THIN LIZZY

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

John Lennon’s killer, Mark David Chapman, famously had a copy of Salinger’s novel on him when he was picked up by the police. Inside, he had written, “This is my statement,” signing his name as “Holden Caulfield.” He said that in the days leading up to the killing he had been re-enacting scenes from the novel. Of Lennon, he said “I wanted to go back to my hotel, but I couldn’t. I waited until he came back. He knew where the ducks went in winter, and I needed to know this.” After shooting Lennon, Chapman sat on the curb and read The Catcher in the Ryewhile the musician died. Nine years later, another man, Robert John Bardo, who was convicted of the murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer, committed the crime with the novel in his pocket, though he claims coincidence.

THE SECRET AGENT

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The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad

Conrad’s novel, a study of terrorism populated by spies and anarchists, is said to have heavily influenced the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. Apparently, he read the novel at least a dozen times and kept a copy by his bedside, identifying with and using as inspiration the character of the Professor, who in the novel keeps a bomb on his person at all times, ready to kill himself and everyone around him. He even used variations of the name “Conrad” to sign himself into hotels when he wished to remain anonymous. Before his arrest, Kaczynski sent 16 bombs to different locations in the US, killing three people and injuring 23 others.

RAGE

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Rage, Stephen King

The first of King’s novels to be written under the pseudonym “Richard Bachman,” Rage details a high school student who goes off the rails, killing several teachers and holding a room full of kids hostage. Since its publication it has been associated with several similar crimes, including that of Michael Carneal, who brought a gun to school and opened fire on a youth prayer group before laying down his gun and saying “Kill me, please. I can’t believe I did that.” He had a copy of Ragein his locker. “The Carneal incident was enough for me,” King said in an address to the Vermont Library Conference in 1999. “I asked my publisher to take the damned thing out of print. They concurred.

THE SATANIC VERSES

The decades-old controversy over Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses has been in the news again recently following the author’s cancelled appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival in the wake of reported death threats. This intended violence is not the first that Rushdie’s novel has inspired, and his is definitely not the first real-life danger to come from literature. In fact, several books are reputed to have inspired or informed violence over the years, to varying degrees. The debate over whether the impulse to violence can originate from media — whether film, video games, or books — is a complex one, and we’re not seeking to answer it here, though we tend to think that no piece of media can incite a healthy mind to violent deeds (and the violence in Rushdie’s case is definitely directly caused by dissent over the book). However, several real-life crimes have been linked to works of literature, and therefore we must consider them at least a little more dangerous than say, Pride and Prejudice. Nota bene: this is a list of dangerous novels, so any potentially harmful propaganda, religious texts and nonfiction are all ineligible. Click through to check out our list, and get ready to scan your friends’ bookshelves for signs of insanity.

The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie

You may think this novel was only dangerous to Rushdie, but in fact more than 50 people died as a result of its publication — or at least as a result of the extreme reaction of the Muslim community. First published in the United Kingdom in 1988, this novel, a magical realist work that includes a dream sequence about Muhammad, caused outrage among many Muslims who accused Rushdie of blasphemy. In 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa against the writer, ordering Muslims to kill him, a ruling that stayed in effect until 1998. Rushdie was bombarded with hate mail and death threats, and was forced to enter the British government’s protection program. Meanwhile, despite Rushdie’s apologies and written reaffirmations of his faith, several people were killed and injured in anti-Rushdie riots, including the book’s Japanese translator, who was stabbed to death, and the Italian translator, who was gravely wounded but survived. In 1993, Turkish scholars attending the Pir Sultan Abdal Literary Festival refused to hand over Aziz Nesin, the book’s Turkish translator, to a group of Islamic extremists. In response, the group burned down the hotel, killing 37 people (though Nesin escaped). Only recently, Rushdie cancelled his plans to attend the Jaipur Literature Festival after reports of planned assassination attempts.

DANGEROUS VISIONS 22

The Earth Strain" --Could NASA's 'Curiosity' Probe on Its Way to Mars Contaminate the Planet?

                 

Michael Crichton would have loved this: Bacteria common to spacecraft may be able to survive the harsh environs of Mars long enough to inadvertently contaminate the Red Planet with terrestrial life, "If long-term microbial survival is possible on Mars, then past and future explorations of Mars may provide the microbial inoculum for seeding Mars with terrestrial life," according to researchers from the University of Central Florida. "Thus, a diversity of microbial species should be studied to characterize their potential for long term survival on Mars." Off the record, many astrobiologists believe that we've already contaminated the planet.

