My Other Vehicle is Going to Pluto

This feels like something of a new golden age for NASA, and for space enthusiasm in general. In two months and one day exactly, the New Horizons spacecraft at 32,600 mph the fastest ever built, will reach Pluto. Even at that incredible speed, it will end up taking a full nine years to reach Pluto. Right now it's about 50 million miles away, roughly half the distance between Earth and the Sun. But perhaps even more intriguingly, in three years, the James Webb Space Telescope, many times more powerful than Hubble, will go into orbit, offering up images of what light looked like only 300,000 years after the Big Bang. To tide us over, we'll have to make due with knowing more about Pluto than ever before.

Since its discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, Pluto has been an object of keen interest, as it was the only planet added to the previous eight discovered in the twentieth century. Pluto represented the limitless horizons of discovery in our own time, the grand possibility of major new findings in our own celestial backyard. But we've made precious little progress in learning about it since it first appeared to human eyes.

The conditions of its discovery, and its tiny size and extreme distance from the Sun, also make it one of the quirkiest planets. Its tragic demotion at the callous hands of Mike Brown, self-proclaimed Pluto killer, only made it more endearing.

Tombaugh was an unlikely planetary discoverer--he didn't attend college, and lived on his family's farm in Kansas. Working almost entirely by his own will and ingenuity, he built an extremely powerful telescope, and discovered Pluto. Pluto got its name from an unusually bright eleven year old schoolgirl named Venetia Burney.

But Tombaugh didn't just discover Pluto--he discovered the first Kuiper Belt Object, a chaotic region at the outermost limits of our solar system which we now know is home to hundreds of dwarf planets and moons. Pluto is actually the second largest object in the region, next to the dwarf planet Eris, but it is number one in fascination and folkloric value.

Since its discovery 85 years ago, humanity has only seen the blurriest images of Pluto--this image, hard-won though it was, is the best we've gotten, and it isn't great. With the cameras on the New Horizons, scientists will be able to see structures about the size of a small city block.

The New Horizons mission, launched in 2006, traveling 36,000 miles per hour, has traveled 2, 550,000,000 miles, and is currently only 50 million miles away from Pluto. And since this is beloved Pluto we're talking about, the spacecraft carries more homages to Pluto's discovery than any other spacecraft. NASA engineers actually figured out a way to install a portion of Tombaugh's cremated remains onboard. Tombaugh saw further than anyone in life, and now has actually, albeit in substantially altered form, traveled further than anyone.

Perhaps the best example of New Horizons embodying the spirit of Pluto's origins is in its homage to Venetia Burney. The Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter (VBSDC) is the first ever student-designed scientific instrument to be sent into deep space. Its main aim is to analyze the immense dust streaming off of the Kuiper Belt--more than six tons every second! The Voyager spacecraft passed through the Kuiper Belt decades ago, but it had 1970s technology, and could not analyze its properties properly.

The VBSDC will provide pioneering data about the chemical composition of Kuiper Belt dust, giving us insight into how the Solar System formed, and why it looks the way it does. Though the student designers of the VBSDC were highly skilled and trained, they were to some extent amateurs--just like Tombaugh.

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History

This is such a fantastic podcast. World War One has always been a bit of an odd historical phenomenon--its importance is so obvious, but so removed and murky. Kind of like John Updike's status in the literary readership community--everyone respects/is aware of him, most haven't read him, though they feel they should.

Carlin does a great job of putting WW1 in its context of military history. The German forces sweeping through Belgium in the summer of 1914 had flanks that were themselves as large as the totality of Napoleon's Grand Army. Such enormous numbers of soldiers had never been organized and deployed, and Germany's meticulous plan for this mobilization is one of the most unprecedented achievements in human history.

Germany's villainy is examined, confirmed, and set in somewhat of a tragic tone--Germany was so focused on showing how great it was, it didn't realize that the rest of the world would think they were complete dicks. Its behavior in its steamroll through Belgium was so shockingly callous, evil, rape-like and overpowering, that they were instantly and lastingly branded villains. German weapons killed 27,000 French soldiers in a single short battle early in the war, a number which would have been high for an entire month of casualties in Napoleonic times.

World War One is also kind of the last mythological war, that has some kind of begrudging grandeur to it. Excellence in warfare itself used to be considered a somewhat refined, gentlemanly pursuit, like chemistry or linguistics. The idea of limited war still had some life left in it, but was pulverized in a merciless hail of flying steel. French soldiers would charge headlong against German machine guns, driven by an outdated sense of heroism that little in the new world.

