Blogcritics Author: DrPat

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Father's Day Shopping Suggestions

DrPat — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:57:21 EDT

What does Dad want for his day? You could always ask, but then you run the risk of the casual demurral, "I just want a nice quiet day at home with the family — you don't have to buy me anything." You know he deserves more than that, and you'd love to surprise him with the perfect gift.So I asked some fellows who are the same general age as my own father what they would like to see inside the Father's Day gift wrap. Their answers may (or may not) surprise you.TECH TOYS: Might Dad like an iPod? Or how about a sleek Razr cell phone, or a Blackberry?According to my friend Ted, a retired USN commander with a collection of hi-tech gear in his own study, Dad generally doesn't want to hand anyone in the family a better way to reach out and touch him. If he leaves his current brick-sized cell phone in a drawer at home, don't assume it's because it's too heavy. He may just want the option to be "out of reach" for part of each day.As for the iPod, guys in my Dad's generation who have a penchant for music usually still have a vinyl collection and a working stereo phonograph system, often one they built themselves when hi-fi was young and required an engineer's certificate to operate. They're not likely to switch to MP3, even if there were somewhere to download the complete collection of the greatest hits of Nelson Riddle or Johnny Puleo and His Harmonica Gang.Buy him a car navigation system, Ted advises. There are some pretty good deals going on Garman Street Pilots. With this, Dad will never have to stop and ask directions, ever again. Not that he ever did, anyway.FROM THE BOOKSHELF: Books are safe for a bookish parent. Chances are, you think you know your Pop's taste in reading material: World War II or Civil War history, maybe, or a coffee-table book of early-19th-century hand-tools."Good grief!" was the reaction of my ex-SeaBee neighbor, Colin, whose bedroom walls are lined with bookshelves. "When I open a book, I want a real story." No coffee-table stuff, Colin recommends; that's more appealing to an interior-decorator type. (Colin's wife is an interior designer.)He recommends something moving, like James Bradley's Flags of our Fathers or Wisdom of Our Fathers by Tim Russert. These are books that celebrate the fathers in my father's generation, both war heroes and the ordinary, everyday men who fed their familes, kept the roof over their heads, and lead them to be better men and women by their sterling example.If you need fiction to round off the bookshelf, try a classic Clancy like Patriot Games or a stirring Nevil Shute novel like Trustee from the Toolroom .DVD DELIGHT: I called Andy, a long-time friend who lives (and still works at age 72) in Hollywood for his suggestions for Father's Day movies. Should I get Dad a circa-1950 Oscar winner? Or would something more contemporary suit better? Andy has his own peculiar preferences in film; he has a copy of every movie that features a major character in clown-face, from Killer Klowns from Outer Space to The Family Jewels, and onward into nuttier realms. But his suggestion for your Dad's day? Icon sports movies, or something with John Wayne.You know the ones. Field of Dreams. The Natural. Victory. And for that other icon, the Duke: The Quiet American. Hellfighters. Donovan's Reef. No musicals. No "chick flicks." Just solid stuff that Dad will want to watch.SPORTS GEAR: Finally, I asked Greggo, an interesting grizzled fellow we fell into chat with at a local bar last Sunday, what he would like if his kids were to buy him sports gear for Father's Day. Greggo (the only name he would give us) has eight sons, all active or retired Marines. We were impressed by this feat of paternal child-rearing, and asked if he was himself a jar-head. "Nah," he told us. "I taught PE and math at a Washington State high school while they were growing up."So, should we give Dad a golf club or a pair of skis for his Day? Greggo suggests that if your Dad is into a sport enough to appreciate the gear, he's probably already got a well-worn whatever that he loves. And if he isn't, he may see such a gift as an unsubtle hint that he needs more exercise, or better gear to compensate for poor skill."Give him a beer mug with a sport-related theme," he said, lifting his own stein. "Or a really nice pair of gloves." Besides, you never know when possessing a "Richmond RiverDogs Logo Mug Collectible Officially Licensed Hockey Team Gift Accessory Merchandise" (huh?) will elevate Dad into the elite of the country-club set.Or you can fall back on the time-honored tradition: give him a tie and let him watch whatever's on TV all day without a single kid's spat, spouse's "honey-do" request, or grandchild's "why did Mommy leave me with you?" wail. And maybe that's what Dad meant by his request for a quiet day at home.

