Serenity sucks

So this has nothing to do with Houston, but I wanted to vent a bit about the movie Serenity. Just so you know, I've seen the entire Firefly series and rather enjoyed it, so I'm not just bashing this movie because I didn't understand it. I'm bashing it because it is a bad movie. I think this movie is already spoiled, but beware: the rant below CONTAINS SPOILERS.

One of the things I liked about the series is that I didn't have to watch it with a theater full of wackos. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge sci-fi fan. But it turns out I hate a lot of other sci-fi fans. Especially the fantasy side of sci-fi. Ug. I saw a preview of Serenity, and I knew I was in trouble when before the film started some yahoo insisted that the entire audience sing Joss Whedon "Happy Birthday" so he could record it on film and mail it to Whedon. I didn't sing. Nor did I sing the second time when the yahoo couldn't figure out how to work his recorder and asked the crowd to re-sing.

Anyway, back to the movie. I understand that a movie format present a unique challenge: it is difficult to condense the rich back story of the entire cast of characters into two hours. So right away, this movie is going to be confusing to people who haven't seen the series because it pre-supposes that the audience already know a lot about the characters. But that's an lame excuse. Peter Jackson seemed to have no trouble presenting the richness of Tolkien's universe in movie format (although granted it did take him three hours per film).

Second, wtf is up with the inclusion of kung-fu? I realize that since the success of the Matrix, every sci-fi movie producer is probably asking the writer "Where are all the cool fight scenes we can film in uber-slow motion?" In the TV series, the character River Tam is more or less a damsel in distress. We see her display amazing shooting skills at one point, but a master of hand-to-hand combat she is not. In the movie, suddenly she's Bruce Lee on PCP. Now, I'm all for strong female role models, but I can't really support such a blatant move to add action-based eye candy.

My main gripe with this movie is that the plot is horrible. The premise of the movie (and series) is great: a band of misfits run their own ship, make their own rules, and buck the law. But the plot revolves around "Reavers," which are demented, psychotic individuals that in the TV series were supposedly driven mad by the emptiness of space. They're certainly scary, but um, how do crazy people maintain and fly spaceships again? If a chunk of foam or a frozen o-ring can take out the space shuttle, I'm pretty sure a ship full of bat-shit crazy cannibals isn't going to last long in space. But that's a minor gripe compared to this one: it's really the government that created the Reavers. Gasp! It turns out government scientist were messing with happy pills for a whole planet, and they took things one step to far. They made a drug that makes 99% of people so happy they are too apathetic to eat, but drives the other 1% nuts. The happy folks die and/or are killed by the Reavers, and the Reavers somehow manage to build a self-sustaining community.

First, how can you keep a whole planet of people cut off from the rest of humanity? Are you telling me that none of these millions of people had any brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. that noticed they disappeared? Image that California fell into the ocean. While many red-staters might be happy, you'd have a pretty tough time hiding the fact that it happened from the rest of the country. Hell, some poor white girl can't even disappear on a Caribbean island without hordes of media slimeballs spending days on end recounting every nuance of her life. Are you telling me the media will somehow miss an entire planet? No way!

Second, having the Reavers be a government mistake is a lame plot device. It was better, I think, when we were lead to believe they were normal people whose minds were unbalanced by unnamed horrors of space. Since we weren't exactly sure what caused them, there was suspense mixed into the horror of their existence. Now, they have all the suspense of a Superfund site. Sure it sucks to be screwed by the government, but we live in an era where the government routinely bends us over the couch and has its way with us. So frankly, I'm not that shocked that the government of the future also screws those is purports to serve.

Not the last post

Dear friends and family,

This will be the last active post on this blog. I will continue to occassionaly post on this weblog. So if you want to know what the heck Molly and I have been doing, check here for updates.

I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much I have enjoyed writing. I encourage everyone to start their own blogs if they've got someting to say - it costs nothing and you don't necessarily have to wait until a natural disaster has driven you from your home to start one.

I hope this blog has served its purpose of keeping interested parties informed (at their leisure) while not clogging up the inboxes of others.

Cheers and thanks for all of your well-wishes,
Dr. Brad

PhD reflections

So now I've had a chance to reflect a bit on what it means to hold a PhD. Several things have occurred to me. First, part of me feels like I should apologize to other doctorates since my receiving a degree kind of de-values the whole process. Okay, not really, but my perception of what a PhD means has certainly changed since I entered graduate school.

Contrary to what I once believed, a PhD is not necessarily a mark of intelligence. Some of the smartest people I have known in my life have run screaming from graduate school. Rather, a doctorate is more a mark of will. The importance of willpower is somewhat underrated in society at large, but it's importance cannot be understated. I have come across individuals in academia whose intelligence is not, shall we say, overwhelming, but whose raw, naked willpower is truly awesome to behold.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you can be a strong-willed, blithering idiot and get a PhD. It certainly takes some intelligence to frame tenable questions correctly (actually I believe that learning how to ask the right questions is the main point of grad school). But perhaps of equal importance to intelligence is the will necessary to bring the answers you find fully into the light. I suspect this same truth holds for most endeavors in life.