The death of the 19th century, the beginning of a totally insane mechanized warscape. It was pretty easy for everyone to except the ubiquity of Predator drones in US military operations. After the appearance of the Paris Gun, whose shells were the first manmade objects to make it to the stratosphere, anything was possible. Flying pilotless missile shooting vehicles? Sure why not.

Carlin does what the best history always does--bring alive the consciousness of the past, making it understandable and compelling to our dim eyes and ears. As the best teachers do, Carlin makes it clear that he is trying to work things out for himself, to develop a fuller, clearer, more dexterous grasp of the ideas in question, and related ones that might be hit upon at any time. It isn't lecturing, its opening a window onto your own thinking.

Why's the participation rate so low?

In a shocking departure from historical precedent, a sitting American president acknowledged one of the major issues actually facing real American citizens. In a conversation with David Simon, creator of HBO's The Wire, President Obama mentioned that the economy has rebounded and many new jobs are being added. Standard stuff, but then he actually referenced the historically bad labor force participation rate, according to which, 37.2% of eligible American citizens are not in the labor force.

Obama and Simon seemed to agree the reason so many people aren't in the labor force is because so many millions of nonviolent offenders have criminal records making it all but impossible to get a job. This was all in the context of Simon pleading for a less insane drug enforcement policy, using the low labor force participation rate as exhibit A of the unintended negative effects of the draconian war on drugs.

This certainly has some impact on the unprecedentedly, disastrously bad labor force participation rate. But even with a reduction in the number of people given criminal records for nonviolent, marijuana related crimes, that 37.2% would likely still be in the high 20s. There is a deeper problem. And even if these people could get the newly added jobs Obama boasts of in our rebounding economy, they aren't jobs that anyone would want. They aren't good jobs, and the reasonable response of these people would be returning to whatever "deviance" got them in trouble in the first place.

But there is of course a much deeper problem. The insidious, entrenched issue is that even college educated citizens with no criminal records and every possible advantage to have a shot at starting a reasonably respectable career are met with rejection at every turn. It is all but impossible for someone with good grades from a good school to get a job in a career that they are interested in. The reasonable response to spending years and years sending out thousands of resumes, many of which are paired with personalized, painstakingly crafted plaintive pleas to be able to start a life cover letters is to give up. At a certain point, being discouraged is not only merited, but the only reasonable thing to do.

Getting your resume past the robotic gatekeepers is only the first step, and most people will not even be able to do this. Being rejected after a few seconds of consideration from an actual human hiring manager is considered a victory. Being rejected after being invited in for an actual in-person interview is an amazing, kingly coup. Actually getting a decent job and joining the middle class is an absurd, rock-star scenario reserved for only the luckiest and most exceptional.

Withdrawing from the labor force, as so very many millions have done, is a vote of no confidence in a system that could not possibly have made it any clearer that it is completely closed off from you. It has nothing to do with the excessive criminalization of drug-related activities. It has everything to do with people who do everything right and are ready, willing, able, and qualified to work, with very pricey degrees and certifications, having absolutely no chance to do so.

Seven. Se7en. 2e7en? S373N?

Seven has always been one of my favorite movies. I hadn't seen it in about ten years, and always nodded approvingly when I saw it pop up on Netflix, but never even so much as added it to my list, let alone watch it again.

I just felt like my history with it was complete. It was a great movie that I saw a long time ago, and that was that. But when I saw that it was due to be taken off Netflix on March 1, I decided to give it a watch, because it would probably never be easier to watch it than it was on Netflix right then.

My first thought was just why is this movie so rare and singular? Has there been a movie that's even remotely comparable? It doesn't seem like that much to ask to have psychological thriller/crime drama/horror movies of this quality and pedigree every few years, does it? Shouldn't this be the kind of thing that Hollywood can produce with some regularity?

I had thought this came out in the later 90s, '97 or '98, but it was actually '95. So this was Brad Pitt right on the verge of becoming the huge star he is today. He was only three films removed from being Floyd, and those films were Legends of the Fall and Interview with the Vampire. Big productions both, sure, but neither of them were real beloved films. Seven was the start of a monster streak that hasn't really ended. Morgan Freeman was one year removed from The Shawshank Redemption, right at the start of his belated prime.

This was David Fincher before he became one of the most famed and admired directors of the era. It was his first film after the harrowing experience of making Alien 3, a production so negative he foreswore filmmaking for a few years after. So Seven had a lot going for it, and was a unique product of a lot of different factors. But it still doesn't seem like it should've been so hard to if not duplicate, at least approach. I can't think of a single film in the crime/horror genre that has approached it since. It was much appreciated in its time, but it wasn't really regarded as the unicorn it turns out it was, since those sorts of movies (think The Silence of the Lambs) came along every so often in the nineties.

