Fab Four
I saw this in the Herald a few days ago and have been meaning to put it up for days. I never seem to get my rear-end into gear. It helps when one's train of thought isn't interrupted by idiots. :)

- Art Neuro

Weekend Mailbag
Pleiades sent in some interesting links.
The firs is about the suface of one of Saturrn's moons, Encaledus.
There seem to be strange boulders on Saturn's largest moon.

On 14 July, Cassini swooped in for an unprecedented close-up view of the wrinkled moon. Its Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) camera has since returned pictures of a boulder-strewn landscape that is currently beyond explanation. The "boulders" appear to range between 10 and 20 metres in diameter in the highest-resolution images, which can resolve features just 4 m across.

“That’s a surface texture I have never seen anywhere else in the solar system,” says David Rothery, a planetary geologist at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK.

Cracks crisscross Enceladus's surface - possibly as a result of the moon being repeatedly squeezed and stretched by the gravity of Saturn and other moons nearby. But Rothery points out the boulders avoid - rather than fill - the cracks. This might indicate that the fracturing took place after the boulders had already formed.

Alien landscape
John Spencer, a Cassini team member at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, US, agrees that the images are puzzling. “You would expect to see small craters or a smooth, snow-covered landscape at this resolution," he told New Scientist. "This is just strange. In fact, I have a really hard time understanding what I’m seeing.”

NASA scientists have been locked in discussions since 15 July and are expected to pass judgment on what they think this peculiar surface might be later on Tuesday.

But Elizabeth Turtle, a Cassini imaging team member at the University of Arizona in Tucson, US, warns there will be no quick answers. “Trying to figure out what is going on is going to take a lot longer than a weekend of swapped emails,” she says.

If that's not interesting enough, here's another article from New Scientist on the Huygens probe:

IF LIFE exists on Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, we could soon know about it - as long as it's the methane-spewing variety. The chemical signature of microbial life could be hidden in readings taken by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe when it landed on Titan in January.

Titan's atmosphere is about 5 per cent methane, and Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffet Field, California, thinks that some of it could be coming from methanogens, or methane-producing microbes. Now he and Heather Smith of the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, have worked out the likely diet of such organisms on Titan.

They think the microbes would breathe hydrogen rather than oxygen, and eat organic molecules drifting down from the upper atmosphere. They considered three available substances: acetylene, ethane and more complex organic gunk known as tholins. Ethane and tholins turn out to provide little more than the minimum energy requirements of methanogenic bacteria on Earth. The more tempting high-calorie option is acetylene, yielding six times as much energy per mole as either ethane or tholins.

McKay and Smith calculate that if methanogens are thriving on Titan, their breathing would deplete hydrogen levels near the surface to one-thousandth that of the rest of the atmosphere. Detecting this difference would be striking evidence for life, because no known non-biological process on Titan could affect hydrogen concentrations as much.

One hope for testing their idea rests with the data from an instrument on Huygens called the GCMS, which recorded Titan's chemical make-up as the probe descended. It will take time to analyse the raw data, partly because hydrogen's signal will have to be separated from those of other molecules. "Eventually, I hope, we will have numbers for at least upper limits for hydrogen," says Hasso Niemann of Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, principal investigator of the GCMS.

So the Huygens Probe is doing its 'thang' nicely.
Also from Pleiades is this article from Rense.com about the dropping of the A-Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But this is disputed by Kuznick and Mark Selden, a historian from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US. They are presenting their evidence at a meeting in London on Thursday organised by Greenpeace and others to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the bombings. Looking for peace

New studies of the US, Japanese and Soviet diplomatic archives suggest that Truman's main motive was to limit Soviet expansion in Asia, Kuznick claims. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union began an invasion a few days after the Hiroshima bombing, not because of the atomic bombs themselves, he says.

According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was "looking for peace". Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb.

"Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan," says Selden. Truman was also worried that he would be accused of wasting money on the Manhattan Project to build the first nuclear bombs, if the bomb was not used, he adds.

Most of you know my opinion so I won't go into it here; sufffice to say I'm glad somebody on the Allied side noticed the inconsistencies to the claim it ended WWII. Not that textbooks will change.
So here's the hypothetical. "What happenes if the government of japan organises mass demonstrations on the streeets of Tokyo over this and the US Embassy gets ddamaged; and the japanese say, "Well, it's your fault for hurting the sentiments of our people..."

Shuttle launch Update
The Shuttle Launch is in crisis again. It's scheduled for a tuesday launch, but fuel gauge problems that have not been locked down and fixed still hangs over the craft. Will they, won't they? The suspense is killing them, so to speak.

"We have had a great many challenges preparing the space shuttle Discovery and her crew to get ready for this historic return-to-flight mission. Certainly, that's the cost of creating the safest shuttle to date," said NASA test director Jeff Spaulding.

The latest challenge involves the hydrogen fuel gauges in Discovery's giant external tank.

Mission managers had yet to settle on a strategy for how best to manage the fuel gauges, which forced a launch delay the first time around. One option would be to proceed with liftoff if just three of the four gauges work, which would mean bending a launch rule that was implemented in the wake of the 1986 Challenger disaster.

A decision on whether to relax the rule for this first space shuttle flight in 2 1/2 years was expected by Sunday evening.

Despite exhaustive effort, NASA still does not know exactly why one of the fuel gauges in Discovery's external tank failed a prelaunch test on July 13.

Workers last week repaired faulty electrical grounding inside Discovery in hopes that would solve the problem, and swapped the wiring between the troublesome fuel sensor and another one to better understand the issue if it reappears.

The same type of problem occurred back in April during a fueling test, and was written off then as an "unexplained anomaly."

The fuel gauges are needed to prevent the main engines from shutting down too soon or too late during liftoff. The first scenario could result in a risky, never-attempted emergency landing; the second could cause the engine turbines to rupture and, quite possibly, destroy the spacecraft.

Only two fuel gauges are needed to avoid such dangerous situations, but NASA requires all four to be working at liftoff for redundancy.

NASA has just one week to launch Discovery and its crew of seven to the international space station, before putting off the mission until September.

Well, so much for that if it gets put off to September again.

Getting Prank'd Upon
Over the weekend, as some of you may know, I was at the receiving end of a pretty silly prank from one David Ball. The prank consisted of setting up a false ID here on Blogger, posing as somebody from Louisiana USA and tricking me nto a dialogue whereby he solicited a negative comment out of me about him; and then posting my damning remark up at his blog. Then, on Saturday night around 11pm, I received a creepy phone call which featured a recorded 'evil laugh' at the other end followed by a hang-up. You know, the sort of creepy behaviour you get in some kind of bad movies, which in turn tells you about the paucity of his imagination, but whatever. More bluntly, it's harrassment. It'ss even a little scary when you know his obsessive-compulsive behaviour.