Passed!

Hoo-ray! I passed my defense! No pound of flesh, no problems.

Don't worry, I'll only make folks call me doctor when they insult me, for example,
"Excuse me, that's 'Dr. Crapweasel' to you."

T minus 24 hours

Molly flies into Providence from Dallas around 3:30 pm EST today. Yay! It will be great to have her here. For in a little more than 24 hours, I’ll be sitting across the table from a panel of five professors to defend my thesis. At least this won’t be a three-day affair like the bar exam. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.

Here’s the procedure tomorrow. First, I’ll give a short 20-minute presentation that summarizes my thesis. This is actually more difficult than it sounds because I have to cram in four separate but related chapters (totaling 200+ pages). My talk is open to the public, and anyone can ask questions. After the public inquisition is concluded, everyone else gets kicked out and my private inquisition is conducted. Actually, I think this setup is ideal. Rather than being judged on my written work from afar (like the bar or medical exams), I get the chance to address any challenges face-to-face.

After several rounds of questioning, the panel will send me out and deliberate behind closed doors. No doubt they will not only assail my scientific endeavors but also my personal hygiene, the color coordination in my wardrobe, and my financial earnings potential (ah, if only that last one was a joke). Once they call me back in, one of three things can happen: 1) I’m granted an unconditional pass, 2) I pass but have to complete major and/or minor revisions, or 3) I don’t pass, don’t get to collect $200, and go straight to jail.

Molly’s dad, Patrick McCanta, offered me this sage piece of advice: “Remember that anything you're not sure of is in notes at your hurricane-ravaged apartment.” It’s the ultimate ‘My dog ate my homework’ excuse.

Airline actually helpful

Wow, I have two pieces of good news to report at once. First and foremost, it looks like Molly will be able to fly out to Providence. I don't often say this, but thank you Northwest Airlines!

Northwest has issued a "weather waiver" for Hurricane Rita, but it offered limited relief to disrupted travelers. According to a notice on nwa.com, the airline will rebook passengers whose flights got cancelled without the usual $100 change fee (subject to availability). You would still have to pay the difference in fare price between your old and new itinerary, however, so that could still cost you a pretty penny. But Molly was able to get a seat on a flight out of Dallas tomorrow (Sunday) with no additional cost incurred. Whoo-hoo!

Earlier, I had to buy a whole new ticket because Northwest didn't issue the waiver until the hurricane hit Cat 5 status. Since nothing on God's green earth is going to stop me from defending on Monday, I couldn't wait for them to get their act together - I took care of things myself. But the airline was kind enough to refund the cost of my cancelled ticket. Many thanks again to the folks at Northwest.

Schadenfreude

It appears I haven't lost my sense of humor in the storm - I can still "take pleasure at another person's pain" (aka schadenfreude). You gotta love the Germans for having a word like that in their language.

Anyway, shots of TV reporters in the field getting rained on always kinda bugs me. Yeah, it's nice to see them without all of the makeup and coiffing that they have in the studio, but they really look kinda silly out there in the wind and rain reporting, "Boy, it's windy!" Don't get me wrong, folks like Anderson Cooper did some top notch field reporting from New Orleans, but that was after the storm hit, not during.

Check out this clip of a reporter getting tagged with a piece of wind-blown debris. Granted, they were reporting on a fire in the rain rather than the rain itself, but the principle is still the same. I promise no reporters were seriously injured in the following film clip (other than damage to their pride).

1. Go to www.cnn.com
2. Click the "Browse/Search" option on the "WATCH FREE VIDEO" link on the right
3. Click PLAY VIDEO when "Crews battle fires, wind" is displayed
4. Enjoy. The fun bit is a little more than halfway through.

Bullet tentatively dodged

Well, it appears that Houston escaped some of the worst that Hurricane Rita had to offer. The storm made landfall to the east of the city, which means that a potentially catastrophic storm surge didn't ravage the city. Our apartment complex is at an elevation of roughly, oh, say, one. And that's one foot, not one meter for you metric types out there. So even a minimal surge could have caused big problems.

We had a bit of a scare this morning because local Houston news reported a fire at an apartment complex in the Clear Lake area (our area). Turns out the fire was not in our complex, but rather was in the Lakeshire Apartments in the 200 block of El Dorado Blvd. Yikes.

So now we have potential wind damage (broken windows), potential rail damage (due to broken windows), and street flooding (due to heavy rain) to worry about. I didn't list roof damage above because they just finished repairing our roof less than a week ago. So the roof's structural integrity is about as good as it is going to get.

We tried to move as much stuff as possible away from the windows. Most of our electronic gear is stashed in the bathroom and bathtub. We also cleared off the deck and brought all of the plants inside to lessen the danger to others of flying projectiles.

Getting back into Houston might not be easy. According to TV reports, some 2.7 million people evacuated the city. Officials are warning that the nightmare traffic-jam exit scenario could repeat itself in reverse if folks don't stagger their return times. And the availability of gas will certainly be a problem along any major highway.