So Seven was a great confluence of star acting and directing talent being caught right at the best moment, and a great script, and a combination of genres (psychological thriller/crime drama/horror) that are related, but not usually meshed together so intensely. What's stopping this from happening today?

Modestly budgeted (Seven was made for a tiny $30 million, ending up making over $300 million worldwide box office), deeply impactful and memorable genre mashups with top quality talent. Why aren't these movies being made? As has been commented often, this is the sort of mid-level production that doesn't get funding anymore, as everything has to either be an enormous multi-hundreds of millions of dollars production with a surefire intellectual property backing it, or a tiny little indie.

The problem is tiny little indies, the province of original, compelling, potentially dark ideas, can't maximize their potential without the world-building assistance of a mid-range budget. And huge $100 million and beyond productions can't take the same kinds of risks that make films truly memorable.

Everyone knows that this sort of mid-level, adult production has shifted over to prestige serialized TV dramas. Breaking Bad, True Detective, Fargo, on and on. But the mere fact that it takes dozens of hours for these shows to pack the same punch that works like Seven and The Silence of the Lambs did in two shows how diluted the effect is. The ultimate quantitative effect of watching Breaking Bad may be the same as watching Seven, but if I want to experience it again, I can just set aside two hours to watch Seven and get it all again. I can't re-watch all of Breaking Bad.

The Oddly Good "The Frozen Ground"

I'd had the Nicolas Cage and John Cusack crime drama The Frozen Ground in my Netflix queue for quite a while, but only recently was I bored and bereft enough of things to watch on my iPad in bed as I fell asleep to start it. Of course, most Netflix movies you start and lose interest in after ten minutes, because most of them are things that you really very much almost want to see. But to my surprise I watched this one the whole way through.

Everyone knows that Cage will do just about any project that offers him a paycheck, so it's no surprise that he brings his usual workmanlike presence to this movie. Outside of a few odd rejuvenated bits of inspired mania every few years, that's all he has left in him. But with this movie, it weirdly kind of works.

It's about real life serial killer Robert Hansen, who killed 17 women in Alaska in the 1970s. Cusack plays Hansen as a workmanlike serial killer, carrying out his compulsions like mandatory tasks, and not really enjoying any of it. We get no idea of why he does what he does. Cusack just seems glad to be playing a bad guy, and so doesn't really make an effort to understand who Hansen is, beyond a guy who mechanically goes about his grim duty of killing young women.

Beyond the two (former) A-list leads, the rest of the cast is far stronger than it has any right to be. Breaking Bad's Dean Norris and classic That Guy Kevin Dunn play cops who help Cage track down the killer; Radha Mitchell plays his wife; and Vanessa Hudgens plays the young prostitute who got away from Hansen and eventually helps to bring him down.

In her desire to jumpstart professional adulthood and seriousness, leaving behind the Disney stain, she's taken on a slew of prostitute, party girl, stripper and uglied up roles. What do you do when playing these extreme roles runs its course? What's the next step?

The plot is mainly about Cage's quest to get enough evidence to convince the District Attorney, played by yet another classic That Guy Kurt Fuller, to give him a search warrant for Hansen's house, since Cage is convinced he is the killer. It's all about paperwork, navigating bureaucratic processes, and keeping your own suspicions and agendas concealed in favor of going by the book.

Which is all to say that The Frozen Ground is among the most boring serial killer movies ever made. But there's something that just clicks about how the workmanlike attitude of the actors in the movie toward the project, the plot of navigating the labyrinths of bureaucracy, and the oddly begrudgingly committed nature of the killings themselves all sync up. Rarely do you find such a synchronicity between the motivations of the  hero and the villain, not to mention the actual actors playing them, and the real life story itself.  I sort of loved it.

Against Gratitude: A Manifesto

Gratitude is the watchword of the era, the value that has risen to the top in a time when there are few values, or rather, when the context in which values might have some meaning has been systematically degraded. It is the firm ground upon which people can proudly stand, secure in that moment, at least, that they do have a true north after all.

Our age is of course so monstrously corrupt and beyond redemption that any value with any sort of unilateral support must be a viciously insidious thing. The top value of a corrupt age serves primarily to enable bad people to rationalize their behavior. So what is gratitude, really? What evilness does it permit to be perpetuated with a cleaner conscience? In what ways does it enable bad people to keep doing the bad things necessary to become successful in a bad place?

Gratitude is the condition of being happy with what you have, being thankful for the things that have entered your life. It is realizing that what you have is much more than you might think. We have a psychological tendency to dismiss the positive things in our lives and take them for granted, while focusing on something we want but don't have, and assigning overinflated value and merit to this missing aspect.

