Alien DNA

No, no, this post has nothing to do with the anniversary of the Roswell incident. For the record, I have no doubt in my mind that extraterrestrial life exists- the universe is so vast, I believe the incidence of alien life is inevitable, and, since the 90's the combination of the discover of extrasolarian planets (including three recently found earthlike planets) and the discovery of organisms that thrive in conditions that would kill off animal or plant life gives me enough confidence to trust my gut feeling.

I'm not talking about E.T.s or UFOs here, I'm talking about watching a couple of movies that influenced the horror/sci-fi movie Alien. I haven't seen Alien in years, but I finally got around to seeing the John Carpenter-directed movie Dark Star, which was written by, and starred Alien screenwriter Dan O'Bannon, who died in 2008. Dark Star is a blackly comedic science-fiction film about the crew of a spaceship sent on a twenty-year mission to seek and destroy unstable planets ahead of any efforts to colonize other solar systems:





One of the film's sequences involves the conflict between Sergeant Pinback (played by writer Dan O'Bannon) and a beach-ball shaped alien lifeform that he has taken aboard as a "mascot" for the mission. While the episode is largely played for dark, slapstick humor, it prefigures the movie Alien, in which the theme of a hunt for a hostile alien stowaway was extended to become a serious, and terrifying feature film. Dark Star also prefigures Alien in that the crew of the spaceship is portrayed as a bunch of working-stiffs, gradually losing their minds as their mission drags on, and shipboard malfunctions mount to a life-threatening degree. I wouldn't characterize Dark Star as a comedy per se, but it has its incredibly funny moments. The end of the movie is a downer, but it achieves a startling poignancy


**SPOILER ALERT**

I was particularly struck by the line uttered by the character Talby, who, upon hearing Doolittle exclaim that he's going to burn up in the atmosphere of the planet that he's falling toward, whispers, "When you hit the atmosphere, you'll start to burn... What a beautiful way to die, as a falling star." Damn, it was hard not to mist up hearing that. The other scene which I found extremely poignant (as well as eerie as hell) was when Doolittle, acting captain, consulted with the cryogenically frozen Commander Powell, who had fallen victim to a mishap- the captain's plaintive "I'm glad you could come to talk with me, Doolittle. It's been so long since anyone has come to talk with me." It was another surprisingly tender scene in this low-budget marvel of a movie.


**SPOILERS OVER**


I'd recommend Dark Star to any fans of the science-fiction genre, and fans of the Alien franchise in particular.


I also decided to watch Planet of the Vampires, originally titled Terrore Nello Spazio:





This low-budget horror/sci-fi film was directed by horror meister Mario Bava, whose dubious claim to fame was inventing the "slasher" film. Planet of the Vampires also has a couple of scenes which seem to have inspired Alien, specifically a scene involving the investigation of a an ancient derelict spacecraft. While the plot can be somewhat confusing at times, the set design is wonderfully eerie. The costume design is a hoot- the hapless crews of the spaceships stranded on the eponymous planet are decked out in tight-leather jumpsuits with high collars (only the crew of a spaceship in an Italian movie would be so fashionably turned out). The end of the movie was a surprise worthy of a film by M. Night Shabba Doo, although when I discovered the twist ending, I expected something more like the world-shaking revelation in Quatermass and the Pit.

Sure, there are other movies which inspired Alien, like It! The Terror from Beyond Space and The Thing from Another World, but there's only so much movie-watching a d00d can do, especially a d00d who's not too big on movies. At any rate, Dark Star is really a must-see for fans of science-fiction cinema (it's like the bizarro world 2001, with the only alien being a nasty, stupid beach ball, rather than a transcendent overseer of human evolution. Planet of the Vampires, while a fun movie, is best enjoyed by fans of the more pulpy Italian movies (Rossellini, it ain't), and people who are into the leather scene.

Of course, major fans of Alien should watch both of these films.

Got that Melty Feeling

For the third day running, we're having a heat wave here in the NY Metro area. There's a heat advisory in effect from Noon until 8PM. Luckily, I've been working the graveyard shift lately, so I have been avoiding the worst effects of the heat. The period from 5AM to 8AM is the most beautiful time of day this time of year.

Sadly, I have to return to work this afternoon at 4PM... yeah, it's one of those days, out by 8AM, back by 4PM. We're in the middle of a major summer fundraiser, and my department is stretched to the limit (my co-worker **REDACTED** is doing a heroic job, working in the most brutal heat of the day, and I am extremely grateful that she is a superwoman). My usual line is that the job is cushy, except when it's not, and today falls into the "not" category.

I know I posted a video for Too Hot by The Specials, but I found a live 2011 version by a reunited band:





Singers Terry Hall and Neville Staples sound good, and the interplay of vocals is as tight as ever. Nice to see them still performing.

