec_playmates_electronix.html ] [ www.playmatestoys.com/html/lor_product-moria.html ] RITVIK MEGA-BLOKS(tm) ... This Canadian line of Lego-compatible plastic building bricks features many replicas of real-world vehicles, which accurately reduce curved surfaces to aliased, voxel-ated lumps using a minimum of brick types. (It's a subtle art, and one that LEGO(tm) has veered away from.) The bricks don't have the exquisite "clutch power" of genuine Lego bricks, but the sets are more economical (half the price per brick). Unlike Lego, Mega-Bloks has produced several explicitly military-themed sets, including tanks, helicopters, jets, and ships. MEGA-BLOKS 9775-"SEA WOLF" ... a cutaway depiction of the US Navy's latest submarine class, showing each functional area on three decks, backlit by 12 light bricks; they're powered from a console which also emits USN-appropriate noises. 2450 pieces, $80 MSRP, marked down to $70 at Toys'R'Us. Some other military-themed sets are the 9707-"Combat Tank" (green, 346- pcs, $10), 9709-"Fighter Jet" (grey Harrier, 226-pcs, $10), and 9780- "USS Kitty Hawk" (grey aircraft carrier, 1700-pcs, $50). [ www.megabloks.com//html/Micro/Probuilder/browserprobuilder.htm ] [ www.megabloks.com//html/Micro/Blok%20Bots/browserbots.htm ] *** LEGO BRICKS ... In recent years, the LEGO Group (aka TLG, Interlego) has been licensing popular media properties on which to base certain sets: Disney characters (Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh), movies (Star Wars(tm), Jurassic Park III(tm), Harry Potter(tm)), and TV (Britain's "Bob the Builder"). This year's JPIII sets are add-ons to the 1349-"LEGO & Steven Spielberg MovieMaker Set", based around a USB PC camera and software to make your own Lego-based films. [ www.bobthebuilder.com ] [ www.lego.com/studios/ ] (In the tables below, the columns denote the set number, its name or description, the number of bricks, MSRP, average price per brick (the standard is $0.10), and notes on the contents.) In addition to JPIII, an additional eight dinosaur sets were released this year (2001). They contain new tapered cylindrical neck-or-tail pieces (which can, with imagination, serve as tentacles, tusks, or table legs), fins, flippers, feet, and one type of head. The four larger sets are based on a body core, and contain enough spare pieces to construct four separate dinos. The smaller sets contain a larger percentage of general bricks, in the new Sand Green and Sand Blue colors. (Note: the catalog photos of the latter sets have badly-reproduced, oversaturated colors.) [ www.lego.com/studios/studioinfo/jurassic.asp ] [ www.legos.com/dinosaurs/ ] DINOSAURS SET DESCRIPTION PCS COST $/PC NOTES ---- ------------------------------------------ --- ---- ---- ----- 6719 Brachio/plesio/plateosaurus/diplodocus 25 9.99 0.40 Green 6720 T-Rex/parasaurolophus/ourano/spinosaurus 23 9.99 0.43 Blue 6721 Mosasaurus/dimetrodon/postosuchus/iguanodon 26 9.99 0.38 Blue 6722 Styraco/camara/centrosaurus/triceratops 19 9.99 0.53 Green 7000 Young Ankylosaurus 37 2.99 0.08 Green 7001 Young Iguanodon 23 2.99 0.13 Blue 7002 Young Brachiosaurus 31 2.99 0.10 Green 7003 Young Dimetrodon 20 2.99 0.15 Blue ---- ------------------------------------------ --- ---- ---- ----- Most of the tie-in sets to the upcoming "Harry Potter" film are playsets of locations within the Hogwarts School, and are designed to stack together into a single recreation of the castle and its cellars. Just as with the "Star Wars" sets, each comes with a variety of human figures ("minifigs", to distinguish them from other scales of Lego figurines) with new accessories (Dumbledore's beard, Quirrel's turban), and also animals (bat, cat, owl, rat, scorpion, spider, frog, dragon hatchling). The Hagrid figure is actually at the new "Jack Stone" scale. The 4708-"Hogwarts Express" set is a train (engine and one car), but does not fit on the Lego train tracks. It should be easy enough to replace its wheels with standard bogeys, however. [ www.lego.com/trains/ ] [ www.lego.com/harrypotter/ ] In the following table, minifig names are abbreviated: DRaCo Malfoy, DUMbeldore, HAGrid, HARry Potter, HERmione Granger, RON Weasly, Prof.QUIrrel, and Prof.SNaPe. Unnamed minifigs are the ghost and suit of armor. Animals are similarly abbreviated and should be obvious. HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCEROR'S STONE SET DESCRIPTION PCS COST $/PC NOTES ----- --------------------------- --- ------ ---- ------------------------------- 4701 Sorting Hat 48 6.99 0.15 