Christopher McKitterick's Blog, page 26

The Iron Giant: Unhappy-Ending Version

Okay, if you're like me, you loved The Iron Giant . It's one of the best science-fiction movies ever, a touching story of friendship and meaningful social commentary (both past and present, as discussed in this Wired article). It works great for both the YA crowd and adults. It garnered both Hugo and Nebula Award recognition. I loved the simple, hand-drawn animation. And even though we all cry when the iron giant gets blown to smithereens heroically saving the town, we cheer when we learn during the final sequence that he's piecing himself back together again.

Hooray! Happy ending!

Except... did you know that the writers and director left out a crucial scene in the theatrical version? One that provides the iron giant's back-story, a scene they wished they had been able to finish? Here it is in sketch and voice-over form:
HOLY CRAP.

You know what that means? Right: The iron giant is part of a Berserker-like army of planet-killing monsters, and our Lovable Iron Hero™ participated in xenocide and planetary destruction on at least one occasion prior to visiting Earth. Only a knock on the head saved all life on this planet from his murderous programming.



So, when he reassembles, will he be whole again? Following original programming? And thus destroying all life on Earth - maybe Earth itself? And what of the rest of the robot army? Are they on their way here, too, or maybe nearby, searching for their missing life-annihilating soldier? HOLY FINAL-MASS-EXTINCTION, BATMAN!

Note that the movie dudes talk about this unifinished scene not as a bad idea or something they decided to cut because it WOULD CAUSE ETERNAL NIGHTMARES for the kids in the audience, but as an important part of the iron giant's back-story. So THIS HAPPENED, people. The iron giant murdered BILLIONS of life-forms - nay, TRILLIONS. And that's if he only destroyed one planet.

And where is this army of life-hating Berserkers now? I'm assuming they didn't arrive in the 1950s of the movie's time, because our tech then would have ensured Earth's annihilation. Are they en route now? Could we hope to repel them using today's tech? Could the nations of Earth unite in time to defend our planet against such machines? I mean, nuclear weapons cannot destroy these monsters! They just disperse the parts until they can reassemble. Even if we could stop one, could we hope to stop AN ARMY OF INDESTRUCTIBLE MACHINES THAT ARE ESSENTIALLY SENTIENT, PLANET-KILLING GUNS? And even if our Iron Giant Hero™ were to retain his flawed programming and try to defend us, could he possibly hope to stand against an army of similar beings?

Doubtful, even if his name was John Rambo.

So I think we know why they never made a sequel. It wasn't because the movie flopped at the box office; something called The Iron Giant 2: The End of All Life on Earth doesn't have quite the child-friendly tone that the audience might expect.

I'll watch this movie in a different light next time, that's for sure.

Chris

Elephant artist

This is ASTOUNDING:

I want to believe the elephant came up with this piece of art on her own, but I presume she was trained. Nevertheless.

Does anyone know back-story for this painting or ths organization? Just WOW.

Thanks for the heads-up, siro gravity.

Chris

Crossfit Friday.

