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The open-for-inspection half-way home for my writing…
This week’s book?
Aha! It was sitting on my desk – a gift from a reader: Soonish, by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. The gift card read, “From a top scientist and the creator of the hugely popular webcomic ‘Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal,’ an illustrated investigation into future technologies.”
It was 368 pages. It had a snappy subtitle: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything. And it was illustrated!
What’s not to like?
Needless to say, I read it immediately…
Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything
By Kelly and Zack Weinersmith
368 pages
Published Oct. 17, 2017 by Penguin Press
Soonish is a fun and fascinating look at transformative technologies that are just around the corner – from robot swarms to nuclear-fusion-powered toasters. Through research and interviews with scientists, the Weinersmiths explore why these innovations are useful, how they might work, and what obstacles for implementation stand in their way.
A brief list of technologies covered:
* Space Exploration: It’s expensive to get into space. The solution, according to Soonish, is space planes, space elevators, and asteroid mining.
* Fusion Power: Something is going on at Sandia Labs with an experiment known as the MagLIF project. It has to do with fusion – splitting atoms. I didn’t understand it, but it sounded exciting. I’ll have to read that chapter again.
* 3-D Printing of Houses: In China, the company WinSun has cleared an impressive hurdle. The company prints the walls and other components of the house, layer by layer, in its factory, and then assembles them on site.
* 3-D Printing of Human Organs: This is a field of study that is well advanced but stalled. The challenge lies in figuring out how to recreate the tiny blood vessels that are vital to organ function. But have no fear. At Rice University, a team led by Dr. Jordan Miller has been working on it.
* Programmable Matter: This sounds crazy, but Soonish imagines a future house that can change its structure depending on the weather. The Weinersmiths argue that this is not just possible, but already in the works.
* Synthetic Biology: An emerging field of study that relies on DNA manipulation to eradicate disease. Recently, biologists figured out how to manipulate the bacterial immune system in a way that allows them to cut DNA at a specific location, remove a piece from one organism’s DNA and add it to another’s. The technology (CRISPR-Cas9) could enable us to do things like cut potential diseases out of human embryos or change the eye/hair color of your future child.
* Precision Medicine: A better and quicker way to diagnose and treat sickness and disease using biomarkers that may be able to instantly detect any unwanted molecules entering your bloodstream, cancerous growths, or even symptoms relating to depression.
* Brain Computer Interfaces: Who knows where this field will lead us? Right now, progress is being made on developing brain-computer interfaces to fix problems like blindness and paralysis. And a deaf patient can now receive a cochlear implant, which uses a small microphone to deliver sounds to a receiver in the patient’s skin. The receiver then translates the sound into electrical signals that are sent to the inner ear. The result has been described as sounding like a low-quality cassette tape recording, which is still far better than silence.
Critical Reception
“An entertaining look at future tech wizardry, from space tourism and asteroid mining to nuclear fusion power, matter replication, synthetic biology and direct brain-computer interfaces…. The text is very well-researched, with a casual, friendly style (‘Tinkering with the language of life. What could go wrong?’), and color cartoons add a wry counterpoint to the narrative of a future that, as always, might be utopia or disaster.” (Steven Poole, Wall Street Journal)
“Curiosity is a beautiful thing, and Kelly and Zach Weinersmith have it in spades. Their coauthored Soonish is an unabashed nerd-out of a book, zinging from outer space to DNA, hardly pausing for breath…. The gleeful geeking out makes for a great read – I couldn’t help chuckling or outright cracking up a number of times – while surreptitiously teaching some really important science. It’s a winning combination. The sheer breadth of topics covered is also amazing: Probably no other book in history has seriously described the science behind both tentacle construction robots and the human nasal cycle.” (Colin McCormick, Science)
“Fans of science, math, or medicine; gamers; and those who love the weird and wonderful will gravitate to this volume.” (School Library Journal)
Licorice Pizza
Release date: Nov. 26, 2021
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman
Currently available to rent or buy on various streaming services
Licorice Pizza is another unique creation of Paul Thomas Anderson and a subtly rich and irresistibly enjoyable film.