Now, the question for us is if we can get Molly out to Providence for my defense on Monday. Since our Saturday flights were cancelled, the airline rescheduled her for Sunday. But that's going out of Houston Intercontinental, which may be very difficult to reach coming from Dallas. Switching to fly out of Dallas is possible, but you have to make up the difference in fare price, which is now astronomical (>$1000, no way). Using my airline frequent flyer miles is a better option to get her out here via Dallas - weather permitting. I'm sure it will be 50,000 miles, but Northwest is going belly up anyway. Besides, in my opinion, FF miles are for emergencies. If this situation doesn't qualify, I don't know what does.

The slow crawl out of town

All roads out of Houston have slowed to a crawl. The only reason Molly and I made it out is because Molly's boss, Steve Mackwell (director of the Lunar & Planetary Institute), told us on Tuesday that if we were going to evacuate, we'd better do it now. Boy, was he right.

As described in this article in the NY Times (free registration required), Houston officials have been caught a little flat-footed by the scale of the exodus. Frank E. Gutierrez, the emergency management coordinator for Harris County, said that models for an emergency evacuation envisioned 800,000 to 1.2 million people but that "well over 2.5 million" hit the road to flee Hurricane Rita.

People are running out of gas and are stuck on the side of the road. City planners had originally reversed the inbound freeways yesterday to try and accommodate the massive outbound volume, but had to abandon that plan by midafternoon in order to bring in much needed gas. The city is now scrambling to try and bring water and gas to stranded motorists stretched throughout the 100-mile parking lots that were once freeways.

Did I also mention it is hot as hell in Houston? This whole week we've had higher-than-normal temperatures with highs reaching the into the 90's and beyond. Coupled with high humidity, you can't help but sweat profusely even when doing such strenuous activities as say, standing still.

The good news is that Rita has veered north (see scary/awesome satellite pics here), and the eye of the storm will now pass to the east of the city. I wonder if this is how people in New Orleans felt when hurricane Katrina took a last-minute jaunt to the east? Did they cheer their apparent good fortune, only to have that hope turn sour when the levees broke? I don't know. The bottom line is that Houston hasn't dodged the bullet yet, for even a glancing blow from a hurricane can really really really ruin your day/week/month/year/life.

Waiting game

So now myself and millions of other Gulf Coast residents have to endure Hurricane Rita eating away the lining of our stomachs as well as threaten our homes. Sometimes waiting for something can be almost as punishing as the thing itself.

I originally hail from California, which is, of course, earthquake central. I went through the 'quake in 1989 and watched in horror as entire sections of freeways collapsed and a rift opened up on the Bay Bridge. I doubt anyone in the Bay Area can forget the footage of several cars that couldn't stop in time and were swallowed whole by the breech, plunging down into the waters of the Bay far below. Driving over the bridge today, you can still see a patch where the rift occurred. But at least earthquakes don't last that long: 30 seconds and boom, it's all over.

A impending hurricane, however, is like slow torture. So now the freeways are converted to one direction (out) but still jammed, everyone's low on gas, and running scared. We were lucky enough to get out yesterday, but now we just have more time to ponder our fate. The hurricane appears to have tacked further north. Will the eye pass to the east of Houston, sparing us from the "dirty side" of the hurricane? Will that matter? Only questions now, no answers.

Getting the hell out of Dodge

As you all are undoubtedly aware, there is now a Category 5 Hurricane (note capital letters), Hurricane Rita, barreling straight towards Houston. You may not be aware that I recently moved to Houston - I arrived the 1st of September. Lower portions of the city are now under voluntary evacuation. To give you a sense of scale of the evacuation, Houston and the surrounding area is home to nearly 5 million people. After watching New Orleans helplessly drown on TV, no one is considering riding this one out.

Houston does not lie below sea level like New Orleans, but that will not stop flooding. That just means that the storm surge will eventually be drained by gravity. Predicted storm surge for a category five hurricanne in our area is in excess of 18 feet. Luckily, Molly and I live on the second floor, so we've got the first 14 feet covered; it's that last four+ feet are really going to be a bitch.

We have both evacuated - Molly dropped me off at the airport yesterday on her way to Dallas with the cat and a half-carload of critical items. For those of you who have never traveled with a cat, it is kind of like driving with a small, hairly, recalcitrant child. We didn't even drive one freeway exit past our starting point before our cat soiled his cage. Knowing the cat, I'd say it was done more out of anger than fear. Anyway, after a brief stop for a clean-up operation, we were underway. Molly made it to Dallas, and I made it to Providence, RI.

The reason that I flew out is because I have my Ph.D. thesis defense scheduled for Monday Sept. 26th. I was orginially scheduled to fly out Saturday morning, but had to buy another ticket. The airline still insists my original flight hasn't been cancelled, but I think they're being overly optimistic. I doubt they'll be flying into sustained wind speeds of 173 miles per hour.

I'm not too worried about my thesis defense, mostly because I'm more concerned about my home and future job. The Johnson Space Center was built to withstand a category three hurricane. Your guess is as good as mine about how it will fare it a category five.

I always said that I would get my Ph.D. come hell or high water. I really didn't expect both.


Cheers,
Brad