DrPat is the blog signature used by an old coot who hoards books, dances Argentine Tango, cooks a mean venison chili, and is happy to be along for the sag while my spouse does a marathon bicycle ride. All that is in my spare time -- and my work life is classified...

DVD Review: Hoodwinked

DrPat — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 21:22:42 EDT

In the woods, something sinister creeps. If it isn't the wolf (and he claims it is not), then who’s stealing the recipes and putting all the goodie-makers out of business? The Muffin Man has closed up shop, Peter Rabbit and his family are moving on, and Red Riding Hood is worried.This cute movie is a worthwhile take on the Red Riding Hood myth, examining the "scene of the crime" at Grandma's house with all the panoply of police, CSI, and a Nick Charles-like private eye with a talent for getting to the bottom of all the alibis. First there's Red herself, the wide-eyed innocent (voiced by Anne Hathaway). Or is she innocent? In a forest terrified by the serial cereal bandit, where no one's cookies are safe, is it naïveté that leads her into the woods — or cunning?Then there's the wolf (voice of Patrick Warburton, square-jawed as The Tick and The Emperor's New Groove Kronk). Is he really slinking around the woods, slavering over Red's goodies and her Grandma's dry thighs? He makes a pretty solid case for himself as a crime reporter, suspicious of Grannie and her delivery-girl, Red, just trying to get the story. When he's accused of the crime, he is quick to demur, "Ah, the wolf did it. Talk about profiling."In the original story, the woodsman is almost an afterthought. In this tale, he is a fully realized suspect, arriving in shards of glass, screaming, and flailing his axe just in time to rescue Red from the wolf's threat to "take out you and your Grannie too!" Jim Belushi's voice is bland, Austrian, and western by turns as the hapless lederhosen-clad actor tries to find his "inner woodsman" while he practices for an audition. His skipping commercial for schnitzel-on-a-stick is worth the price of the DVD all by itself. The final party in the lineup is Grandma herself (Glenn Close's voice). She has been acting suspiciously, hiding from Red and leaving her precious family recipe book in Red's cabin. And why does she have a tattoo on the back of her neck?In this tale, the police are (you should pardon me) pigs, and the Chief (a bear, voice of Xhibit) has to watch them lest they gobble the evidence. A singing goat is another high point, a sort of running gag through the second half of the film. David Ogden Stiers gives voice to Nicky Flippers, the private eye, but there isn't a hint of Major Winchester or even Cogsworth about this dapper frog.This film came out last year, but there must have been something in the Hollywood air about hyperactive squirrels and caffeine. Cory Edwards at double-speed is the voice of Twitchy, the wolf's assistant, in a turn reprised this year by Steve Carell as Hammy in Over the Hedge. Now that this DVD is out in the grocery stores, it's available at under $10, and it's great summer fun at that price, too. Make some muffins, bake some cookies, put some schnitzel on a stick, and enjoy it together. It's delicious!

Book Review: The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

DrPat — Fri, 9 Jun 2006 16:58:59 EDT

The City of Ember is a rule-bound place, where all the lights go out at 9 each night, everyone rises early for breakfast, and careful recycling is a way of life. Lately, though, the lights have begun flickering. Supplies are shorter each year, and some foods are no longer available.Until their 12th year, the children of the City of Ember go to school. But at the end of that year, they are assigned the jobs they will do for years after, perhaps to the end of their lives. Lina yearns to be a Messenger, running free in the streets, learning the secrets of the city. Doon wants desperately to be an electrician's assistant or a pipeworker, because he dreams of fixing the ancient, failing generators of the city.When each receives the assignment the other wants, they switch jobs, and begin a conspiracy that will not end until they learn how to save the entire city. Along the way, they solve an ancient puzzle, defeat the greed and subterfuge of the Mayor and his minions, and discover a much wider world than either had ever dreamed existed.When I read children's literature, I look for more than a tale well told. Juvenile science fiction is not hard to come by, especially today in the age of Harry Potter. But fiction that lauds heroism (particularly the kind of courage which every child will have an opportunity to demonstrate), extolls the value of friendship, and shows when adult precepts and rules are worthwhile, and how to tell when they are not — that is uncommon. (Those qualities form the foundation of the Harry Potter stories, too, and explain the widespread appeal of the boy wizard and his friends.)The City of Ember has that same appeal. Doon and Lina are courageous; they do things children would do, yet also show judgement, persistence and intelligence. These are kids who love their parents, and still see that they must take extraordinary steps outside the regimented life they have led. In the end, they do save their city, and if they do not battle great evil, they do encounter and overcome the kind of petty nastiness that is far more common in the world.This book works best in tandem with its sequel, The People of Sparks. Together, they are an interesting story — even for an adult. I recommend it highly for boys and girls who want something better than comic-book heroes and video-game battles.