For those of you playing along at home, here's last night's workout:
Lotsa stretching using lacrosse balls duct-taped together to target stiff and sore areas.
Jump-rope. I hate jump-rope. I suck at it, and no matter how fast I whip the rope, I never seem to be able to do double-jumps. And it's frakkin' TIRING. But we did it for many minutes, anyway. *pant*
Core work.We practiced hollowing our front by pulling shoulders toward hips, then creating a hollow in the rear by pulling shoulders toward butt.
When we got that to work, we jumped up to pullup bars and practiced "kipping" our core fore-and-aft; that is, swinging our torso using only shoulders, so that your head moves ahead of the shoulders as you extend your ribcage, then moves behind shoulders as you round them forward and extend the rear of your ribcage. Oh, and try to keep your feet in the same position relative to the floor as you do so. I know it sounds like it is, but this is not easy, folks.
Once we got down the technique, we moved to the floor and hollowed the front-core, making a V by reaching up toward the feet, balancing on the top of the hips.
Now rock hips-to-lower-back, using only core muscles to do so. For two minutes, I think.
Now do Superman!
Lay on your belly, then hollow your back, feet extended behind you as high from the floor as possible, hands extended before you as high as possible. Hold for a while.
Now, without touching the floor with anything but your core, swap from hollow-back to hollow-front as you roll onto your back and hold the V for a while, roll, repeat 5 times. Now roll the opposite direction and repeat 5 times. I kinda sucked at this, unable to avoid getting myself over without using my shoulder or elbow.
OH MY GAWD, PEOPLE, MY ABS TODAY ARE LIKE WHOAH.
Headstands. I did my first headstand since high school! And that was in the latter part of the last millenium. Ahem. The technique:Go into pushup pose and touch your forehead to the mat, hands about a foot or two from a wall. That gives you the proper hands-to-head ratio for the support triangle you'll use to do the headstand.
Walk your feet forward until you can put your knees on your elbows. Get stable.
Bring your feet and knees together, then - using your ass and core - lift them up until you can point your toes at the ceiling. Viola! You're in a headstand!
Of course, it's not that simple. Let your heels tap the wall behind you if needed, then use your glutes to slowly move your feet straight above you.
Experiment with flexing your core fore and aft, letting your butt just touch the wall, then heels just touch the wall; repeat for a couple of minutes.
Now it's time for the WoD! A simple pairing of two movements:Burpees (this video shows good form step-by-step):

Situps. Crossfit uses a special technique to keep up the cardio, kinda like this, only moving hands to tap the mat above your head as you lay back, then tap your toes as you crunch:

The full WoD is 10 burpees followed by 15 situps, repeat 5 times.
Did I mention OH MY GAWD, PEOPLE, MY ABS TODAY ARE LIKE WHOAH?
Then stretching using big bands to open up the shoulders and ribcage.
And there you have it: The perfect Friday-night date ;-)

Chris

Big Brother sees all. And now it's law.

Bad news: The US gov't just probed deeper into your private life.



Combine that with this new NSA personal-liberty nightmare underway, and... well, I guess that says it: NIGHTMARE.

Chris

More Crossfit Craziness.

Okay, for those of you following along at home, last night's workouts:
Warmup:First, frog-walks (I think they're called), where you put your hands behind you and walk hand-foot about 50 feet as fast as you can, then walk backwards to the starting point.
Now stand up and run about twice as far like normal, except with each step tap your knees into your hands, held out straight in front of you. WHOAH TIRING.
Run back, but this time whacking your behind with your heels with each step.
Now fast-step running back and forth. By now if you're not seriously out of breath, you're a god.

After drinking some water and catching one's breath (no more than a few seconds, really), move on to learning how to do deadlifts. Here's Brandon Cox ( normalcyispasse ) setting a world record for this movement:

