THE MT VOID
08/30/24 -- Vol. 43, No. 9, Whole Number 2343
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper,
mleeper@optonline.netCo-Editor: Evelyn Leeper,
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Topics:
Middletown (NJ) Science Fiction Discussion Group
Mark's Picks for Turner Classic Movies in September
(comments by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)
Mayoral Candidate Vows to Let an AI Bot Run Wyoming’s
Capital City
Tarzan (letters of comment by Gary McGath and Mike
Van Pelt)
This Week's Reading (THE ROAD TO ROSWELL, THE MARTIAN)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Middletown (NJ) Science Fiction Discussion Group
September 5: THE HUNGER GAMES (2012) & novel by Susan Collins
(Book 1)
October 10 (not October 3): TBA
November 7: Halloween Horror fest: THE METAMORPHOSIS & novella
by Franz Kafka
December 5: Xmas double feature TBA
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mark's Picks for Turner Classic Movies in September
(comments by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)
We have two recommendations this month.
7 FACES OF DR. LAO (1964) is based on the 1935 book THE CIRCUS OF
DR. LAO by Charles G. Finney. The book won the National Book
Award for Most Original Book; the film adaptation by Charles
Beaumont does depart from the book in many ways, but it still a
very good film. The film was produced by long-time stop-motion
animator George Pal and uses stop-motion animation to depict the
mythical creatures of the story. Tony Randall plays all "7
faces". All in all, a true sui generis delight. (And read the
book, if possible with the original Boris Artzybasheff
illustrations. And be sure to read the catalog of figures, animal
vegetable, and mineral, at the end.)
BIGGER THAN LIFE (1956) is at the opposite end of the spectrum of
the fantastic. While THE 7 FACES OF DR. LAO is a Western
comedy-fantasy with truly fantastical beings, BIGGER THAN LIFE is
a film "ripped from tomorrow's headlines"--actually, from a fact
article by Berton Rouche titled "Ten Feet Tall" which appeared in
the New Yorker. In the film James Mason plays a man whose use
(and eventual mis-use) of cortisone for pain relief starts to
affect his mental state in truly frightening ways. The film has
been praised for its look at then-current attitudes toward mental
illness and addiction. In 1963, Jean-Luc Godard named it one of
the ten greatest American sound films. [-mrl/ecl]
[7 FACES OF DR. LAO, Monday, September 9, 8:00AM]
[BIGGER THAN LIFE, Tuesday, September 3, 8:00PM]
And of course, there's the complete set of Val Lewton's nine
horror films, plus the documentary "Val Lewton: The Man in the
Shadows", on Friday the 13th.
[-mrl/ecl]
Other films of interest include:
SATURDAY, September 7
10:07 AM Tarzan and the Mermaids (1948)
THURSDAY, September 12
8:00 PM 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
FRIDAY, September 13
12:45 AM Logan's Run (1975)
3:00 AM Demon Seed (1977)
4:45 AM Brainstorm (1983)
6:45 AM The Seventh Victim (1943)
8:00 AM Cat People (1942)
9:15 AM The Curse of the Cat People (1944)
10:30 AM Bedlam (1946)
12:00 PM Isle of the Dead (1945)
1:15 PM The Ghost Ship (1943)
2:30 PM I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
3:45 PM The Leopard Man (1943)
5:00 PM The Body Snatcher (1945)
6:30 PM Martin Scorsese Presents, Val Lewton: The Man
in the Shadows (2007)
SATURDAY, September 14
10:08 AM Tarzan's New York Adventure (1942)
SUNDAY, September 15
6:00 AM Cabin in the Sky (1943)
11:30 AM Oliver Twist (1948)
MONDAY, September 16
8:00 PM To Have and Have Not (1944)
10:00 PM The Big Sleep (1946)
TUESDAY, September 17
12:00 AM Dark Passage (1947)
2:00 AM Key Largo (1948)
4:00 AM Bacall on Bogart (1988)
WEDNESDAY, September 18
12:00 AM Jungle Book (1942)
10:45 AM The Enchanted Cottage (1945)
12:30 PM The Woman in White (1948)
THURSDAY, September 19
9:00 AM Tarzan's Savage Fury (1952)
10:00 PM Modern Times (1936)
FRIDAY, September 20
1:15 AM Metropolis (1926)
4:00 AM Westworld (1973)
SATURDAY, September 21
10:07 AM Tarzan's Desert Mystery (1943)
4:00 PM Soylent Green (1973)
SUNDAY, September 22
8:00 PM The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976)
MONDAY, September 23
6:00 AM A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
TUESDAY, September 24
2:15 PM The Seventh Victim (1943)
8:00 PM The Milagro Beanfield War (1988)
WEDNESDAY, September 25
10:15 AM Them! (1954)
THURSDAY, September 26
1:30 AM What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
SATURDAY, September 28
10:08 AM Tarzan's Revenge (1938)
MONDAY, September 30
12:15 AM The Enchanted Cottage (1924)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mayoral Candidate Vows to Let an AI Bot Run Wyoming's
Capital City
<
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/19/artificial-intelligence-mayor-cheyenne-vic/>
<
https://wapo.st/3yNaHk2>
Mayoral candidate vows to let VIC, an AI bot, run Wyoming's
capital city
Mayoral candidate Victor Miller, a bespectacled librarian with an
AI obsession, stood between an American flag and a Wyoming flag,
preaching what he sees as the untapped potential of artificial
intelligence in government.