Har Her Ron; owl 4702 The Final Challenge 60 9.99 0.17 Har Qui; spi 4704 The Room of the Winged Keys 175 19.99 0.11 Har Ron 4705 Snape's Class 163 19.99 0.12 Snp Ron ghost; frg rat spi 4706 Forbidden Corridor 238 29.99 0.13 Har Her Ron; cerberus 4707 Hagrid's Hut 299 29.99 0.10 Dum Hag; drag, owl rat 4708 Hogwarts Express 410 49.99 0.12 Har Her Ron; frg owl spi 4709 Hogwarts Castle 682 89.99 0.13 Drc Har Her Ron Hag Snp Dum ghost armor; 2 bat 3 owl 4721 Hogwarts Classrooms 73 9.99 0.14 Har Her, Ron; frg owl spi 4722 House of Gryffindor 73 9.99 0.14 Ron; owl rat 4723 Diagon Alley Shops 80 9.99 0.13 Her; cat frg rat scp k4709 Harry Potter Collection 1891 199.99 0.11 All but 4708 ----- --------------------------- --- ------ ---- ------------------------------- TLG has produced three styles of "Star Wars" sets: vehicles and playsets at minifig scale; detailed, articulated Technic-class droids; and oversized vehicle models. The latest of these (announced in the Holiday 2001 edition of the Shop at Home catalog, and available to ship mid- November) is the 10019-"Rebel Blockade Runner(tm)" (properly known as a Corellian Corvette), the first ship seen in the first film ("Star Wars Ep.IV: A New Hope", 1977). This is the first capital starship-scale model released by TLG, and it manages the trademark "Star Wars" junky hull texture ("greeblies") with side-mounted plates, many small elements, and large elements printed with pipage. It's a treasure trove of white bricks and plates, with a smaller number of grey and dark-grey, and a sprinkling of dark-red and sand. It looks to contain 52 castle-sized quarter-cylinders. [ www.starwars.com ] [ www.lego.com/starwars/ ] STAR WARS SET DESCRIPTION PCS COST $/PC NOTES ----- --------------------------- --- ------ ---- ------------------------------- 7181 TIE Interceptor 703 99.99 0.14 20x17x17" black grey blue 7191 X-wing(tm) Fighter 1304 149.99 0.12 20x17x 9" white grey sand red 10019 Rebel Blockade Runner(tm) 1748 199.99 0.11 28x11x17" white grey dark-red ----- --------------------------- --- ------ ---- ------------------------------- /* *************************************************************************** ** UPCOMING & ONGOING ** "Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket" ** "Zoids" (vs. "Heavy Gear" and "Medabots") ** "ReBoot" season 4 ** Movies: "Monsters Inc.", "Harry Potter" ** "Justice League" on TCN sat-17-nov-19:00 ** ************************************************************************ */ Last year, The Cartoon Network (TCN) aired the animé "Gundam Wing" for several cycles, attracting the preteen girl demographic (all those dreamy boys) while alienating the mature male space combat demographic. "Gundam Wing" is part of the "After Colonies" timeline of the "Gundam" franchise, but TCN has now moved resolutely into the original "Universal Century" timeline, airing the original "Mobile Suit Gundam" (42 eps), "Gundam: 08th Mobile Suit Team" (13 eps), and now "Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket" (6 eps). (While "08th MS Team" was allocated at least three cycles in the afternoon and late-night slots, TCN failed to complete even the first cycle of "MSG". Did the programmers belatedly realize it was violent and featured many deaths, including some by handgun?) The UC timeline also includes "Gundam 0083: Stardust Memories", and because toys affiliated with that series are now on shelves (alongside "Wing" and "MST"), can we hope for it to appear on TCN too? Don't bother checking www.cartoonnetwork.com; it's a horrible, HORRIBLE site that can't be browsed text-only or over a low-speed connection, and lacks even the courtesy of customer comment email addresses. Also, it has broken scripts. *** This next series was completely unheralded, but TCN is also showing "Zoids", a new animé series combining cel animation (for human characters) and cel-shaded CGI (for the huge animal-themed combat machines they pilot). That name familiar? "Zoids" was a toyline in the early 1980s; you assembled the robotic dinosaurs with knurled cylindrical nuts, then set them walking via spring-wound motors (the annoying buzzy kind). The CGI is essential to depict the Zoids on the show, crammed as they are with fiddly detail. Like "Heavy Gear" (on KidsWB), the premise of "Zoids" is organized giant robot combat, in huge arenas and off-limits wastelands. (In the former it's a war-surrogate, the latter a sport.) The story follows the exploits of the "Blitz Team", in particular against the "Backdraft Group", a