Oh, it's Monday, isn't it?

Okay, it's one of those times again where events conspire to pile things on top of things. Thus, I have to cut this weeks post short.

I give you a really intersting interview with John Cleese:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-p44-9S4O0

So join me next time for more Eccentric Spheres and have a great week!

That's a big ape.

A couple of days ago, I watched King Kong (2005).

Many years ago, I saw the original 1933 version but to be honest, I remember very little of it. A few snippets here and there is all. Still, I got the impression that Peter Jackson did a pretty faithful retelling. Still, there are good and bad parts.

First the good. This is a very pretty film, even though it relies heavily on CGI. This is understandable considering Kong is a giant gorilla and he lives on an island full of forgotten creatures like dinosaurs. Not too many of those around, now are there? In fact, the CGI is better here than in many newer movies.

The actors are excellent for the most part, as are the props. A very slick portrayal of the early 1930's, no faults there. The movie is over three hours long, and it doesn't really ever get boring.

But there are problems. Some pretty big problems in fact. First up, Carl Denham. Denham is the character who drives the plot. The film maker who drags everyone else along on the expedition to Skull Island and the horrors that dwell there. The actor, Jack Black is unfortunately miscast. Black is a jovial guy, which suits half of Denhams personality, but the film really can't make up it's mind on whether he is a misguided but well-meaning or a villain. This becomes pretty jarring by the end of the film, as he again stares blankly at something while muttering his lines.

The biggest flaw however, is the pacing. For a three hour epic, it wastes a huge amount of time on drawn out scenes that serve little purpose being so long. Drawn out scene after drawn out scene showing the strange emotional relationship between Kong and Ann (the leading lady) become increasingly annoying as the movie draws to an end. Likewise, some of the action scenes are way too over the top. Sure, they need to bring the heat, but they don't just jump the shark, they throw the shark at you along with a few more for good measure.

All this sadly leads to nothing, as we all know the iconic scene where Kong climbs the Empire State Building and ultimately dies. The scene has become a meme, it's so famous. It has become a symbol of someone going berserk.

I mean, the original was filmed 72 years earlier. We all know how it has to end, and still they waste so much time trying to make an emotional impact it can never achieve.

Still, I don't hate it. I'll probably never watch it again, but I was sufficiently entertained the whole time. If you want a good bit of mindless entertainment, King Kong will do.

Until next time, have a wonderful week, and stay away from giant apes.

Practical Fashion

You have probably heard of Alexander the Great, right? I mean how many have actually been known as “The Great”? Not too many.

Anyway, the young Macedonian and his armies conquered the “whole known world”, by which they meant, everything until his armies said no. He did get to India, but his troops were too tired and worn out to conquer any more.

An important question is, how did they do it? How could they conquer so much? Well, that is a subject for a historian, which I'm not. Not to mention that the subject is quite a bit longer than what this blog post can handle.

Instead, we're looking at what the average soldier in Alex's army would have worn. Alex himself would have had the highest quality bronze armor, but the average dude could never have afforded that. In those days, a soldier had to supply his own gear, and the common man had no way to afford metal armor. So, what did they wear?

A professor at Wisconsin-Green Bay and his students have a very good hypothesis. They assembled thousands and thousands of images of urns, vases, wall paintings etc. from that time. The Greeks loved depicting anything and everything with their art. As a relevant example, a group of women harvesting flax, weaving it and then presenting armor to a man. This was an important clue.

Texts of the period, like the Iliad speak of linothorax, or literally linen chest. That's chest like torso, not a box for storing things.

The professor, Greg Aldrete, and his team got to work. The bought linen made by an artisan who grew her own flax and made cloth. No artificial materials used. Aldrete knew that the ancient Greeks used to glue, or laminate, linen for a variety of purposes. Therefore they chose to go that route and picked up lots of rabbit glue, which is glue made from, you guessed it, rabbits. Again, no modern chemicals.

At first they glued together a bunch of linen sheets, but they discovered that once it dried, they couldn't cut it. Not with knives and not with scissors or shears. Nothing short of an electric metal saw could go through it. They had to start again. Using the aforementioned pictures, they managed to make a tailors pattern and after some trial and error they assembled a bunch of tunics made from linothorax.