As a result, I've had to re-post some of the entries of the previous days's posts just to get rid of his comments. If you're wondering what happened to your comments, well, I exercised editorial censorship (which does compromise my principles greatly) because I don't think David Ball's behaviour is acceptable in any way shape or form. So dear readers if you feel put out by this, you are welcome to complain, but please understand, my hand was forced by the downright sneaky, petty behaviour of David Ball who operates under many cyber-aliases.

Then I find that David has gone to a couple of my songs on iComposition and posted 1-star ratings with sarcastic remarks, which is fine if:
a) the acts were unrelated to the other obvious cyber-attacks; and
b) they were his genuine considered musical opinion;
c) and if his musical opinion actually carried some weight or credibility
- but clearly they are part of the 'harrassment strategy'. he is undertaking. This is getting seriously petty and infantile. I have no control over his actions so all I can do is tell him to stop. As in 'No', means 'NO'

So, David, stop.
I don't like you any more. It should be no surprise to you that I don't; and I don't know how you expect me to like you or trust you as a friend when you behave like such a fuckturd. There is no case to be gleaned by drawing out negative commments about you from me because it's no secret that I no longer respect you, feel that you are trustworthy; are a friend in anyway shape or form or are worth spending time talking to. I don't like your self-pity and insistence we all fall in line with it; and all the blame you throw around for who your are and what you are today. It's not my fault.
So if you don't want to set the ship right, then stop fooling around and leave me alone. I've been blocking your e-mail since 6th January this year (when you publicly wrote you wished me dead); I certainly don't interfere in your life; I avoid making comments about you even when provoked (which indeed you told Big W you liked doing); I make an effort not to contact you or get into your social circles. So kindly please leave my life, get some counselling help and stay the hell away.

- Art Neuro

The Day My PC Died
I was really attached to it because I picked the parts and built it. It was my brain child, and only 2 years and 7 months into its life, it died. Did I get a lot of use out of it? Yes. Did I achieve what I thought I would with it? Not really - the Mac does what i want a computer to do for me. But the PC was so fundamentally mine in a way that say, a song I wrote and stuck up on iComposition might be mine. Now I have to replace it and I don't have the energy to do the research and parts hunting; I'm just a little bit more weary.

I have to warn you all that until I do manage to replace a PC, I'm not going to link to articles because it'ss actually a lot more tedious in the safari interface than it is with IE5. Blame Blogger and my ennui. Or life. Or my dead PC. Or the fact that my HTML skills are simply not up to scratch to be able to write the code for in-text lnks. So please forgive me; when I get a new PC I promise I'll link to everything.

It's the 5th Wintel PC that died on me: a A Pentium 166MHz, A P3 466MHz, A P4 1.7Ghz, anoher P4 1.7GHz I got from a generous friend and now my 2.4GHz.
That's pretty disturbing considering that my old Commodore Amigas tended to keep working way into their obsolescence, I'm a little surprised by how Wintel boxes tend to be so much more vulnerable. It makes me worry for the future of my Mac, but my friends' Macs seem to do what the old Amigas do, which is keep on working until they are well and truly obsolete that when they go, you don't miss them the way I'm missing my PC right now. That's right. I run both systems and I still think there are a lot of merits to both systems. Still, there is nothing like the grief you get when a PC starts going wonky and then wobbly until it just simply packs it in; diagnosis not withstanding, the motherboard just goes bung. It's a good thing they come relatively cheap.

I spent the day rying to revive the machine, but my efforts were in vain; I ended up taking the data off the hard drives through the firewire drive trays. It took all afternoon - a very long, long, long afternoon. At the end of it, I just moved the dead computer out of my room. Oh yeah. I get to move some of the other computer clutter out of my room. I'm now a 1 computer man, an Apple Macintosh man to boot. How things change.

- Art Neuro

Alex VDP in Wonderland
Baseball buddy and manager of 'Hamo's Warriors' in the Jack Kerouac Memorial Fantasy Baseball League is traipsing across the US of A. It's his big baseball pilgrimmage wherein he visits and watches games at as many stadia as he can muster finance. Good on him.

Recently, he was spotted on TV, by somebody else in our fantasy baseball league; Alex was taking in a game at Minute Maid Park, home to his beloved Astros. I hope he's having fun.

Even MORE Shuttle Delays
Predicatbly the shuttle launch got delayed. now they are saying the launch is unlikely to take place before July 26th.

"Troubleshooting is continuing around the clock," Space Shuttle Programme Manager Bill Parsons said at a press conference yesterday.

"This team is persistent and energetic and we will conquer this problem too. Once the problem is resolved the next opportunity to tank the vehicle would be Tuesday, the 26th of July." Programme Deputy Manager Wayne Hale said.

Hale is hopeful that this week the problem could be identified and NASA managers are still optimistic about a launch within the current window, which ends July 31.

"Right now, I can tell you that we're still looking for the problem," Parsons said. "We've waited two-plus years, 2 1/2 years to be here. We're trying awfully hard to resolve this issue."

I'd really hate to be the astronauts on standby for this mission. This is no way to fly into space.

- Art Neuro

Andrew Denton Interviews Anthony La Paglia
There's this interview transcriptt I've been meaning to post this up for a few weeks now .

Contained in the link is the transcript of the La Paglia interview by Andrew Denton in which the following interaction took place:

ANDREW DENTON: You know, you think a 25 million dollar salary is wrong for Hollywood stars. Have you ever considered...

ANTHONY LA PAGLIA: The actual thing that I say is this: The advent of the 25 million dollar actor has kind of ruined movies, has actually ruined movies. Because what's happened is this, two things. It's affected the quality of scripts. It's also affected the quality of basically the character actor. Now, I don't begrudge anybody getting paid 25 million dollars. That's fine, if that's what you're worth, and that's what the studio wants to pay you, that's fantastic for you. However, what's happened is that the studios then say, "We spent all the money on that guy or that girl and we can only pay you scale."

In the old days, if you look at the movies from the '70s, for example, even the supporting characters had an arc. They started somewhere, they went somewhere, and they finished somewhere. Now you see a character come into a film, have his two little seconds and then they're gone. There's no explanation of where they went, what happened to them, nothing. I know what happened to them - There's no money for them to do anything. It went all on the other person.

ANDREW DENTON: If you were to be offered 25 million dollars to do a film?

ANTHONY LA PAGLIA: Listen, I'm a working-class boy from Adelaide. If someone offered me 25 million bucks, my teeth would fall out. I'd have to think, yes, of course, I want to do it. But I'm also connected enough still to the real world to think this thought - I want the best actors around me because they're going to make me look even better, and to get the best actors around me, you got to pay them more. Therefore, I'll take a chance on the film and I'll take less money, but give me a piece of the back end of the film. If it succeeds, I succeed. If it fails, it's my fault too.

