I am not a big fan of the space program. I would much rather the money were spent on something I consider useful, like a high speed train to Los Angeles. But the pictures that come out of the program are amazing. This is a picture of Falling Material Kicks Up Cloud of Dust on Dunes according to NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.
It is everything I could hope for: mysterious and beautiful. The picture above is a detail of the picture below. About a third of the way up from the bottom and a third of the way in from the left, is a dust cloud kicked up by the sun warming and melting carbon dioxide ice. This is a picture taken on Mars and sent here by a robot!
I love reflections. Reflections in metal, or water, or glass are always fun when we are not quite sure what is going on. The reflection below is off the side of a very polished Airstream trailer parked near the Palo Alto Concours D'Elegance at Stanford a couple of years ago. It is a straight shot. Where the metal is warped – for example, the lock on the panel or the rivets – the reflection is warped.
Reflections in water have the added complexity of the water surface. For example, this is a reflection on a pond with a very soft breeze.
Flipped up side down and it becomes a soft impressionistic image.
The reflection on a perfectly still High Sierra Lake is almost like a mirror – except for the rings left by a fish. (Double click on the image to enlarge it for the full effect.)
One of my favorite end of the year entertainments is looking at Ten Best lists, especially the Ten Best Movies. This year, I was surprised at, not only the movies I hadn't seen, but the number of movies I hadn't even heard of. So I thought I had better put my two cents in.
This has been a great year for good movies. Maybe not a great year for great movies; but, still, there were an amazing number of good movies. And…in the summer a burst of great movies. Granted, we didn't see very many movies this summer, having missed G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra, for example, but what we did see was better than any summer I can remember.
The summer started with Up. An allegedly kids cartoon about growing old, the meaning of life, friendship, and other childish concerns. It was engaging and moving. Then in no particular order, cameFunny People, The Hangover, The Hurt Locker, District 9, and Inglorious Basterds, ending with Julie and Julia.
Funny People is anything but funny and I think it got panned by a lot of critics because they were expecting fart jokes. Directed by Judd Apatow and starring Adam Sadler who is as good and complicated as he was in Punch Drunk Love, Funny People is about dying and community, money and isolation, hero worship and reality, and humor. If you are looking for a truly funny movie, then The Hangover can't be beat. It is a very funny movie about men doing very stupid things in Las Vegas, but they are not stupid and that is what makes it work.These two movies sort of work together; the funny people not being funny and the serous people being very funny.
District 9 got great reviews but I thought it was the weakest of all the summer movies. But that really is only saying how good the other movies were. District 9 has lots to say while still being an engrossing scifi adventure.
The Hurt Lockerand Inglorious Basterdswere two very different war movies. But not war movies in the classic, Aldo Ray, sense (althoughInglorious Basterds wants us to believe it is a classic Aldo Ray movie). Of the two, at first glance, The Hurt Locker, wants to be the most serious and it was serious and excellent but… Looking back at it over dinner after the movie, or the next day, it didn't always make sense. And I am not sure that it was anatomically correct: a firefight at the center of the movie seems to just start and stop at random, and why are they driving around the desert without backup, and the Colonel is unrealistically over the top enthusiastic. But, still, a powerful movie about men at war. The best description I have read of Inglorious Basterds is Jewish porn – and it is. It is my favorite movie of the year. Quentin Tarantino switches from scene to scene with no transition shots but we always know exactly where (and when) we are. And each individual scene is a near masterpiece: the photography is staggeringly good, the dialog brilliant, the contribution to the story arc pitch perfect. At the start of the movie, the evil Nazi – and he is very evil – pulls out a ridiculously large German pipe: when I mentioned it to Michele, she said I think it is Tarantino's way of saying This is a fantasy
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The summer ended with Julie and Julia. An obvious homage to cooking and food but also a uplifting movie about good marriages. A great way to end the summer.
Michele and I painted our bedroom and my office which has kept me off my computer for the last week or so. It is very nice to have a newly painted bedroom and office with new carpet in the bedroom and wood flooring in the office and even nicer to be able to sit down at the computer.
2012 2010 promises to be an very interesting year. In the Obama Administration's second year, we should get out of Gitmo, start getting out of Iraq, double down on Afghanistan, and pass some sort of Health Care Bill; in F1, Schumi is back and driving for Mercedes Benz; on the downside, the real economy will probably limp along; but the best news is that the Oughties are over.
For me, the Oughties were a decade of six operations – and that was the good news compared to how Bush screwed the country over. Happy New Decade indeed.