Book Review: The Secret Life of Dust by Hannah Holmes

DrPat — Sat, 3 Jun 2006 15:34:56 EDT

Dust is all-pervasive in our lives. It permeates our atmosphere and even fills the void between stars. Hannah Holmes has breathed life into this dusty topic, in a narrative that is by turns terrifying and fascinating.Holmes' dust is not the motes you see floating in a beam of sunlight, but invisibly tiny flecks of dead and once-living stuff. The author wraps the dusty path of everything in these well-written essays: Build stars from it. Water earth and entomb dinosaurs with it. Start and end ice ages in its flight. Share it worldwide. Kill each other and ourselves with it. Nourish tiny grazers and predators — and the Amazon Basin, and the entire world of grain eaters — on it. Smoke it, eat it, drink it, breathe it, and wear a thin sheath of it all our lives. Return to it at life's end. It is fitting that this tale of dust begins with the birth of the universe, our sun and the Earth; and ends with death, our own transition to dust, and that of our solar system and of the universe. Holmes makes a good case for the triumph of dust.She also accuses it of all sorts of villainy. Dust is implicated in the creation of a field of amazing dinosaur fossils in China's Gobi Desert. The Fighting Dinosaurs were buried so quickly and completely that they retain their battle-stance. Big Mama was interred as she hunkered over her nest of eggs. The best theory is that all these animals were overtaken in the midst of their everyday activities by a massive dry mud-slide as a dune of dusty loess soil suddenly collapsed over them.Dust is the root cause of plenty of human misery, as well, from black lung and mesothelioma to asthma and heart disease. Airborne dust has been lofting off the Earth's surface long before there were animals, including humans, around to breathe it in. In fact, humans have evolved to be highly efficient at ridding our bodies of most kinds of dust particles. Eventually, however, the "mucus elevator" fails, and we drown in the dust we've inhaled. From the personal fight against dust, to the global, Holmes points out that increased clouds of dust may have resulted from the cool air and entrapped water of the Ice Ages, and that dust may then have brought about the death of the glaciers. Iron-rich dust promotes blooms of carbon-dioxide-spewing phytoplankton (warming), and dust is required to create reflective cloud masses (cooling). She quotes Columbia University's Pierre Biscayne, who works to identify the ancient sources of dust trapped in ice cores from Greenland and Antartica: "The climate modelers know dust is important, but it's the least well-known parameter in the Earth's thermal balance. Right now, they don't even know its sign."This is not a book for the squeamish. If you have not been able to eat sausage since the time you read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, you may now find the idea of taking deep breaths of sea or woodland air horrifying. Reading this may kindle a desire to remove the carpets, toss your candles in the trash, and convert your fireplace into a cold, clean bed for your pets. You might even hesitate before taking a book down from a dusty shelf.I recommend reading this excellent book right away, before it gathers dust.