What they found was amazing. Not only is such a tunic comfortable to wear, but it's cool in the sun, and after a while it molds to the wearer and fits even better. And as for armor, it worked amazingly well. No period bow and arrow could pierce it! Wearing a 12 mm. linothorax tunic made you almost immune to any arrow manufactured between 600 B.C. and 200B.C. After that, metals got better and bows got stronger, so armor had to improve.

This discovery could mean a lot for understanding the ancient world. Yes, it's a theory, but it's a very likely theory. If you want to know more, here's the New Yorker article:

https://www.newyorker.com/books/joshua-rothman/how-to-make-your-own-greek-armor

So that's that. Glue and linen. Until next time, have a great week, and look out for conquering Macedonians!

It's a big world

Right, so I'm pretty sure I have talked about this before, but I can't find a shred of proof of this, so today's topic is:

Geoguessr

Geoguessr is a browser game that uses Google street view. Depending on your settings, the game drops you down somewhere in the world and it's your job to pinpoint that exact location. You are scored on how close you get. That's the simple explanation, but wait, there's more!

There are lots of different game modes. The world, Europe, the United States, Famous Places, specific countries, specific cities and on and on.

You can play alone, or partake in a challenge. When you generate a challenge, you get a link that you can send to your friends and then see who gets the closest. Now it is perfectly possible to cheat, and look up places in another window, but that's not fun.

How does one figure out where one is, you ask? Street and road signs, building and business signs, climate, plants, which side of the road people drive on, languages etc. It doesn't sound as much fun as it really is. But trust me, it's addictive.

Sadly, it can get a bit buggy. I've seen it spawn with a black screen, and then you're out of luck. I have also seen it load the previous map, but with another location in mind, and you have no clue. These are unusual occurrences though. Oh yes, it's completely free, so you loose nothing by trying it out.

The difficulty varies greatly from map to map. It can drop you down right next to Big Ben, or on a nameless highway somewhere in the U.S.

Here's a link to some great Geoguessr let's plays, featuring a special challenge, but I'll let Docm77 explain further. Keep in mind that his challenge is homemade, you don't have to play his way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2zrGL4tlCc&list=PLvh8CGg6LWwp5oCE7sS8ykLIZfW98Fa2U

Well that's that, go explore the world and all it's wonderful oddities. See how people actually live and see how close you can get. Until next time, have a wonderful exploratory week!

Jack Reacher

Lo and behold, I have watched a modern movie for once.

Today we are taking a look at Jack Reacher (2012).

This movie is based on the novel One Shot, by Christopher McQuarrie. I haven't read it, so I'm not commenting on it, I'm just mentioning it.

First of all, this is a Tom Cruise produced movie, starring Tom Cruise. Now, this isn't a bad thing – Tom always gives it his all. I haven't seen all his films, but the ones I have seen are at least decent and he never gives a lousy performance.

Anyway, Jack Reacher is no exception. It is a very enjoyable movie. But it's a weird one. The story in a nutshell is this;

A man is accused of shooting five people, and during interrogation, he asks for Jack Reacher. Reacher is a former military police Major with pretty much every decoration and medal the U.S. gives out. Being an amazing investigator, he and the accused persons lawyer, Helen, digs around. The plot thickens, lots of action happens, end credits roll.

So far so good, but I get a feeling that this film has a bit of an identity crisis. Conspiracies, deep deceptions, cover ups and paranoia belongs in the thriller category. Car chases, tense shoot-outs and close combat badassery belongs in the action section. Snappy dialog, and goofy events are pretty much comedy material.

Of course, action-comedies are normal, as are action-thrillers. But an action-thriller-comedy is an odd bird to say the least. Alright, so I'm being a bit picky here. There isn't that much comedy, but there is enough to stand out. The surprising thing is, it works. For some mysterious reason this movie hit pretty much all the right notes.

Jack is the typical lone wanderer, bad-ass fighter, super smart hero. You have seen him before with other faces and names. He can beat up multiple goons at ones. Whether it's clues or bullets, he doesn't miss, ever. You know the type, but Reacher feels a little more “realistic”.

Helen is awful. I have nothing against Rosamund Pike, but Helen is a weak character through and through. She spends half her scenes looking bewildered, as if Rosamund had just realized she's in a Cruise movie and she's not sure if that's good for her career. You could replace her with anyone else and it wouldn't matter.