If you're lucky to be born with the gift of acting, with the gift to be able to act and communicate, that's a gift. As you become more successful, it's incumbent upon you to exhibit largesse as a person. You have a lot of power. You make a lot of money for really doing bugger-all, to be honest with you. Acting's not rocket science. It's not. I've never found it difficult. I found some things difficult to do, but it's a joy for me to do it.

ANDREW DENTON: Have you ever discussed this with Russell Crowe?

ANTHONY LA PAGLIA: No. I haven't.

ANDREW DENTON: I would love to hear the conversation between you about this.

ANTHONY LA PAGLIA: You know, I've met Russell on a number of occasions in the past, and I don't know what his feelings would be about that.

ANDREW DENTON: Yes, you do.

ANTHONY LA PAGLIA: Well, I wouldn't venture to... I wouldn't venture to comment on them, you know. Different philosophies. Listen, you know the truth is that Russell is probably one of the finest actors that New Zealand's ever produced. I'm kidding. He's very much Australian. He's spent his most formative years here, and he is one of the finest actors, I think, in the world.

The last bit there was with much laughter between the two men, prior to Russell throwing a telephone.
Now, the bit I want to draw your attention to is the notion of the 25million dollar man on a roster. Any roster whether it be a cast for a big budget movie or a baseball team. Coincidentally we live in a time when A-Rod gets 25million a year and Tom Cruise gets 25million a year (and I flippantly said I'd rather have A-Rod's career than Tom's - BUT I MEANT EVERY BIT) but La Paglia's point highlights that the issue of how much to pay a star isn't isolated to one project or one season or even one field. In a time when stars exist an their crowd-pulling power ergo turns into revenue/tangible outcomes for an organisation, it becomes critical for any General Manager/Producer & Director to weigh up just who they are getting on the team to represent the investors.

Put it another way, you didn't see Superstar-monster-contracts on the 2001 Mariners or the 1998 Yankees, two of the most winningest teams of recent years. The original Star Wars had unknowns play the 3 main roles supported by British veterans, and look at the profit ratio of that film. Management of projects should be putting together projects that finesse disparate parts that makes the whole, great than the sum of the parts. Then again, there's the 'Ocean's 12'/2005 Yankees approach where one grabs hold of every available suprstar and bankrolls it without a concern to the bottomline; and even then the 208million payroll needs the kind of finessing whereby rookies Robinson Cano and Chien-Ming Wang become vital contributors to a veteran team on the verge of collapse. In other words, the kind of role-players you get define the oragnisation or project as much as the star. It's only the casual observer who only recognises the superstar

Clearly the A-Rod contract didn't work for the Texas Rangers for the very reason that La Paglia mentions. Though, to be more precise it wasn't the A-Rod contract per se, but the non-performing, yet almost equally onerous Chan Ho Park contract that ate up such a large portion of their budget. And when a Star-vehicle film flops, well, it could be because they didn't spend enough on the writing or production design or whatever. Anyway, it's probably like management 101 and obvious as daylight to some but the same logic could probably be said for NASA crews, projects and administrators. maybe the Space Shuttle program is like a non-performing big-contract eating up too much of the payroll for very little return?

- Art Neuro

Flight Of The Undead Movie Script
This is in from Walkoff-HBP. Basically it's Paul Byrnes having a whinge about the state of the film industry in general; or perhaps it's just a whinge about the world.

Apart from Dennis Quaid, who was 50 last year and Hugh Laurie, who's 46, most of the actors in the remake weren't yet born in 1965. So what? Well, nothing really, except that I think we may have lost something since the youth market became the dominant force in Hollywood. This began well before Star Wars. Indeed, it probably began with the rise of the affluent American teenager in the 1950s, but it means that now, a great many movies are skewed toward younger actors. I suspect that means we see less of the great character actors who made movies like The Flight of the Phoenix so memorable. By definition, character actors bring a certain depth of life experience, but if you're not allowed to cast many people over 40, you must surely affect a film's dramatic possibilities. The writing has to stay younger, to reflect the audience's range of experience.

The difference can be seen in the approach of these two movies. The first was a taut, entertaining survival story in which an experienced director made the most of a seasoned cast and a solid script. The drama was serious and played as such, with attention to character detail across a dozen or so roles.

I'm not much of a Paul Byrnes fan as far as Australian film critics go. He has a penchent to get all moralistic and really quite self-righteous in spite of his good insights. He was also a phenomenally boring curator for the Sydney Film Festival, so much so he put me off the SFF for life. Having said that, I have to admit that he's on the same page with me on the issue of the increasing 'adolescent quotient' in cinema, sort of dumbing down drama everywhere. So now cinema belongs to the young and the ever-recurring infantile desires. It's only fiction, but it bugs me.

Tangential Thought To The Above
Actually I was thinking about Wendy James and Transvision Vamp (and whatever happened to those inpet musicians?) in the shower this morning. No, I wasn't wanking. I was thinking about the ephemeralness of marketed commodities. You know, the unbearable lightnesss of my counted bean and all that. And how totally incoompetent as rockers those guys in transvision Vamp were. Frickin' woeful. Sort of the Tony Womack of rock bands.

Music used to be hard to organise. Composers wrote stuff down on pieces of paper and you had to find people who could read it and play it; you needed lots of these people depending on the score. If it were a symphony, you needed a whole orchestra. Then, along came Jazz, where the musicians decided to play what they liked and the combos got smaller and smaller: from Dixieland to Bebop, to Trios, the number of musicians kept shrinking. Then came rock'n'roll, where musicians decided you didn't even have to play too much complicated stuff. That you could organise music in blocks of chords andd rhythm and still have a rockin' good time. And while some people still tried to achieve virtuosity, the predominant trend was towards requiring less and less competence to be called a musician. It was only a matter of time before punk and grunge surfaced and laid claims that any kind of competence was a pretension and one was ar more legitimate a musician in one's own incompetence. Until eventually some people invented Rap *music* whereby people just did away with melody. And lots of people thought this was a great breakthrough.
It's all part of a long term trend.

Meanwhile technology has been advancing leaps and bound and it has now gotten to the point that people who sheepishly call themmselves 'non-musicians' can arrange entire chunks of recorded music and poste them up on the internet at iCompositions ("PLEASE CHECK MY RECENT STUFF BY CLICKING ON THE BADGES TO THE RIGHT!!"). A munchkin vocalist like Britney Spears can be turned into a most marketable commodity through the marvels of technology, but also thanks to a generally deteriorated sensibility in an ever increasing, anti-musical audience that for reasons totally unknown to themselves want to participate in 'music', heck, she can be (and IS) a star.
Well, that's like a modern blockbuster film, isn't it? Too much special effects, not enough writing/directing/acting/editing?