Movie Review: Over the Hedge

DrPat — Fri, 2 Jun 2006 01:56:09 EDT

Over the Hedge is a delightful animated film that offers nothing but pleasure to its audience. Expect no deep insights, no religious conflicts, and no intense discussion of implications to ensue from its viewing. What it does promise (and amply deliver) is the kind of movie enjoyment we always used to get from cartoons. With sly references and broad slapstick, this script has something to offer every member of the family. RJ (voiced by Bruce Willis) is a snack-addicted raccoon whose greed leads him to make the wrong choice as he burgles a hibernating bear (voice of Nick Nolte). He wakes the bear, then his effort to finesse his theft fails and he is given a one-week deadline: replace the stolen junk food or die. As he shuffles through the woods, RJ stumbles across a cooperative group of foragers lead by genial turtle Verne (Garry Shandling's voice). Instantly, he hatches a plot to dupe the group into invading suburbia, just over the hedge, and helping him gather the wherewithal to placate the bear. Verne is fearful and dubious of the value to his foraging family, but RJ overcomes these fears with a single blast of cheesy powder from a nacho-chips bag. Immediately, the other animals in the group are hooked. Hammy the squirrel (perfectly voiced by Steve Carell), with wistful hope, carves a Dorito-shaped chunk of bark and dusts it with yellow pollen from a passing bee, trying to recreate that glorious cheesy rush. He also develops a serious jones for cookies, which RJ uses in his plan to replace the bear's little red wagon. Girl Scouts, wheeling their wares around the neighborhood, are panicked by the "rabid" Hammy, jaws flecked with whipped cream, threatening, "I am a crazy rabbit-squirrel! I want my cookies!"The rest of the story is the tale of how these animals conquer suburbia, the evil HOA queen Gladys and the demented "Verminator" Dwayne (voiced by Thomas Haden Church), and the selfish plans of RJ. Oh yes, and the bear.The central roles of RJ and Verne have been through several changes as the film moved from its comic-strip conception to the screen. Originally, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis were to voice RJ and Verne. Then Jim Carrey was slotted for the RJ role, but was replaced by Bruce Willis. The gentle good will and manic humor of the script, however, would make this movie funny even if the main voices were total unknowns. But recognizing voices is part of the fun. Around us in the theater we could hear the comments: "That's Eugene Levy!" "That's Catherine O'Hara." "That's Wanda Sykes."And if you have an over-the-top ham-actor possum who needs to play dead in a drawn-out diversion, who could possibly be better to voice him than the original emoter, William Shatner? No simple roll over and play dead for this possum. Shatner's Ozzie keels over in a swoon that would do a Victorian damsel proud, clutching his heart, and delivering his lines with that classic Captain Kirk sputter: "Mother, is that... you? Beckoning me... into the light? Must... move... toward... the light!"There are ample wry jokes for the adults to catch as they whiz over the heads of the youngsters, too. At one point, the love-smitten tomcat Tiger (Omid Djalili) carefully explains that truly well-bred Persians have no noses, hence no sense of smell. That's good, since Wanda Sykes' sultry skunk Stella has been painted black with charcoal and, assisted with a strategically placed cork, sent off to seduce the cat away from his cat-door. When she decamps back through the hedge, the heart-broken tom cries after her. "Stella-ah!"No, it's not deeply philosophical. Instead, Over the Hedge is witty and wild and cheesy and sly, like the animals themselves.

Do You Really Need that Light On?

DrPat — Thu, 1 Jun 2006 20:32:46 EDT

My father was an environmental visionary. (Who knew?) As evidence, I cite the numerous occasions when he railed at us to turn out the lights when we left a room, scoffed when we asked for a ride to the local swimming pool, and challenged us as we sat reading beside a sunlight window, "do you really need that light on?"I was reminded of this voice from the past as I listened today to a friend describe the efforts she and her husband need to stay within the energy budget imposed by their generator, the sole power source for their rural retirement home. They choose this power supply as a "green" statement. In a greener-than-thou region of California, they decided not to have PG&E run power lines over hill and dale to their house.Instead, they ruthlessly hunt and eliminate every power drain. Microwave and coffee-maker are on power-strips so they can be switched off except when in use; the clock on the front panel draws a trickle. Likewise the VCR and TV: microvolts vanish into the circuitry as these appliances retain their settings.Clocks are wind-type, not electric. They have no air-conditioning unit; for a breeze, they open windows on either side of the house. No vacuum cleaner, either. A Huffy broom scoops dust from the floors and whisks cat hairs from the area rugs. No electric blankets for this couple! Carol drops an extra quilt on the bed if the temperature drops at night. Still, Carol's husband follows her around the house at night, watching for potential power-drains. "Honey, do you really need that light on?"In short, except for the high-tech restrictions, they are doing all those things my family did when we were kids because our parents wanted to keep the power bills in check, and avoid filling the car too often. But it wasn't only money-saving that motivated my Dad. We had a push-lawnmower, because there were plenty of kids available to shove it around the yard. "Builds character and muscles," my Dad said. We were green in a lot of ways in my home. No SUVs prowled the streets then, but my large crowd of siblings jammed somehow into the family station wagon. Littles sat in bigger kids' laps as we went to church or traveled to Grandma's house. We dried clothes on that wonder of green-tech, a clothesline in the back yard. We rode bikes to our high school, and blushingly locked them to the rack near where the "cool kids" parked their cars. "You don't need a car to go 12 blocks," my Dad was certain in his opinion. He was right. I didn't get far without a car while I was in high school.And now, I hear that echo of Dad's foresight in the complaints of my environmentally-savvy friends. You can ride your bike to work, can't you? You don't need that SUV to drive to the gym for your workout. And do you really need that light on?