There’s not much plot to it, but it manages to tell, simultaneously and harmoniously, at least three wonderful stories. At one level, it is, undeniably, a falling-in-love story. At another, more engaging, level it presents two independent coming-of-age narratives. And at still another level, it is an evocative memoir of California’s San Fernando Valley in the 1970s.
On top of that, Licorice Pizza is a showcase for mesmerizing performances by two novice actors. Cooper Hoffman (son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) plays Gary Valentine, a chunky, pimply-faced teenager quo childhood actor, with vexing credibility. And Alana Haim, (one-third of Haim, the pop band she’s in with her sisters) as Alana Kane, his very ordinary looking but visually riveting 20-something love interest.
What I Liked About Licorice Pizza
* All the key components of the movie: the direction, the cinematography, the editing, the lighting, the set design, the costuming, the soundtrack, and, of course, the acting.
* The film is full of cameos, including appearances by Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, Benny Safdie, Maya Rudolph (Anderson’s long-time partner), and George DiCaprio (Leonardo’s father).
* An intimacy of character created by the direction and camerawork that reminded me of The Florida Project.
* I read, from some critic, that I was supposed to be offended by a bit depicting an American owner of a Japanese restaurant who speaks to his Japanese wife in a fake-Japanese broken patter. To be sure, it’s juvenile and politically incorrect. But I loved it.
What I Didn’t Like So Much
There were a few moments during the film that felt almost too intimate, that made me feel oddly and vaguely voyeuristic.
Critical Reception
Licorice Pizza was nominated for many awards, including three Oscars (one for “Best Picture). It won a BAFTA for “Best Original Screenplay” and was cited by the New York Film Critics as one of the “Top Films of the Year.”
“This is lighter and sunnier than previous Anderson pictures; subtract the porn and indeed the sex from Boogie Nights and you have something like it; remove the metaphysical anxiety from Inherent Vice and that comes reasonably close, too. It’s such a delectable film: I’ll be cutting myself another slice very soon.” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)
“Licorice Pizza meanders in the best possible way: You never know where it’s going but you can’t wait to find out where it’ll end up, and when it’s over, you won’t want it to end. Once the credits finished rolling, I had no desire to get up from my seat and leave the theater, I was so wrapped up in the film’s cozy, wistful spell.” (Christy LeMire, RoberEbert.com)
You can watch the trailer here.
Interesting
* The characters of Haim’s family – her parents and her sisters – are played by her actual parents and sisters.
* Anderson says that Gary’s character is based partly on former child actor Gary Goetzman, and partly on a kid he remembers from high school that he watched trying to chat up an older woman.
About Paul Thomas Anderson
In 1996, at the age of 26, Paul Thomas Anderson made his first movie: Hard Eight. Since then, he’s been writing, directing, and producing almost nothing but good-to-great films. Here are some of them:
* Boogie Nights (1977)
* Magnolia (1999)
* Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
* There Will Be Blood (2007)
* Inherent Vice (2014)
“Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.” – Mark Twain
The title of today’s movie reminded me of a “new” slang word I came upon: spoonish. It supposedly describes a person or thing that acts silly or makes a silly mistake. But I googled it… and I can’t find any confirmation that it’s actually a word that people use. Can anyone out there help me?
Re the Mar. 23 issue on Ben Carson:
“Good piece on Ben Carson. I thought he was the most composed of the candidates and stayed composed during his tenure as Secretary of Housing under Trump. It’s crazy that he’s been so demeaned by the mainstream media.” – PL
Re my interview with Charles Mizrahi:
“I watched the interview you did with Charles Mizrahi. You were good when you were looking at the camera, but when you were looking away, which was often, it was very distracting. You should get someone to coach you when you do interviews.”
– AS
Re my review of Kill Your Darlings:
“Thanks for the recommendation of Kill Your Darlings. I had never heard of it. Watched it last night. It was really so interesting. Made me want to learn more about Ginsberg and that crew.” – EG
Moonlight Sonata like you’ve never heard it…