So the post-'Star Wars' munchkinification trend we were discussing recently is not isolated to cinema. It's taking place even in music; in fact it has been for a good 255 years since the days of JS Bach's passing. And from this we know, that subsequent generations will be more inept, but with better technology invested, they will look almost half as worthy as generations past. It's a con, really. - The other way to look at it is this: at $120 for a night at the Opera; or at $7 a pop for an LP for rock music;or $20 for a CD of your favourite DJ; it's all about what one expects to get for what one pays.
So for a 'free' download of an MP3, what should one expect? It kind of tells you what kind of times we live in, no?

- Art Neuro

Embarrassment
I guess it's pretty embarrassing that I couldn't tell 'success' was yet another alter-ego of 'David Daniel Ball', a.k.a. DDB; a.k.a. 'DDBall'; a.k.a. 'Conservative Weasel'.
I imagine him to be sniggering up his sleeve like Newman in Seinfeld, an angry fat man who is a captive of his 20year grudges and resentments Well done, boy-o! You got me a beauty! Though, I don't know what point it exactly proves, I hope you're basking in the glory of a clever little point won. Touche!
Yes, I was pretty upset when I found out, you did ruin my day David. Well done. You're the man of the hour!

- Art Neuro

London Bombings Update
Speculation is mounting on the bombers' Modus Operandi. There have been reports that they four bombs were delivered by suicide bombers, though as far as I've checked, Scotland yard are saying no such thing. There's also been an arrest.

Clarke said one of the suspects was reported missing by his family later that morning. That man was on the bus that blew up in Tavistock square 50 minutes after the carnage on the underground.

In the bloody aftermath of the explosion of the bus, police found a gruesome clue: the detached head of a man. This, according to Israeli experts who have experience in such things, was a telling clue that he was the person closest to the explosion. Police believe he was either a willing or inadvertent suicide bomber.

But it wasn't the only clue to the killers. "We have found personal documents bearing the names of three of those four men close to the scenes of the explosions," said Clarke. Clarke also says it's likely at least one of the men died in the blasts, perhaps all four. But he didn't label them as suicide bombers nor did he release their names.

Hmmm. So we don't know if the patsies get hit - but that assumed the kind of conspiracy people are talking about. :)

Jury Duty
I got summoned and so I went. As I approached the table, the crabby looking woman in dark blue with the bogus uniform asked me if I was available for the 2 weeks trial. I said "I guess so. I'm here by summons so I think I must..." - as in, I don't have a legitimate excuse to squirm out of it so I cleared the decks of my schedule (not that there was much). I had my had chewed off by the most rude court officer: "It's not what you think you must; you are required by law to be here!" she snapped. I was taken aback.
I was being polite, damn you stupid woman; not trying to squirm out. I was there because exactly because I believe in civic duties. So excuse me and FUCK ME DEAD YOU SOW BITCH!!!! Really.

What is it about officials who have to ask dumb questions?
You get caught speeding. The officer asks: "Do you know you were 15kms over the speed limit in a 50 zone?"
Errr, now that you mention it after having flagged me down... Yeah.
"Why were you speeding?" they ask.
Like, could there possibly be *any* reason why one should be allowed to speed? Is there a reason on the planet that one could give an officer that would get one off the ticket thing? No, I didn't think so. So WHY DO YOU ASK, YOU DUMB-ASS FUCKING MORON?

See what I mean? Same fucking stupid illogic. Am I available? Well, of course I'm available if I must, excatly because you made me be here for a possible 2 weeks. Don't yell at me for saying I did my best to clear the schedule for you.

Anyway, I sat around for 3 hours, didn't get picked and got discharged. Yay. I just hated the experience and if I ever get summoned again, I'm going to make the utmost effort to get out of it. It might be democracy in action and us ordinary folks participating in the judical system but it's a crock of shit in practice.

ScreenHub
I paid up my subscription for screenhub again this year. They charged me $77 this year instead of $65 of last year. Fuck me dead.

Quickshot Review On 'Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith'
After all the weeks of hoopla passed, I maanaged to mosey on down to watch the final installation in the epic Star Wars Hexalogy. Partly because I was at a loose end and knew there was a 12:30 session straight out of my jury duty discharge; but also partly because I couldn't bring myself not to have seen this film on the Big Screen in the final analysis. Sure, get it on DVD and enjoy it later; but this would be the only only Star Wars film I didn't see at the cinema. So the completist within got a hold of me and I marched into the cinema.

What's Good about it?
Effects and effects and more effects. There are so maany special effects going on the word 'special' seems to no longer apply. The effects come from everywhere and every which direction you kind of get inured to the mass of this stuff. and it gets so overwhelming you stop analysing each shot; suddenly you find you've arrived in the Star Wars universe proper instead of trying to watch it as a film. Now that's interesting because usually one complaains that the effects are the main character in special effects movie, but I don't think I've seen the truth of that observation until I found myself watching this film. It's damn amazing from both a quality and quantity point of view.

Take Yoda, who started out as a muppet in the second film. In this film, he's walking, talking, fighting, interacting with the kind of freedom inconceivable in the first series. The characterisation of Yoda is so good, you forget he ain't *real*. Amazing. And off-putting as it is to see the cloned army of Maoris heck, you just accept it because the action goes so fast and furiously. The film gives you very little timie to pause to think about the contexts of the many light-sabre battles. I think that in the years to come, this film will come to be seen as a watershed in space operas. You simply can't go and make one after this film. It is as if the Star Wars hexaology has totally eaten the genre in the way that the Lord of The Rings trilogy has eaten the fantasy genre whole by being so complete. Now, I'm not ssaying this is the death of science fiction; rather, these films are to their genres what the Empire State Building is to skyscrapers. There will be other skyscrapers, but none will be more culturally important in our awareness as the 'ur-object'.
And maybe that's not such a bad thing either.

Also notable was the relative absence of the comic-relief aspect that plagued Episode I and II. The fights going on were for keeps. Winner take all and death came swiftly to big characters: Count Dooku, Mace Windu and the Jedi council; General Grievous; the trade Federation delegates; all of these folks buy a farm rapidly as the events unfold and truth be told, I liked it that way.

What's Bad About It?
Dialogue. Everybody else has said it; but it can't be said how bad the dialogue is between Padme and Anakin. It actually works to turn these characters into much smaller munchkins than we were led to believe. Even the turning of Anakin that people complain about is bad precisely because the dialogue is so turgid. But how did it get this way?

There are also a lot of arbitrary things about the script as a whole that makes you think 'what the Fuck?!' For instance, Obi Wan seems to readily appear when needed, convenently stowing away or falling fortuitously into water. The thrills and spils are nice to watch, but from a writing point of view, it seems these extrinsic obstacles that are easily surmounted only seem to take up screentime for the sake of showing the action. Even the final duel with Anakin-Now-Vader where Obi-Wan cuts the legs off Anakin, you sit there and think, "Dude, kick him in the river, then complain that he was like brother; don't walk away, man!" but alas, that's what he does.