We are certain that the experience of having our void filled is more valuable than the, if modest, experiences of wholeness we walk around with every day. We are more whole, more fulfilled, luckier, and fortunate than our brains allow us to perceive. We tend to walk around in states of destructively reductive mania, treating good things like shit. Gratitude corrects this.

So why does gratitude take such concerted effort and practice to incorporate as an active value? Because whatever we have, whatever has been there for us reliably, means little to us. Attaining anything is typically insignificant. What we have means little to us because what we have begins as what we wanted, and we can generally only want stupid things.

Our society would cease functioning if people weren't conditioned to maniacally want things, and the persistent malaise and drift of our society is caused by the perpetual realization upon attaining the objects of desire that having them changes little, and means less. Valorizing gratitude is necessary when desire reveals its hollowness--if wanting and having were less hollow, were in fact fulfilling, nutritive, sustaining, then we wouldn't need to overtly train ourselves to appreciate what we have.

One would think that all the time and effort that goes into achieving something would generate enough meaning to ward off the habit of viewing what you've attained with dismissiveness, or even contempt. Capitalism encourages long, intense working effort devoid of meaning or logic--you can work away at a career for decades and then have a midlife crisis in which everything you've labored for day in and day out appears absurd and meaningless. Capitalism discourages us from even asking, let alone living in accordance with, the most important question of all: what am I doing, and what do I mean by doing it?

Imagine a being completely alien to the American capitalist laborer: someone who understands the meaning of his labor. Such an exotic, alien figure would have deep logic underlying the majority of his daily tasks, and an appreciation for the assets his labors have allowed him to accrue. At no point would such an alien being require a boot camp in gratitude--he would simply have worked for things that were important to him, and would have enough time and a logically supportive environment to have a chance to understand what was important to him. He would not work unless he had a reason to, and if he could not find a reason to work, he would not work, but would be supported by the state.

In our society, we are expected to work before having any inkling of why we work. This pattern holds fast for nearly everyone, since the only way to get a decent job is to become pre-professional and hyper-organized in your outlook from about your first high school report card.

The sooner you can become an adult in training the less likely it is that you will be shut out from the hallowed ground of respectable, gainful employment in your actual adult years. So of course there is no time to instill sense into your actions. It is an absurd thing to expect to understand why you undertake labors every day--you should just be ravenously obsessed with working as much as possible, end of story.

A society which places gratitude on the high altar of virtues is a society in which human beings have no idea why they do the things they do, and yet cannot be permitted to stop, or even slow down long enough to insert some kind of logic into their maniacal activities. Gratitude is a superficial bandage on a deep wound. The fact that we praise a superficial bandage shows how deeply sunk into ideological muck we are, and will continue being.

Narrative in Journalism

You can't read a nonfiction piece these days without wading through some hokey narrative context in the first few paragraphs. I blame Malcolm Gladwell's enormous success for the popularization of this trend--he made millions by writing pop psychology books whose chapters began by telling you about how Joe the Farmer always got up at the same time to check on his chickens and so forth, as a way of illustrating some larger point.

Purveyors of all forms of creative nonfiction think their readers want, or even need, to be "told a story." Is this not just a bit condescending? The presumption seems to be that readers are so resistant to receiving any ideas at all, that they need to be gently brought into the orbit of ideas through relating to an everyday character embroiled in some everyday situation. Is this really the case?

There are too many examples to list, but here's a quick one from a baseball Hall of Fame story yesterday on Grantland. I was excited to read it, but that excitement dissipated after the very first sentence: "Charles Bronfman was desperate." Oh no. Was he? I look forward to eventually learning how this obscure person from history's desperation fractionally elucidates the thesis of this piece of writing.

A reason I've stopped reading much fiction is because I don't really care about imaginary worlds--the real world is interesting enough, dense enough to parse. I don't care about characters--I care about ideas, which should be the province of creative nonfiction. But too often the creative part of nonfiction is interpreted to mean storytelling, or setting some traditional narrative context with colorful characters and charming settings.

Storytelling is a neat way to blend the creative with the nonfiction, since the story is based on a real event, but can include any quirky, minor, offbeat aspect of the character's biography. It also follows the bogus rule that writing should show rather than tell, which makes the journalist feel like he is doing the right thing.

But too often it seems like the narrative is a stand-in for the writer's own grasp of the ideas, or at least serves to pad out a thin idea over greater word counts. A story may more "vividly" (though probably not) illustrate an idea than simply describing the idea itself on its own terms, but not more trenchantly or subtly. If you can find a real life character who can be tied to an idea in some minimal way, you don't have to work to understand the idea as much, and you don't have to develop a narrative context of ideas into which it fits--instead you just shove it into the readymade context of the character's life.