Creepily Prescient!

This post is inspired by OBS's latest post, about watching a documentary about METAL GAWDS Iron Maiden. I was never into Maiden as a high-schooler, entirely due to stupid teenage tribalism... I was a punk, not a metalhead. Foolish, I know, hardcore punk and thrash metal would be virtually indistinguishable to a disinterested listener. My great and good friend J-Co was a big Maiden fan, and he put a couple of their songs on a mixtape he made me (remember when kids did that and it destroyed the recording industry?). Funny, Maiden was pretty much nerd metal, with its references to Coleridge, Frank Herbert, and The Crimean War (hilariously, the linked video was preceded by an ad for Coors Light in Spanish and accompanied by an ad for a Taylor Swift release). Yeah, my Iron Maiden prejudice was pretty much baseless, and could be chalked up to youthful foolishness.

J-Co, being a huge Iron Maiden fan, and an inveterate collector of music, also had not one, but two of Bruce Dickinson's solo albums. Cyclops, a particular song from Bruce's second album, was written about paparazzi, but it could be equally applied to our modern surveillance society:


We all have secret lives
In our secret rooms
Living in our movies
Humming our own tunes

Living life in camera
When the night is closing down
Sliding into darkness
You could be like me

Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Why are you looking
At the camera's eye?

Where are you staying?
Why are you leaving?
We watch you breathing
Through the camera's eye


Blast it, the contractors monitoring the web for the NSA have a right to rock out on the job:

Fabulous Fossil Finds

I was happy as a clam when I saw bit on the BBC website about fossil finds in Wyoming that detail the early explosion of mammal species after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. Further poking around the t00bz uncovered an interview on Chicago Tonight with Dr Lance Grande of the Field Museum, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois. In the course of the interview, Dr Grande displays some gorgeously preserved fossils:





I am especially intrigued by the bird fossils which show the early evolution of parrots and the hummingbird/swift divergence. Also fascinating to me are the fossils of long-tailed, day flying bats and a carnivore with the earliest appearance of a prehensile tail.

Dr Grande's book, The Lost World of Fossil Lake: Snapshots from Deep Time, looks gorgeous. Hopefully, he'll be conducting a book tour that will bring him the NYC in the near future... I know some people who'd want to have a word with him.

Happy Independence Day!

Here's wishing a happy Independence Day to all of my U.S. readers, and hoping that all of my foreign readers enjoy a pleasant July 4.

One thing that all liberals should strive for is the reclamation of the word "liberty". Tragically, the word has been co-opted by creepy authoritarians who seek to erode the civil liberties of any Americans who do not adhere to their draconian code of conduct, and corporatists who seek to remove any barriers to the complete dominance of American society by multinational corporations that are answerable only to the oligarchs. It is a sad, sad thing that the word "liberty" in the name of an organization is a red flag.

The domestic struggles of the 20th century, the struggles for civil rights for minorities and women, demonstrated that a strong federal government is the best guarantor of individual liberties. The bad legislation being put forth in states such as Texas, Ohio, and North Carolina underscores the reality that local and state governments really can't be trusted to safeguard liberty for all residents, not merely straight, white males who adhere to certain sects of a certain religion.

Time to take "liberty" back from those who have been distorting it. That being said, by all means take today off, even a liberal firebrand needs to kick back with a cold beer and a hot dog every once in a while.

150 Years Ago: TiDoS Tide Turned

Today marks the 150th anniversary of Pickett's Charge, a disastrous infantry push by the Confederate army during the Battle of Gettysburg in which the traitorous forces of the CSA reached their furthest extent north- the High Water Mark of the Confederacy. The failure of Pickett's charge to dislodge the Union troops holding Cemetery Ridge marked the turn of the TiDoS tide, the last real hope for a feudalistic system to survive in a nation founded on Enlightenment principles.

Apologists for the Confederacy try to console themselves with the lie of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, and have characterized their failed rebellion as the War of Northern Aggression (even though southerners fired the first shots). Make no mistake, though, this is one war in which the "bad guys" are clearly evident- to underscore how awful the Confederates were, their army seized free blacks and brought them back to the slave markets of the South during their foray into Pennsylvania.

The plantation system was a vestige of the feudal system which had no business surviving in a nation which had a foundational document which stated that all men are created equal. The institution of slavery, along with the extirpation of the native population, was a congenital defect which marred the nation, and from which the nation is still recovering. The Battle of Gettysburg, in which the failed Pickett's Charge spelled the ultimate doom of the Confederate war effort, was merely the beginning of the end of the ills of the Confederacy. Tragically, the struggle still continues, as the forces of patriarchal authoritarianism continue to fight to regain ground in former states of the Confederacy. The Civil War didn't really end in the South, it merely became a cold war, largely forgotten by northerners, many of us (like myself) the descendants of people who emigrated to the U.S. well after the end of the war. We ignore the continuing cold war being fought on our soil at our peril. Dammit, the Union one the war so handily, the Confederacy surrendered unconditionally- why are we still allowing manifestations of the Confederacy to pop up?