The directing isn't much better than in the second film, but I have to say it is better than in 'Phantom Menace' for which I am grateful. It sort of sits at B-miuns as an average, but in reality it'ss A+ for the action and the avalanche of effects; it's F- for the interpersonal stuff and logic. IOW, it seems Lucas has re-discovered some touch in this film; a lot of it in the fight scenes, but you take that. It's in the inter-personal material that his inept hand lets down the film. We never get close enough to the intimate space inhabited by Padme and Anakin. They deliver their lines across the room like strangers at a dinner party even when they are in each other's arms. The spectacular backdrops keep eating into the interpersonal space so that the audience is forced to marvel at the sky-line of Corruscant with its flying cars instead of watch the uncomfortable performances of Natalie Portman and Hayden Christiansen. In other words, the focus of the action never seems to narrow down enough to closely observe the emotions of Anakin; and so when he turns to the Dark Side (*gasp*), it seems like it's undermotivated.

Really, fear of future events and a strong desire to stave off tragedy is a good enough motivation. It's old as Cassandra. It's MacBeth, it's any character who has a prophecy placed upon them. - It is reasonably easy to understand the logic of Anakin's actions. but as an audience we have to work so hard to feel its burden because George Lucas as director is counting on our empathy to gauge the mounting value of that choice. Which iss to say, if you can't find the sentiment within, you're condemned to watch the drama as a total outsider. Now this is not a small issue from a directng point of view; however, the tableau that is Star Wars Universe mitigates against the analysis of emotional minutiae greatly. Yet, compared to the subtle, intimate moments played between Han and Leia, or Luke and a puppet Yoda in 'Empire Strikes back', the misc-en-scen (placement in the scene) is terribly clumsy.

However a lot of this is nit-picking. The films together as a whole is a true achievement; the cultural value of which, I imagine, will reveal itself even more through time. I'll post up some more thoughts later.

- Art Neuro

Mailbag Report
As usual Pleiades has been sending in a large number of stuff so I'm going to quickly link this stuff and leave it your judgement. They are lsited here in the order they were sent; not in my perceived order of importance:

1. Here's one on the USA's track record on how it gets into wars. It's a must-read, interesting little analysis.

2. Speculation on a conspiracy surrounding the London bombings.

3. Somebody (in their own words) ranting to the effects that the conspiracy is fact.

4. An interesting article raising some questions that ought to be asked about the bombings' timing.

5. A REALLY SCARY atticle about how security exercsise were taking place exactly on the same day that the business of London Bombings went down. Better cache this or save this before it disappears folks.

The fact that the exercise mirrored the exact locations and times of the bombings is light years beyond a coincidence. Power said the drill focused around 'simultaneous bombings'. At first the bombings were thought to have been spread over an hour, but the BBC reports just today that the bombings were in fact simultaneous.

Mr. Power (pictured above) and Visor Consultants need not have been 'in on the bombing' or anything of that nature for this to be of importance. The British government or one of their private company offshoots could have hired Visor to run the exercise for a number of purposes.

The exercise fulfils several different goals. It acts as a cover for the small compartamentalized government terrorists to carry out their operation without the larger security services becoming aware of what they're doing, and, more importantly, if they get caught during the attack or after with any incriminating evidence they can just claim that they were just taking part in the exercise.

This is precisely what happened on the morning of 9/11/2001. The CIA was conducting drills of flying hijacked planes into the WTC and Pentagon at 8:30 in the morning.

Got that?
Next...

6. An interesting read about some Hollywood directors taking on some interesting projects.

7. A weird blog saying Al Qaeda isn't behind the London Attacks.

Tell me what you think when you've gone through those. :)
Tomorrow, I go in for jury duty. Wish me luck. :)

- Art Neuro

Baseball Won't Be Played At London 2012
In a secret ballot, the IOC members threw out baseball and softball from the schedule at London. Baseball will still compete at Beijing in 2008, but it won't be there at London. IOC President Jacques Rogge says the London Games will be better for the axing of Baseball. He says it's going to be quanlity over quantity. To be fair he's making noises that baseball might be allowed back if the Major Leagues send MLB players and of course the issue of steroids. Mr. Rogge who represented Belgium as a rugby player (something as significant as if I represented Japan in their cricket team) thinks that these things would make baseball attractive as an Olympic Sport.
Yeah well, I don't know about that.

One of the things I have to put forward is that Mr. Rogge is probably one of those athletes who suck at bat and ball sports. Indeed, the Olympics is hardly the place you'd tune into to find expert hitters of any kind except maybe tennis, table tennis and badmington. Well, we know how uncompelling Olympic Tennis can be, and really that sport probably doesn't belong at all either. Table tennis and badmington are such minor sports they probably do well out of the Olympic competition. The rest of Olympic sports seem to be either grunt running, jumping swimming, chucking, mock fighting, or glorified contortions acts. When I stop to think about it, as much fun as Olympic baseball was in 2004, it was only fun because it was international competition - you know, finding out just how good the Japanese professional squad might be. Finding out about the Cubans and all that. To be frank, it had nothing to do with the Olympics or the Olympic Spirit. It was the excitement of international 'ball.

Really, baseball should just forge ahead and work on a better world cup concept. They should also have a world club championship too. The way I see it, when international baseball get under way with any kind of credibility, then it will be the Olympics begging the baseball federations to have them back. I mean the IOC is a hopelessly idiotic organisation from most observers' reports; chances are, they'll invite Cricket in 2012 and kick them out by 2020 (and that's a sport with 1billion Indians watching and following very closely).
In the mean time, I think I'll try out for the Australian tiddlywinks team. Maybe that'll get voted as a sport for 2012.

- Art Neuro

The Shutle Returns To Launchpad
Here we go. It's been 2 and a half years of reports, revisions, investigations, re-engineering and re-design; it's cost US $1Billion; there have been 2 significant delays and it's still unpredictable and unforgiving. But it's on the tarmac ready to go again.

Managers believe they have licked the overriding problem of foam shrapnel, but warn that no one will know for sure until Discovery goes up. Ice from the fuel tank could also prove to be a deadly spoiler.

As for those little shuttle bandages, the astronauts don't trust them enough to ride home with them covering any holes, even those considerably smaller than the one that doomed Columbia.

An oversight group found the remedies to be so deficient that it ruled NASA noncompliant with Columbia accident investigators' 2003 insistence on practical space repairs. The task force also found NASA lacking on two other crucial requirements, shuttle hardening and elimination of fuel-tank launch debris.

I'm really scared for the astronauts. I can't watch these things any more.

The Week That Was In London
I've been a little pre-occupied this week so I haven't posted much stuff.
Suffice to say it was the week that saw London become the fist city to win a right to host the Olympic Games AND get mass bombed by terrorists in the same week. While the events and the images are shocking, and indeed my heart goes out to the victims and their family just as it did with September 11, I am more curious as to just how Scotland Yard intends to bring the perps to justice.