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Despite sterilization efforts made to reduce the bioload on spacecraft, recent studies have shown that diverse microbial communities remain at the time of launch. The sterile nature of spacecraft assembly facilities ensures that only the most resilient species survive, including acinetobacter, bacillus, escherichia, staphylococcus and streptococcus.

Yesterday, NASA mission managers said they have tweaked the flight path of the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft during a three-hour series of thruster-engine firings about 81 million miles from Earth. 

Should Earth bacteria make it to the surface of Mars' Gale Crater ( image below) -landing site of the Mars Curiosity rover, terrestrial organics could contaminate soil samples, giving experiments false positives of a second genesis on Mars. Even worse, should there be indigenous life on Mars, any accidental microbes from Earth could possibly destroy microbial alien life.

During the preparation for the launch of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity this past Nov. 26, a step in the "planetary protection" procedure wasn't adhered to. The procedure's key purpose is to make sure organic material from Earth doesn't get transferred accidentally to the Red Planet.

As reported by Space.com's Leonard David, MSL project developers decided not to send a set of drill bits -- attached to the rover's exterior, ready to be used by the robotic arm's drill -- through a final ultra-cleanliness step before launch.

This deviation in protocol wasn't communicated to NASA's planetary protection officer Cassie Conley until it was too late. "(MSL project developers) didn't submit the request for the deviation not to comply with their planetary protection plan until several months ago," she said.

The deviation was made by project managers as they considered the risk to be very low -- the rover wouldn't be drilling anywhere near potentially life-harboring ice in Gale Crater, the region of Mars Curiosity will be exploring.

When the Apollo 11 astronauts splashed down in the Pacific they were immediately whisked off into quarantine, spending three weeks in a rather unglamorous steel shell for fear that they'd contracted lethal space-plagues. 

NASA's Mars mission lends living credibility to a paper by Professor Cockell of Great Britain's Open University that points out that the flow of life is more likely to be FROM the vast dirty ball teeming with billions of organisms TO the utterly dead space rocks.  Who could have guessed?

The idea is that hardy hitchhikers on our interplanetary probes could face alien ecosystems with "The Earth Strain", and they won't even have a rugged team of determined scientists to find a cure.  Never mind that anything capable of surviving extended exposure to cosmic rays would have to be King Hardcore of the microorganic kingdom.

Some in the science community be;lieve we may have already contaminated Mars. But Earth microbes trying to make it to Mars must survive sterilization in NASA's clean rooms, harsh cosmic rays during months of space travel, and the Red Planet's unforgiving surface environment. But any bacteria that successfully hitchhike aboard the wheels of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission in 2012 might manage to scratch out a brief existence on the martian surface.

The finding comes from a study that examined how the new high-tech landing technique of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) may affect the risk of contaminating Mars. The mission will use both a parachute and downward-firing thruster rockets to slow its descent so that its "sky crane" can lower the SUV-sized Curiosity rover onto the surface — a direct touchdown that may give microbes a brief chance to experience life on Mars. 

That translates into a higher risk of contamination when compared to some past Mars rover missions, said Andrew C. Schuerger, a microbiologist at the University of Florida and the Space Life Sciences Lab at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But he added that microbes still face tough odds for surviving space travel and martian conditions.

"Although this paper suggests we could be transferring bacteria to martian surface, we don't know for certain yet," Schuerger said. "We could very well be losing most due to the exposure to vacuum in space, cosmic rays and hard radiation. Even if cells are present on a rover wheel at launch, they might be dead by the time they get to Mars."

Schuerger and his colleague, Krystal Kerney, wanted to find out whether the wheels of Mars rovers past and future could contaminate the martian surface. They ran two experiments simulating the contamination possibilities for MSL versus the Mars Pathfinder mission of 1997 and the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) that landed on the red planet in 2004.

The Mars Pathfinder rover, called Sojourner, sat on a landing platform for 2 martian days before rolling onto the surface. The twin MER rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, sat on their landing platforms for 12 and 7 martian days, respectively. Each martian day is just a little over 24 hours.

In the study, researchers simulated a Mars rover sitting on a landing platform for 1, 3 and 6 hours while being exposed to martian levels of ultraviolet (UV) rays. Even such short amounts of time killed between 81 percent and 96.6 percent of the Bacillus subtilis bacteria used in the experiment.