This post, which may seem a bit intemperate, was inspired by a call into the NPR show On Point in which a North Carolinian referred to the Confederate army as "we" and showed resentment that Pickett's Charge was not known as Pettigrew's Charge, as it is in North Carolina. If I could have smacked this guy through the airwaves, I would have done so- what kind of pathetic creepazoid not only identifies with an unjust, failed cause, but also with a poorly planned, poorly executed disaster of a military maneuver.

I refuse to be nice when that sort of idiocy is on display.

Secret Science Supplemental: Fruit Flies in Focus

Last night, I headed down to the beautiful Bell House in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn for a Secret Science Club event that featured a film clip and a discussion of fruit flies by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories neuroscientist Dr Josh Dubnau. Dr Dubnau studies neurodegenerative disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and temporal lobe dementia using fruit flies as a lab subject. Dr Dubnau likened Drosophila melanogaster to the genetic Swiss army knife- they have been the go-to organism used to study genetics for about a century.

Drosophila is a good lab subject because it has manipulable genes and manipulable neurons. Flybase is a database of Drosophila genetics and Flycircuit is a database of Drosophila neurons. Enhancer traps are inserted into the genome of a subject to produce genetic markers, with the GAL4 gene (obtained from yeast) being commonly inserted in Drosophila.

Dr Dubnau made a humorous comparison between Drosophila behavior and human behavior, noting that Drosophila was highly motivated to mate with opposite sex parters (and sometimes with same-sex partners, most appropriate for a Pride Day lecture), and that they enjoyed alcohol (with unsuccessfully mating flies seeking out alcohol after their amatory failure). Those little flies are enough like us genetically and behaviorally to make good models for human genetics and neurology.

Dr Dubnau then went on to discuss the role of transposons or "jumping genes". Transposons were first described by Dr Barbara McClintock, who, while researching the genetics of corn (Zea mays), discovered that there were genes which could change locations on a chromosome, and such changes in location could alter the expression of nearby genes. She was specifically describing the genes which control the pigmentation of corn kernels. McClintock originally described these "jumping genes" as "controlling elements" because she hypothesized that these movable genes regulated development. In humans, about 44% of the genome is composed of transposons.

In Drosophila, transposons have been implicated in intra-specific infertility among two strains of flies (the Harwich and Canton-S populations- Harwich males mating with Canton-S females would result in a lack of fertility)- in the Q&A session, some bastard in the audience asked Dr Dubnau about the role of transposons in speciation, and Dr Dubnau responded that they probably played a major role in the inability of populations to mate successfully, thus leading to a "separation".

Dr Dubnau then moved on to the topic of fruit fly neurology, and his specialty, the study of neurological degenerative diseases. Structures in the fruit fly brain, the mushroom bodies are connected to olfactory learning and memory. Dr Dubnau showed us a video of flies which had been subjected to a mild electric shock while being exposed to a particular fragrance. They learned to associate the fragrance with the shock, so continued exposure to that fragrance would cause them to behave so that they would avoid an expected shock. The flies are then put in a T-maze and subjected to different odors... here's a video featuring Dr Dubnau, explaining this experiment:





Neurological damage may result from a "storm of tansposons", with the accumulation of a protein called TDP-43 playing a role in ALS. In patients with neurodegenerative diseases, these transposons avoid the regulatory affects of piwi-interacting RNA, which "tamps down" transposons.

Besides Dr Dubnau's lecture, the 1910 short film The Acrobatic Fly was shown:





The main news of the night, though, came from Friend of the Bastard Dr Alexis Gambis, who announced that he has finished filming his first feature film, The Fly Room. He will be spending the next few months editing the film, and hopes to shop it around to the major film festivals. The Fly Room will tell the tale of pioneering geneticist Calvin Bridges through the eyes of his daughter Betsey (who, **SPOILER ALERT** makes an appearance in the film). In discussing the film shoot, Dr Gambis told me that filming took place in upstate New York during the emergence of the 17-year cicada brood so, appropriately, **SPOILER ALERT**, insects make their presence known in the film.

All told, it was a great night, and the news of Dr Gambis' first feature film has me overjoyed. I always love to see the good guys succeed and Dr Gambis (who I have known since 2006, before he was a Doktor) is one of the goodest of good guys. Here's video of a TED talk that Dr Gambis gave back in 2011, so you can get an idea of where he's coming from:





Rest assured, I'm going to make it to the theater when The Fly Room is released. GO DR GAMBIS!!!