I also have to confess I'm a little bored of the sort of chestbeating done by politicians in the aftermath of each and every incident. Her Majesty the Queen visited the Hospital caring for the victims and quickly got up to make an impromptu speech that echoed her ancestors defiant stance against enemies of yesteryear. While admirable in sentiment, you sort of expect the monarch to do that in such times. And if such predicatble things aren't boring, then I don't know what boring is.

Meanwhile here are people on the planet who celebrate these tragic moments - like the family who were shown dancing on the streets in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. They have reasons to do so; as Jean Renoir once famously observed, "Everybody has a reason". Well Mr. Renoir, the people with minds that hate, really work on having a reason. It seems to me, nothing concrete can be accomplished while these same politicians keep on providing reasons for these people to feel these nasty sentiments. Or maybe it simply is the case that we are living amidst a cultural war that is rending asunder the accomlishment of the Enlightenment. Maybe the current vogue of Medievalist thought, ranging from the sort of blurring of the line between Church and State, the fundamentalist religions trying to stake out a position in politics, the attempt to discredit rationalism, science, philosophy and indeed knowledge that we see almost every day; maybe these things are all symptoms of the same and single problem. Some people just aren't up to the challenge of living in the twenty-first century.

Predicatbly the loonies on the left and right are pointing fingers at each other on boards of baseball to Yahoo to whereever else people ordinarily talk things other than politics. It's a shame really, because these discussions bear no relationship to the hateful mind of the terrorist out there somewhere enjoying his adrenaline rush of a successful bomb or planning his next attack.
So I guess we'll see what Scotland Yard can accomplish in the coming week or months.

More Thoughts on Live 8
Channel 9 played some more cuts of Live 8, some of which weren't shown last time.
I missed a few acts in my last pot-shot review:

U2 plays 'Sgt. Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band' with Sir Paul - How frickin' naff did that sound?

Annie Lennox observation II - She must be a very difficult person. She kept changing her expression from impassioned to irritated with a vaguely missed not to a sublime 'got it' to a 'WTF' as she played piano and sang. I thought, "Far out, it's not that critical Annie, it's only pop music".

REM - Michael Stipe looked like a freak with a blue band across his eyes. Still dull, tepid and boring after all these years.

Dido - She can't sing. She really can't sing. I can't believe she gets paid. She was so awful I had to walk away.

Pink Floyd - They played 'Comfortably Numb' on the second broadcast. It was cool. They look really, really old, and Gilmour's black strat looked really battered but hey, the leadbreak just cut the audience down; and was that Roger Waters smiling and grooving? They were the very definition the old-fart-ness of the Live 8 but still, they rocked.

Scissor Sisters - Who are these people? They were okay.

Celine Dion - She was doing some weird cabaret act in Vegas. She can sing, but she sure ain't no dancer. Actually, as she's 'matured' her voice has gotten richer. Very nice voice now compared to even a decade ago when she sang the theme for 'Titanic'.

Mariah Carey - She was practically busting out of her tight dress. She can still sing, but everyday she looks like she's headed out towards a Aretha Franklin sort of stature. I can sort of see why Derek Jeter dumped her... :)

The Who - How can they still be The Who when half of them are in the grave? The half-Who belted out 'Won't Get Fooled Again' because, well, Pete just turned 60 in may so they eally aren't qualified to play 'My Generation' any more. At least Keith lived up to the adage, "Hope I die before I get old"... Still, Pete's red Stratocaster sounded just as huge as it did on the 2000 Live DVD. You can see him wind up the output on the retro-fitted active circuit knob and his sytem howls. Most notably, he was on all Fender amplifiers tonight - you notice these things when you're a fan.

Sir Paul - I noted how bad he sounded. They must have re-mixed it during the week because he sounded much, much better in the same performance being broadcast again. In fact, the London gigs over all, sounded pretty crappy last week, compared to the stuff in Berlin and elsewhere. OTOH there was no saving Sir Bob Geldof's sad effort because that one still sounded crap.

It's at the point where some of these boomers are geting really old. Roger Daltrey looked like the local bank manager on his Sunday pub gig more than a rock star. In fact they're so old they are older than the G8 leaders yacking in Scotland. So maybe this is the last ditch effort by the Baby Boomers to salvage something from what has amounted to a really selfish self-serving generation that ate more than its fair share? When I see their slogan 'Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great', I think "certainly ain't mine".

It's a fine cause and all, but the whole thing left me very cold indeed. Maybe I'm too deep in my cynicism.

Yankee Comings & Goings
The New York Yankees are adopting a Youth policy more out of necessity. Since callig up Robinson Cano and Chien-Mig Wang to fill roster spots, the Yankees have shown a bit of spunk. now that Jason Giambi is hitting like a Juicin' Giambi is supposed to, The Yankees felt advneturous enough to elevate a 20 year old prospect into Centerfield. That's right. Melky Cabrera, who started the year as a distant prospect finds himself in the lineup at number 9, displacing Tony 'Woe'-mack to the bench.

While a lot of analysts predict that it is too early to bring up this prospect, it seems the Yankee brass are determined not to overpay for mediocre veterans anymore; certainly not this year. When asked if this was an attempt to showcase Cabrera for a trade, GM Brian Cashman emphatically denied this was the case. So I guess it's warts-&-all-growth-in-pulic-view time for the young Mr. Cabrera, who by most accounts is most probably the Yankee Centerfielder of the near-future.

Win or lose, it's a good sign and suddenly the Yankees are fun again; it reminds me of the 1996 squad that had a rookie Derek Jeter at short, with young arms from the farm Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte and a still pretty young Bernie Williams in center. This could be very promising.

- Art Neuro

Some Thoughts On Live 8
Just a quick note before I forget after the weekend. It's probably a bit late, but what the heck.
Can't believe 20 years flew by and there's another one of these global superstar concerts in aid of Africa. There I am still sitting on the couch watching it with friends; it felt so passive on both occasions. It's also kind of weird to see the headline acts are still the same sort of guys.

U2 - Caught the last of their song where they broke into Blackbird. I don't understand why, and it didn't even fit the chords properly, but that didn't stop them.

Elton John - Big band, but he warbled and rawbled his way through 'Saturday Night'. Was rather sad because he sounded 'spent'.

Annie Lennox - on the other hand sounded like she still had it as she sang 'Sweet Dreams'. Lots of energy there. The Berlin crowd seemed to go bananas.

Coldplay - I'm sure it was their hit song, but they were pretty cold and clinical. Then they came on and played that song that lifts the Rolling Stone sample with the guy from the verve (I think). The crowd response looked muted.

Stevie Wonder - Turned up dressed like Shoko Asahara of the Aum Supreme Truth sect. Very bad look. Also, looked fat and rolly-polly. But he could really hammer away at the clav keys. Wasn't too bad as his funk went down smoothly.