megacorp-crime syndicate. Te "Liger Zero" Zoid can be instantly accessorized with alternate hull plating, a process which satisfies the jp-RDA for stock footage. (And then there's the animé "Medabots" on FoxKids, in which ubiquitous kid-sized sentient robots, many of them owned by children, engage in refereed fights to settle arguments; in "submission battles", the loser forfeits a body part. It's like "Pokémon" for the Radio Shack set.) *** Remember "ReBoot", the first fully CG-animated half-hour cartoon, produced by Vancouver pioneer Mainframe from 1994-1997 (including a third season that wasn't shown in the US)? TCN is once again airing it (in the weekday 06:00 slot), along with a fourth season (or possibly two four-part telemovies) on Fridays at 17:00. Like Disney's "Tron", "ReBoot" works from the conceit that sentient beings and civilizations exist inside our computers, fighting aginst scheming Viruses and in Games downloaded by the godlike Users. If the Sprite and Binome inhabitants don't prevail within the Game Cube, that sector of the city is Nullified. The series excels in its stylish /homages/ in each game: "Army of Darkness", "James Bond", "Jurassic Park", "Toy Story", etc. *** Pixar-Disney's "Monsters Inc." reached $100 million in box office receipts in nine days, faster than Dreamworks' "Shrek" (2001) or Pixar's "Toy Story 2" (1999). To quote Tony the Tiger, "It's grrrrreat!" Watch for the allusions to "Star Trek II's" Kobayashi Maru simulation, and to Ray Harryhausen (maker of stop-motion monster films like "Jason and the Argonauts"), and for the stunning closet-door warehouse-library scene; the inside of Trantor might look like that. (Trantor is Isaac Asimov's city-world from his "Galactic Empire" books, predating "Star Wars's" Coruscant.) In England, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" has already beaten the record set by "The Phantom Menace", and in the US (s/Philosopher/Sorceror/g) is beating records for advance ticket sales. *** "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is now available on UPN tues-20:00, on FX weekdays, and on wtxf-29-fox sat-13:00 and sometimes -18:00. FX has changed from showing eps MTWRF-19:00 with repeats TWRFM-16:00, to two new eps per night, MTWRF-18:00 and -19:00. Currently in mid-s3. thu-08-nov-20:30 30m Fox, "The Tick" premieres. sun-11-nov-20:00 30m Fox, "Simpsons" (anim) s13. sun-11-nov-21:00 60m Fox, "The X-Files" s9. thu-15-nov-00:30 30m TCN, "Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket" begins second run. fri-16-nov-17:00 30m TCN, "ReBoot" (cg) ep 406 (aka 4.2.2). sat-17-nov-19:00 TCN, "Justice League" (anim) premieres. /* ************************************************************************ ** Legalese ** Acknowledgments ** Opt-in/out Instructions ** *********************************************************************** */ The set of creative works herein reviewed and analyzed, including the subset {books, movies, TV shows, toys}, are the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement or endorsement is expressed, implied or intended. The original reviews and analyses are themselves copyright 2001 by Phillip Thorne. In this issue, certain data (possibly not otherwise acknowledged) have been obtained, aggregated and synthesized from: Epguides.com epguides.com Tribune Media Services Excite TV tv.excite.com FOX Television fox.com The Internet Movie Database imdb.com The LEGO Group lego.com The Star Trek Encyclopedia If you're receiving this newsletter, you've probably intentionally subscribed to it, or possibly you're interested in special topical coverage, or maybe I've sent you a teaser issue. To subscribe and unsubscribe, follow standard mailing list protocol with the addresses below: Publisher: nsx@underbase.org Newsletter: nsx-l@underbase.org nsx-l-subscribe (to subscribe; blank subject) nsx-l-unsubscribe (to unsubscribe) Discussion list: nsx-discuss-l@underbase.org nsx-discuss-l-subscribe (to subscribe; blank subject) nsx-discuss-l (to post) nsx-discuss-l-unsubscribe (to unsubscribe) /* *************************************************************************** ** *************************************************************************** ** The Non-Sequitur Express ** http://nsx.underbase.org/ ** Volume 3, Issue 14: Wednesday, 14 November 2001 ** Copyright 1999-2001 Phillip Thorne, nsx@underbase.org ** *************************************************************************** ** ************************************************************************ */