Getting into J. Craig Venter's Genes

DrPat — Sun, 28 May 2006 21:37:01 EDT

What could possibly be next for manic bio-radical J. Craig Venter? Venter's entire personal genome will be published as a reference databank, to be available for all researchers, later this year. Where will the maverick researcher, once introduced in New Yorker with the opening line. "J. Craig Venter is an asshole," head now?Venter has been an object of hate and derision among fellow genome researchers, who call him arrogant and focused on the commercial aspects of his research, and claim he "bogarts" his data. He petitioned for permission to use his "shotgun" DNA-reading method, which he developed to identify fragments of working genes while employed by the National Institutes of Health, for genome-sequencing, but was turned down by the government. So he founded the TIGR Institute, which became the first to sequence the entire genome of a living organism, the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae, which causes meningitis. In the late 1990s, Venter and a rival research group headed by Francis Collins both published human genomic sequences derived from an amalgam of individuals. These two teams "achieved the feat of reading three billion letters of DNA code, the entire human genetic recipe, triggering endless discussions of the extraordinary implications of having access to all the instructions required to make every protein that builds and runs a body." (Roger Highfield, Daily Telegraph Magazine, May 27, 2006)The "successful" human genome sequencing, however, was less than helpful in interpreting the meaning of this DNA code. For one thing, the combination of five sources in the DNA that was sequenced means both teams ended up with a recipe more goulash than human. As Nobel laureate Sir John Sulston admitted, "We were just a bunch of phonies."Now Venter proposes to publish the entire genome of a single individual -- himself -- in a databank available to all DNA researchers. Knowing the sequence does not, as yet, allow reading one's DNA like a book. The six billion "letters" of Venter's sequence are not organized into words yet, let alone the sentences and paragraphs that would allow us to identify the effects of all these genes. Nevertheless, Venter has learned a few things by sequencing his own DNA; for example, he now takes drugs to forestall heart disease after finding a gene sequence associated with heart problems. Venter sees a future in which "personal genomics" will contribute to long healthy life for the average person. To that end, he has offered a $10 million prize to the first person to develop a way to sequence a genome at a cost of $1,000 or less.In the meantime, having succeeded in reading DNA, Venter has no qualms about what comes next: writing it. Venter and his team have already launched a project to create life by building a custom DNA sequence for a microbe. Challenged to answer if this isn't "playing God," Venter replies with a grin, "We aren't playing."

Robson Green: From Wire in the Blood to Rocket Man

DrPat — Mon, 22 May 2006 11:59:30 EDT

In case I haven't mentioned it lately (and I know I haven't), Robson Green is the man you want when you have a subtly-damaged, slightly-weird, very intelligent role to cast on BBC TV. I'm basing this opinion on two excellent series currently airing on BBC America: Wire in the Blood and Rocket Man.I've already sung the praises of Green in Wire in the Blood, in which he plays Dr. Tony Hill, a criminal profiler who solves mysteries and finds killers by the simple process of "noticing everything." Green's Dr. Hill is an intense, complex fellow who seems incapable of making strong emotional connections with other people. His best connections seems to be with the killers he profiles.This is the subtle damage to Dr. Hill, an easy thing to overplay, yet Green carefully skirts the boundary between comic and tragic in his portrayal. We are not inclined to laugh at Tony Hill, even when we see him do something comedic. Robson Green shows us that the cause of Dr. Hill's bumbling lies in his very focus on something outside himself, something necessary and noble.In Rocket Man, we see that same intensity turned in another direction. Here, Green plays George Stevenson, a nearly-illiterate, widowed engineer "made redundant" when the local factory closed. Now he and his friends are misemployed as candy packers, night watchmen, and janitors. Green's solo project, to create a rocket to shoot his late wife's ashes into space, becomes a consuming team effort, first for his engineer buddies, then for their wives and the owner of the defunct factory. In last week's episode, George berated the team for lack of focus, then made an appeal that encapsulated the theme of the series. "We were engineers in this factory, and now we're packing silly little chocolates into silly little boxes, but that's not who we are. This is who we are, this rocket."The rocket has come to mean more to these people than a project to put Bethan Stevenson's remains into orbit. Each person on the team uses the rocket project to transcend all the major and petty troubles in their lives. In this, the series reminds me strongly of The Full Monty, another tale of a group of unemployed workers and their one-time manager who come together to reaffirm their worth as men.Wire in the Blood aired before it in the US, but Wire was preceded on BBC by Rocket Man. Because of that reversal, it seems strange to us that Green should "follow" the coolly-distant Dr. Tony Hill with such a likeable leader-type as George Stevenson. Rocket Man could rise or fall on the strength of the central character. Fortunately, with Robson Green as George Stevenson, it seems destined for a path to match one of the team's rockets.