Craig David & Tina Arena - were singing Come Together in Paris. My girlfriend asked, "Do you think she knows the words at all?" Had to laugh at that.

Boomtown Rats - These guys were sad. There was no oomph to their music or performance as they meandered through a rather turgid 'I Don't Like Mondays'. Then Bob thanked the crowd for letting him do it. I don't recall giving him permission to commit musical atrocities like that.

Keith Urban - Don't know his work, but he's a good singer, good player. Probably in the prime of his career because hesung & played with gusto and got a lot of crowd response as well. Still, I wouldn't buy his stuff.

Madonna - Came on and gave a mature renidtion of 'Like A Prayer'. I remember playing a Heavy Metal version of that song in the Elvis Pizza Restaurant in Rushcutter's Bay about 13years ago. I'm gettin' old.

Sting - Turned up with a full band this time. Last time he kind of walked on stage and played guitar by himself. His song was 'Every Breath You Take' and I sort of thought, "gee why couldn't you at least re-form The Police for one occasion!? Because...

Pink Floyd - reformed for the gig. Roger Waters made some remarks about how wonderful it was to be on stage with the other 3 guys. You sort of think, what took you so long, but at least it was legitiamtely a 'special' moment. They actually looked like they were having fun as they wound through an acoustic-heavy version of 'Wish You Were here'... I think.

Paul McCartney - got 2 songs. I guess it's because he was a Beatle. He can't do it no more. He's 63, and his vocal cords have simply had it. Even back in '93 when I saw him live, he could belt out the rock numbers and go back to his ballads with ease, but he sounded rat-shit on 'Helter Skelter' and he sounded really shaky on 'Long and Winding Road'. Then inexplicaly, they went into the 'Da-da-da' extro chorus of 'Hey Jude' as everybody came out. Very sad.

Overall it was a really ordinary experience. Then, Federer predicatbly thrashed the pants off Roddick in the Wimbledon final in 3 straight sets.

Arnie Steps Up
His father was a Nazi. His reputation was built upon more muscle than brains or heart; and yet here he is, multi-millionaire superstar governor of California telling fellow Republican to wake up and smell the coffee on Global Warming.

LONDON (AP) — California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is urging governments — including that of President Bush — to face up the reality of global warming.

"The debate is over," he wrote in Britain's Independent on Sunday newspaper. "We know the science. We see the threat posed by changes in our climate. And we know the time for action is now."

Schwarzenegger, a Republican, did not mention Bush by name, but called on "governments everywhere" to join action to combat climate change. He contradicted Bush's claims that taking action will damage the U.S. economy.

Climate change is one of the major issues expected to be discussed at the upcoming Group of Eight summit at the Gleneagles resort in Scotland. Schwarzenegger has vowed to make California a leader in the battle against global warming, calling on the state to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases while increasing use of renewable energy.

"Global warming threatens California's water supply, public health, agriculture, coastlines and forests — our entire economy and way of life," Schwarzenegger wrote.

Cool. Way to go Arnie.

- Art Neuro

Bulls Eye
Deep Impact hit its target. Everybody is happy.

The brighter-than-expected white flash of light climaxed a daring mission "that's something to be proud of on America's birthday," said Rick Grammier, the mission's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

About 12 hours after the barrel-sized Deep Impact space probe smashed into a comet half the size of Manhattan, scientists showed off dramatic, sci-fi-like images. Photos shot by the impactor probe as it awaited its suicidal collision revealed for the
first time the surface of the comet Tempel 1 as it closed in at 23,000 mph.

The close-ups revealed not so much the pickle-shaped comet that scientists originally thought, but one that looked more like a potato, lumpy and pocked. Michael A'Hearn, an astronomer at the University of Maryland and Deep Impact principal investigator, likened it to a muffin or loaf of bread.

The impact released a bright flash followed by a larger one as a plume of trapped
gas and debris spewed from the comet's belly into space, backlit by the sun. The cloud blocked scientists' view of the excavated crater and it could be weeks before the dust disappears. Still, scientists were confident they accomplished their mission because they were able to see the crater's shadow in the photos.

"Our experiment went very, very well," said co-investigator Pete Schultz of Brown University, who seemed to be brimming with enthusiasm. "We touched a comet and we touched it hard."

The mission seemed to spark enthusiasm of skywatchers too. Officials at JPL said the Deep Impact web site had 1 billion hits, compared to some 400 million hits for the Mars mission. Scientists said the comet appears to have a soft, dusty surface with crater-like features. Trapped ice seems to be below the surface, possibly containing the primordial ingredients of the solar system, Schultz said. Scientists are hoping to get to the core of this rocky, ice-filled structure to learn about the origins of the sun and planets.

So it appears the comet looked nothing like the jagged landsape we saw on 'Armageddon' - but that was an asteroid.

Nine Inch Nail Re-mixes
Trent Reznor has released another track to the public to be remixed. The track is titled 'Only'
Good on Trent.
So naturally I've done a re-mix too, so please check it out on my artist page at iCompositons. You won't be disappointed. :)

- Art Neuro

Wimbledon, And Other Tennis Thoughts
I used to play tennis. I think I was pretty competitive in the sport, though not enough to turn pro. In years past I would've stayed up all hours to watch Wimbledon, but for the beter part of the last 5-10 years I've been giving it a miss, more and more. Why? I think it's because of two reasons: modern racquets have ruined the game and the scoring system in tennis is stupid.

On the first point. It used to be really hard playing with heavy wooden racquets. You had to hit th ball cleanly in the sweetspot for it to travel any distance, and any mis-hit was rewarded with a jarring shudder up the elbow. Hitting the sort of topspins that Bjorn Borg used to unleash took a great deal of control, timing and eye-hand coordination. Hitting balls flat like Jimmy Connors took a lot of the same, and neither method had much that was transportable to the other. The margin of error on those racquets were small. It took real talent and skill to hit the ball the way those guys hit the ball. Then came the Prince racquet with the over-sized head, followed by composite material racquets, and the rest is history.

Recently I hit with a Wilson Hammer racquet of a very recent vintage. I could hit all osrts of crazy shots with it. I could whip a tonne of topspin or hit it dead flat without really altering m y swing greatly. The margin of error on the thing was so big, you couldn't begin to compare it to an old wooden racquet.

The point I'm making is that with the increased margins of error, the element of talent and skill has eked out of the game and now, you can train people with less talent to hit the ball harder and stay in the game. The end result is really pathetic to watch as a spectator sport. The power game is nice, but everybody playing a power game plays the same way, and everybody is choosing to play the power game. What's gone is the surprise that used to come in a good game of tennis. The sort of amazing rallies that took place between John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg, where unexpected angles and touch played such a role in a game, are long consigned to the dustbin of tennis history, thanks to the modern high-tech racquet. And the governing body of tennis won't do sweet F.A. It's so stupid.