(I am not ashamed to say that I lifted nowhere near that amount. Only gods can.)Start with working on form by lifting just the bar itself, about 45 lbs.
Now they have you add some poundage; for me, that was 30 kg (about 110 lbs total). Work on form, especially keeping back straight, knees in good squat postion (as I described yesterday). For me, a special difficulty was not compensating for the f'ed-up shoulder; I kept using a shrug to keep the joint in place. Got better. Do 5 reps.
Now swap the 15 kg weights for 25 kg (total 155 lbs). Do 5 reps.
Add 20 lbs, 5 reps.
Add another 20 lbs (195 lbs total), 5 reps. At this point, the coach said he normally has people go to their max weight for 1 rep, but was worried about my shoulder and just had me do another set of reps.
Drink water.
Jump-rope time. Discovered my rope was too short because I couldn't do more than a few at a time; the handles should touch the top of your armpits when standing on the rope. Do about a million, aiming for double passes for each jump. My form was crap; you want to use only your wrists to whip the rope and only your calves to bounce up and down. I haven't jumped rope since high school, and it showed!
Now wall-ball. Basically, you hold a medicine-ball (soft leather ball about 18" wide, and the ones we used were either 14 or 16 pounds) to your chest, do a squat, and on the up-thrust launch the ball up about 12 feet to an X on the wall. It bounces off, and you catch it on the down movement. Repeat a billion times, all the while maintaining good form, going below horizontal to touch your bum on a second ball behind you. Whoah.
Now we did toe-to-ring:Position a pair of gymnast rings just out of reach so you have to jump to hold them.
Squeeze your abs and bring your toes up into the rings above your hands.
Extend back down, then using a "kipping" or swinging movement, drive your feet back up into the rings. The kipping keeps up the momentum so you can do them faster and maintain high aerobic energy. The warm-up was about 10 or so.
"Warm-up?" you ask? Why, yes, this was all in prep for the Workout of the Day (WoD):10 toe-to-ring. Let me tell you how not-easy this becomes after the second set - which comes after 40 minutes of hardcore warm-up.
20 jump-rope (or 10 double-jumps; I'm lucky to be able to do 20 regular ones in a row without tripping on the damned rope).
10 ball-to-wall. Not so bad, except keeping good form is rough when you can barely stand or move your arms.
Repeat AMR (as many set-reps as possible): The goal was 3 sets minimum over 7 minutes; we all did 3, and the others got almost 4, but I slowed way down and barely managed the jump-rope and wall-ball of the 4th set. Wish I hadn't eaten my tuna salad so soon before I went there, as I was getting close to tasting it again....
And then we all look like this for a while:



Afterward, we did cool-down stretches (tons of 'em) and finished gallons of water.

There you have it! Interestingly, though this was KICK ASS HARD (I urge you to try this at home and see what I mean), I'm nowhere near as sore today as I was last week.

It gets better™!

Chris

Holy crap: Tor Books is dropping DRM on their ebooks!

Huge news from Tor Books, folks!

“Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time,” said Tom Doherty, Tor President and Publisher. “They’re a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another.”

About damned time. Not that DRM actually did a thing to stop pirates, as I discovered when my novel was pirated within a day of its Kindle publication. DRM does nothing but irritate legitimate e-information buyers, so I'm not surprised in the least that Macmillan finally made the leap, at least with Tor Books.

Good for them. Show your support by buying Tor/Forge Books, people!

Apparently, Macmillan consulted with Charles Stross about the topic, as he's long been a proponent of DRM-free books. Check out his blog entry for a full discussion.

We are entering the Age of Information Gets to Be Free - scary and exciting!

Chris

Fitness update: Crossfit is kicking my ass

Just realized that I haven't been tracking this very well. For those of you who haven't heard of Crossfit (link: Crossfit Lawrence's site), here's what my hour there last night looked like:
Warm-up:
Stretching: Most dramatic part is using lacrosse balls, PVC pipe, and bars to target sore spots.
Lunges: Big step forward until rear knee almost touches the mat, then step up so that back knee touches chest - hold it for five seconds! - then lunge forward. Repeat until you reach the far wall (about 40 feet).
Turn around and do fast running-stuff: Step 10 times per mat as fast as you can until you reach the end of the mats
Turn around and do inchworm-things: With feet shoulder-width apart, reach down with palms flat (keeping feet flat). Now walk out with hands until back is staight, do a push-up, then walk feet back into flat position. Repeat until you reach the far wall.
More stretching. My mind blanks on what we did.
Squats, working on form. A lot of 'em, focusing on good knee position, using glutes and hamstrings to do most of the work, and form. Dip so that hips are lower than knees, touch bum on a short medicine-ball, then push up using mostly glutes. This is a warm-up for what's to come.
Now some training: Weighted squats with the bar across the top of the chest, against the throat. I believe it was about 100 pounds. We did what felt like a million of these, 10 per set, each of the two of us taking a break as the other did his set (okay, we each did about 5 or 6 sets). Yes, my heinie is SORE today.
Now we begin the "Workout of the Day" aka "WoD" - last night's was called someone's name I can't recall done "as many reps as possible" or "AMR"; here it is:
5 jumping pullups: Push off with your legs and lower slowly.
10 pushups: Good form is feet close, lower until chest just touches mat, all the way to arm lock.
15 squats: Not weighted, hands out front on the bottom, at sides when fully upright.
Back to pullup bar: That's 1 set. Repeat for AMR in 8 minutes. My partner and I did 6 complete sets, then I managed the pullups and half the pushups before time. Egad, I was dying.
Then the coach had us stretch our calves on a raised bar: Yowza.
Now a final stretching session, using a giant rubber-band hanging from the pullup bar to keep the hip in position when he placed a big weight on one leg, then we push the other knee down as far as possible. HOLY CRAP. Got a cramp in the hip here, but it lessened over time. Apparently I'm pretty stiff there.
And that's what Crossfit looks like on a typical training night early in the process. Later on, after we are approved to join the others for group WoDs, the sessions are shorter but more brutal. You don't really take any breaks between these stages except to drink a little water, because the point is to keep the cardio going full-blast. I discovered my weakness right there: Cardio.