Book Review: Dead Lines by Greg Bear

DrPat — Sun, 21 May 2006 00:41:33 EDT

What if some of the things you see every day aren't really there? What if they just look normal? You seldom compare notes with anybody, do you? You don't bring along a video camera and record every minute of your daily life to see what you might have seen that wasn't there after all. — Greg Bear, Dead Lines For those who would dine on old, dead dreams of glory, Hollywood is always willing to set a place at the table. In his house in the Glendale Hills, Peter Russell has been dining for years on his defunct dream. A one-time creator of "nudie films" and Playboy cartoons, he planned novels, plays, short stories that somehow never were completed. Peter's creative stream was first diverted by the easy sex of his heyday, and then dammed up by the murder of one of his twin daughters.Now he retains just enough charm to get by. He provides the likable "face" of business for a misanthropic millionaire, and charms the trophy wife of his employer, his remaining daughter, and just about every woman he meets (except his ex-wife). And even though he is not in the movie business anymore, he does still have connections. Those connections bring him an innovative new cell phone, a hefty commission check, and an exciting chance to get back in the game. He will create a complete marketing campaign for the Trans, an eerily clear communication device that, according to the inventor, taps into a space "below our world, lower than networks used by atoms or subatomic particles, to where it is very quiet." Even as he dreams of revived glory, the spirit of Rod Serling is waiting to detour him into nightmare. Peter's "signpost up ahead" is a phone call to let him know his best friend is dead. After that call, his life becomes more like a Twilight Zone episode with each passing day. His dead daughter, his deceased friend, and a host of other "ghosts", living and not, begin to haunt his life. Peter's efforts to understand these things take him from one memorable extreme to another: he consults a charismatic psychic, takes a funereal road-trip to San Francisco to dump his friend's ashes in the sea, and visits a famous prison-turned-office bloc where the death chamber is now the server room for a telecommunications startup. Phone calls from Prague and an invisible chess opponent come to seem equally mundane in Peter's new world, as the tale moves in increments from creepy understanding to real horror, ending in a crashing climax of fire and discovery. Greg Bear's Dead Lines is truly spooky, in the way ghost stories seldom are after we enter our cynical middle years. Peter, like most of Bear's readers, does not believe in psychics, ghosts or paranormal powers. He may not be happy, but at least he is content with his life and himself. The power of Bear's story is that we understand how Peter loses both that easy contentment and his disbelief. We travel with him on his downhill path to the queasy realization that Hamlet was right. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies. And if we're lucky, none of them have our cell phone numbers.

Farewell Tom Corbett: A Space Cadet Departs the Earth

DrPat — Thu, 18 May 2006 08:53:28 EDT

The black depths of space are no stranger to Frankie Thomas, who starred as Tom Corbett, Space Cadet from 1950 to 1955. Dead at age 85, the veteran actor departs for his own space journey: he was buried yesterday wearing his "Tom Corbett" costume.The TV show, which aired on CBS, NBC, ABC, and the Dumont network, spawned the first science-fiction product marketing campaign, and informed school-boys' conversation with catch-phrases like "Blast your jets!" and "Spaceman's luck."For a young DrPat, the premise was absorbing. Cadet Corbett, living 400 years in the future, being trained for his job as a Solar Guard, went to school just like we did, but found adventure zapping intruders and sailing the spaceways with his plucky companions Roger and Astro. I ate Kellogs Pep from the "Solar Cereal" box adorned with Thomas' image as Corbett, and yearned for a plastic "fuser pistol" so I could ZZZT my playmates in style.Alas, the program ran only from 1950 to 1955, and Thomas retired when the program was cancelled. The severely-dated look of the sets and props never quite rose to the camp level of Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon, and the series is remembered mostly for its hearty baritone introduction. When Jackson Beck boomed out, "Tom... Corbett! Space... Cadet!", we settled in for an enjoyable ride to the outer limits of our mid-century imagination.Farewell, Mr. Thomas. Don't fuse your tubes!