The other issue is the scoring system in tennis.
There are so few leveraged points in a set of tennis.
The business of first to 6 games is just awful because a breakpoint doesn't becomes meangful until they've played 6 games to 3-3. Those moments when the set or game is on the line only seems to comein every 25 minutes to 30minutes. Everythingin between is an acumulation of points that are not going to greatly determine the outcome. The most boring moments of 5 set matches are found in the first 4 games of the 4th set, where palyers either dog it or just roll with the serve, hoping to find a way into the 5th set. It's the most excruciatingly boring set in all of tennis. And if there should be an early break in fabour of the guy who is 2-1 down, oh boy, the guy who's up 2-1 simply rides out the set conserving energy for the fifth. Frankly, I'd rather they played 7 sets of first to4 than 5 sets of first to 6.

Anyway, Roger Federer, a player of extraordinary talent and skill beat a player of exatraordinary determination today. Federer is as great a hitter of the tennis ball as I've ever seen, but I'd still not tay up to watch him thrash the Aussie B(r)attler, Lleyton Hewitt. You can blame that on the racquets and scoring system.

Billy Beane Interview
It must be the day for Borg-McEnroe comments. Here's GM of the Oakland A's, Billy Beane interviewed by Tyler Blezinski:

Beane: You know what it is. It's the old John McEnroe versus Bjorn Borg personality. Is Bjorn Borg any less of a champion in tennis than John
McEnroe with a completely different personality? Bjorn Borg is one of the greatest tennis players of all time. He and McEnroe are, but totally different personalities. When McEnroe misses a shot and argues with an umpire, people felt better because they want to do that. But when Borg didn't, and I'm going back quite a few years for some people, does that mean he doesn't care as much? They're just different personalities.

Yeah.
Interestingly, Bjorn Borg quit at his peak because he couldn't handle facing what he saw as the decline-side of his career. So that lion bought a one-way ticket to Monte Carlo, instead of sticking around for the winter - much to the chagrin of many tennis fans as well as John McEnroe.

- Art Neuro

Aussie Comeback Kid
This was in the mailbag from WalkOff-HBP.
Who is Glenn Williams? He's a little Aussie battler:

Discovered at 14 while starring on Australian youth teams, Williams, a smooth and strong switch-hitting infielder, was the most polished young prospect his country had ever produced. And he wasn't some raw project from the Outback; Williams had been around baseball all his life. His father, Garry, had been a member of the Australian national team a generation before, playing in international tournaments against Tim Wallach and other future big-leaguers. The day Glenn left the hospital after being born in July 1977, Garry took him straight to the ballpark.

A half-dozen organizations fell all over themselves trying to sign Williams when he turned 16 in July 1993, and the Braves won out with that $825,000 offer – the highest bonus international baseball had ever seen. Atlanta brass predictably compared him to its top prospect and a fellow switch-hitting infielder, Chipper
Jones.

Williams never showed that type of talent again. From 1994 to 1999, playing just 57 games above Class A, he hit in the low .200s with little power but lots of injuries. A fungo bat slammed into his shoulder. A pitch crashed into his elbow. Another pitch hit his bad shoulder. He dislocated a finger before dislocating his left shoulder twice and his right shoulder once.

Just like any American bonus baby, Williams knew he hadn't lived up to the hype.
"It was tough – you never see yourself failing," Williams said. "What got to me was the expectations. There were a lot of things said about me and a lot of things written about me that I tried to live up to, and whenever you do that and you stop concentrating on what you have to do, it makes it tough."

Williams' huge bonus was a byproduct of baseball's industrywide Australia fix in the early 1990s, when scouts believed the huge nation could become a serious talent hotbed. Australia hadn't produced much before – its only notable export was a 19th-century second baseman, Joe Quinn, who later managed the historically inept 12-104 Cleveland Spiders of 1899 – but with Dave Nilsson and Graeme Lloyd just breaking in with the Brewers, scouts thought investment in Australia would reap future All Stars.

They were wrong. No Australian ever proved even half as good as Nilsson – particularly Williams, who at least symbolically soured the scouting community on the nation as a whole.

"I would say that's right," said Dan Jennings, Marlins assistant general manager and
longtime scout. "I think Australia still gets scouted pretty heavy, just not as much as in the past. Probably Japan has taken the place of Australia in terms of priority." Released by Atlanta after the 1999 season, Williams got picked up by Toronto and spent the next five seasons in that system, including 2002-04 with Syracuse. It began to look as though his finest moment would be helping his home country win the silver medal in last summer's Athens Olympics.

Which goes to show, the gap between performance and results can be an ocean. He probably had it in him all along and took until his Age-27 (a magic number for most players) to prove it.

Psychiatry Not For Tom Cruise - Then What Is?
The psychiatrists struck back at the sientological one today.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) and a national charity, SANE Australia, advised Australians using psychiatric drugs who are concerned by the screen idol's remarks not to change their treatment.

"It is reckless and potentially dangerous of Mr Cruise to make uninformed comments about the treatment of mental illness; many people are well because medication plays an important role in managing their health," said SANE's director Barbara Hocking.

"The stigma and misunderstanding of mental illnesses, such as postnatal depression, prevents help-seeking behaviour for people who are unwell." The president of RANZCP, Julian Freidin, said: "Scientific research has clearly demonstrated that modern treatments for psychiatric illnesses - including medications - are safe and effective."

The joint statement, entitled "Tom Cruise's 'Mission Irresponsible'", said his comments should be seen in the context of his religious beliefs as a Scientologist.

Cruise created controversy recently when he criticised actress Brooke Shields for revealing that she went into therapy and took anti-depressants to deal with postnatal depression.

Defending his remarks later on NBC television's "Today" show presented by Matt Lauer, Cruise launched into an attack on the whole field of psychiatric medicine, which Scientologists spurn.

"Psychiatry is a pseudo science," Cruise said. "She (Shields) doesn't understand the history of psychiatry. She doesn't understand in the same way that you don't understand it, Matt. You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do."

Man, I wonder what Mr. $25Million/year Alex Rodriguez thinks of Mr. $25million/picture Tom Cruise, because A-Rod went public that he's been in therapy and that it has helped him a lot, making a big plug for the psychiatric cause. Judging from this year's number's, A-Rod might be a lot more right than Tom and the Martians who together with rest of Hollywood are on a 18week losing skid.

Or more succinctly, if you had the choice of careers, do you want A-Rod's or Tom Cruises'? I'd want A-Rod's any day of the week! - I mean, it's no contest really - Do I want to be the hard hitting Yankee thirdbaseman with a Hall of Fame career with 400+ Homeruns who visits a shrink; or a closet-gay, short-ass, smugazoid actor that was sham-married to Nicole Kidman for many years, who gets his mental health advice from L. Ron Hubbard's men?

- Art Neuro