On the plus side: Things really do get better. After my previous session, my quadriceps (front-of-the-leg muscles) were SO SORE that I could hardly walk for two days afterward. I had been doing squats not-quite-right, using too much front of leg and not enough backside, plus I haven't exactly been a fan of squats, so my prep was crap. This time, they're not so bad, even though last night's workout was MUCH harder than the one that whacked me for days.

So: Progress! Soon, I shall be in the best condition of my life. <- That right there is my goal. Also to be ready for the coming Zombie Apocalypse.

Chris
PS: LJ's being dead precluded posting this yesterday; this was for Monday. I'll post an update later tonight or tomorrow about tonight's session....

Meteor shower tonight: Lyrids!

Almost forgot to post a reminder for tonight's meteor shower. Skies will be clear in Kansas, so get out there!


Click the image to see the Astronomy article about the show.

Enjoy!
Chris

Social networking: the death of creativity

The modern dilemma of creatives: staying in touch with your audience - increasingly expected these days - versus actually, y'know creating stuff. As always, xkcd speaks most clearly in its minimalist way:


Click the image to see the xkcd website.

LJ and other blogs often require a lot more thought and attention per entry to update and read than the other social-networking sites, but Twitter requires constant attention to make any sense of at all.

The most productive I ever am is when I'm offline.

How about you?

If so, why are you reading this? ;-)

Chris

Best. Lecture. Ever.

Whether you're an inventor, writer, teacher, or any other kind of human being, you will find great enlightenment and hope in this talk by Jeremy Rifkin at the Ross Institute:


I first wrote about the core of Rifkin's talk months ago after having watched an abbreviated, illustrated version. But after watching his entire talk today, it's changed my life in a few ways:

I'm going to redesign all my courses to enable students to share in the teaching to help them learn better. This is part of Rifkin's urging, that teachers join the "distributed and collaborative communication and energy/mind revolution" that's happening right now. I already do a lot of this in my literature and advanced courses, but I'm also going to use this framework in my 300-level technical-writing course.
I'm going to re-roof the house with solar collectors to tranform my habitation from energy-consumer to energy-producer. Heck, I expect to sell power back to the utility most days!
I want to create a course centered around the concepts in Rifkin's talks and book, The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis , or at the very minimum include the book in my spring "Science, Technology, and Society" course.
On a larger scale, I want to create a school - could be for young people, could simply be part of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction's mission - that is centered around this approach, is cross-curricular, and empowers students to be active participants in their education and the education of their fellow students. This is an idea I've been kicking around for years, outlining details, but Rifkin's talk finally crystallized the structures in my mind. SO EXCITED and movitvated!
Anyhow, go listen to the talk. It's about 1-1/2 hours long, so it might take a while. I'd love to hear what you think.

Chris