We have a couple of veterans making and appearance. Robert Duvall and Werner Herzog play small but important roles, and there are some other recognizable faces. No complaints about the others.

The action is really solid. Well shot, and not too jumpy or dark. The stand out for me is how people react when getting shot. They don't go flying or spin several times. They mostly fall over as they should. Bonus points there.

My biggest complaint (apart from Helen) is the way the film presents the “mystery”. It's hard to say if it's intentionally feeding you information, or if it's clumsily leaving things in the open, but by the time the characters learn something vital, you already know about it.

Ultimately, Jack Reacher doesn't really do anything new, but it does it's thing well. It is in my book a genuinely entertaining movie. I got the feeling that they had fun when shooting it, and that's awesome. If you want a decent low key action movie, you can do a lot worse than this. And by low key I mean it's not by Michael Bay.

That is that. Until next time, have a great week and stay safe.

How did they do it?

Some people love it, some don't really care about it, but I have never run across someone who actively hates The Blues Brothers (1980).

This is not a review of the classic comedy, that would be a bit pointless, it's an introduction of the making of video. I watched it last night, and it was fascinating.

The Blues Brothers is a movie that essentially does everything right. And it's an odd one. Part action comedy, part rhythm and blues musical. It's also odd in how there is no typical good guy / bad guys set up.

Sure, Jake and Elwood are the good guys, but they lie, steal, cheat, sabotage and destroy property in spades.

Then we have the Illinois Nazis and the violent Good Ole Boys, but one group are Nazis (no, really?) that don't really accomplish anything, and the Good Ole Boys who, while in the wrong, have every right to be mad at the Blues Brothers. Law enforcement does not count since they're doing their jobs.

In the end, everyone get what's coming to them. Even Jake and Elwood (and the entire band) goes to jail, as they should.

But for all the chaos and madness, it's a really heart warming movie. You feel good after seeing it. It's a movie the likes of which we will likely never see again. It was too expensive, too demanding and way too experimental. You know, things studios void at all costs. After all, 103 cars were wrecked during shooting (a record at the time) and in the penultimate scene, there are over 500 extras running around. Oh, and three Sherman tanks, all in central Chicago, which had to be shut down.

Anyway, I tripped over the Making of the Blues Brothers documentary, and it's really interesting, so I thought I'd share it with you guys.

Until next time have a swinging week!

Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHMzKNR7iWc

The Voynich Manuscript

Today we're talking about the Voynich manuscript.

Called the most mysterious book in the world by some, a complete hoax by others and a compelling mystery by practically everyone else.

The book has been carbon dated to the early 15^th century, probably between 1404 and 1438, so we know the vellum is real. It then went from owner to owner but there are very few confirmed owners on record, but every famous astronomer, alchemist and soothsayer is named as a “possible owner” even though there's no proof.

What we know however is that it ended up in the hands of Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish revolutionary, antiquarian and bibliophile in 1912. Since no one knows who wrote the book, it's named after him.

So, what's the book like, you ask? It's written in an unknown language, with many illustrations. Some pages are walls of text, others written in circles. Some pages are fold-outs, and all of it is a mystery.

Code crackers ranging from eager amateurs to professional military cryptographers have tried their best and come up empty. This of course fuels the hoax theory. After all, how can it be that no one can crack it, right?

Well there has been a new development. A team from the University of Alberta have put an AI to work on it, and it has suggestions. Not proof, keep that in mind here, but ideas and new avenue of approach.

It seems, according to the AI, that the text is Hebrew, but that every word is an alphagram. An alphagram is when you take all the letters in a word and arrange them alphabetically, so alphabetical becomes aaabcehillpt.

The team needs help from people who are good at Hebrew, but so far no one want to help. If you're good at it, maybe contact the university?

Anyway, according to the AI, the first words in the Voynich manuscript are:

"She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people,"

A bit of a mess, sure, but at least it's something. If you want to know more, here are some helpful links:

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript

the Science Alert article about the AI:

https://www.sciencealert.com/ai-may-have-finally-decoded-the-bizarre-mysterious-voynich-manuscript

A PDF of twenty pages from the manuscript:

http://ixoloxi.com/voynich/pdf/en/vms-quire1-en.pdf

That's that. Happy reading, and until next time, have a great week!