AI would be objective. It wouldn't make mistakes. It would read
hundreds of pages of municipal minutiae quickly and understand
them. It would, he said, be good for democracy.
Miller made this pitch at a county library in Wyoming's capital on
a recent summer Friday, with a few friends and family filling
otherwise empty rows of chairs. Before the sparse audience, he
vowed to run the city of Cheyenne exclusively with an AI bot he
calls "VIC" for "Virtual Integrated Citizen."
AI experts say the pledge is a first for U.S. campaigns and marks
a new front in the rapid emergence of the technology. Its
implications have stoked alarm among officials and even tech
companies.
...
The day before, Miller had scrambled to get VIC working after
OpenAI, the technology company behind generative-AI tools like
ChatGPT, shut down his account, citing policies against using its
products for campaigning. Miller quickly made a second ChatGPT
bot, allowing him to hold the meet-and-greet almost exactly as
planned.
It was just the latest example of Miller's skirting efforts
against his campaign by the company that makes the AI technology
and the regulatory authorities that oversee elections. His
ability to stay one step ahead of both illustrates how the use of
AI is developing more quickly than efforts to regulate it. The
case also highlights the ease with which the technology has seeped
into politics ahead of the November election, spreading false
information and injecting chaos into the campaign.
...
Rosenzweig-Ziff reported from Washington, and Sampson reported
from Cheyenne, Wyo.
===================================================================
TOPIC: Tarzan (letters of comment by Gary McGath and Mike Van Pelt)
In response to Evelyn's review of I, TARZAN in the 08/23/24 issue
of the MT VOID, Gary McGath writes:
Does Farmer address how Tarzan learned to speak English when he
had access only to written and printed materials? [-gmg]
Mike Van Pelt responds:
When first contacted, Tarzan couldn't speak English. He could
read and write it, but not speak or understand it.
The French ship captain he rescued taught him French, but not
English. So, for a while, he could speak and understand French,
but not read or write it, and could read and write English, but
not speak or understand spoken English.
This amusing dilemma ended quickly, as he had the superpower of
being able to learn a new language in about two pages. [-mvp]
Evelyn adds:
See also my comments on language-learning in PROJECT HAIL MARY and
ARRIVAL in the same issue. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I find that my tastes have changed over the years--or have the
authors' styles changed? I used to love Connie Willis's books,
but when I started her latest, THE ROAD TO ROSWELL (Del Rey, ISBN
978-0-593-49985-6), I just couldn't get into it. It actually
wasn't too bad until she got to the aliens, which is sort of the
reverse that it is supposed to be. Anyway, at my age, life is too
short to read 400-page books that I'm not enjoying.
One of the things that happens when you keep re-reading a book is
that you keep finding new things--some good, some bad. I have
previously commented on various "goofs" in THE MARTIAN by Andy
Weir (Ballantine, ISBN 978-0-553-41802-6), such as having the
laptop display boil off when it was taken outside, while the other
laptops seem to have survived the Hab decompression.
So here are the latest: Watney talks about how the MAV for mission
N is sent early enough that the pilot for mission N-1 can give it
a precision soft landing, which couldn't be done from Earth. What
he doesn't explain is how the *first* one got landed.
Also, it apparently took two days to set up the Hab, the solar
cells, etc. What did the astronauts do before it was set up? Did
they remain in their suits for two days? Watney seems to say
elsewhere that the waste reclamation units in the suits were good
for only short periods (although he also talks about a drill where
they stayed in them for 48 hours. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very
long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head
is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this?
And radio operates exactly the same way: you send
signals here, they receive them there. The only
difference is that there is no cat.
--Albert Einstein,
when asked to describe radio
MT VOID, 08/30/24 -- Vol. 43, No. 9, Whole Number 2343