"We did very short UV exposures, and even there we see 96 percent [of bacteria killed] over 6 hours," Schuerger told Astrobiology Magazine. "That's a very dramatic and a very positive sign that a rover wheel which sits on a platform, like MER did, has a much better chance of being sterilized prior to roll-off than a direct to ground system."

The number of survivors would likely have dropped to practically zero if the experiment had run for 7 or 12 days, Schuerger said.

By contrast, the second experiment simulated how a rover wheel in the future MSL mission would immediately come into contact with the martian surface. When the contaminated rover wheel rolled over the simulated surface, about 31.7 percent of the surface samples ended up showing bacterial growth.

But the contamination level dropped by 50 percent after 24 hours of exposure to simulated Mars conditions, such as UV radiation, low pressure, low temperature and high levels of carbon dioxide. The results pointed once again to the harshness of the martian surface environment for Earth life.

The second experiment doesn't say anything definitive about the real risk of contamination, Schuerger warned. For instance, it didn't test whether having multiple wheels rolling over the same surface area could bury microbes from the first wheel beneath the martian surface. It also didn't simulate the weight of the SUV-sized Curiosity rover that could mash even more microbes into the ground.

On the other hand, the researchers contaminated the rover wheels with perhaps 100,000 times more bacteria compared to what would realistically exist during any of the Mars rover missions. Some Mars rovers get sterilized three or four times, Schuerger said. He added that the journey through space may kill 75 percent of whatever survived after launch.

What the experiments do suggest is that just having the Curiosity rover sit still for a number of days could help kill off much of the bacteria clinging to its wheels. But the researchers still have questions to answer.

"We need to repeat these experiments with much longer time exposures to martian conditions to see if we can get to a rover wheel completely sterilized sitting on a landing pad," Schuerger explained. "We also need to see if 7 or 8 martian days would essentially get to zero amount of survivors, even if we accidentally transferred bacterial spores to the surface."

Such contamination experiments could be done more easily once humans establish a Mars colony and can work alongside their robotic rovers, Schuerger said. But for now, he will have to make do with small Mars simulation chambers on Earth.

Because of its history, 96 mile wide Gale Crater  with its strangely sculpted mountain --three times higher than the Grand Canyon is deep--is the ideal place for Curiosity to conduct its mission of exploration into the Red Planet's past. Joy Crisp, MSL Deputy Project Scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explains:

"This may be one of the thickest exposed sections of layered sedimentary rocks in the solar system. The rock record preserved in those layers holds stories that are billions of years old -- stories about whether, when, and for how long Mars might have been habitable."

An instrument on Curiosity can check for any water that might be bound into shallow underground minerals along the rover's path. 

"If we conclude that there is something unusual in the subsurface at a particular spot, we could suggest more analysis of the spot using the capabilities of other instruments," said this instrument's principal investigator, Igor Mitrofanov of the Space Research Institute, Russia.

Today the Red Planet is a radiation-drenched, bitterly cold, bleak world. Enormous dust storms explode across the barren landscape and darken Martian skies for months at a time. But data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter suggest that Mars once hosted vast lakes and flowing rivers.

"Gale Crater and its mountain will tell this intriguing story," says Matthew Golombek, Mars Exploration Program Landing Site Scientist from JPL. "The layers there chronicle Mars' environmental history."
In the gentle slopes around the mountain, Curiosity will prospect for organic molecules, the chemical building blocks of life. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has found an intriguing signature of clay near the bottom of the mountain and sulfate minerals a little higher up. Both minerals are formed in the presence of water, which increases potential for life-friendly environments.

"All the types of aqueous minerals we've detected on Mars to date can be found in this one location," explains Golombek.

Clay settles slowly in water and forms little platelets that conform around things, hardening over time and encasing them in ''casts." Clay could seal organics off from the outside environment much like it preserved dinosaur bones on Earth. "If organics ever existed on Mars, they could be preserved in the clay."

Even on planet Earth, teeming with life, finding billion year-old well-preserved organics is difficult. But Curiosity will find them if they're present in the samples it takes. The rover is equipped with the most advanced suite of instruments for scientific studies ever sent to the Martian surface1. When these are brought to bear on Gale crater’s mysteriously layered mountain, the odds of a discovery will be at an all-time high.

As seasoned travelers know, however, the journey is just as important as the destination. Curiosity can travel up to 150 meters per Mars day, but will stop often to gather and analyze samples.

"It could take several months to a year to reach the foot of the mountain, depending on how often the rover stops along the way," says Golombek. "There will be plenty to examine before getting to the central mound."

A high-resolution camera on the rover's mast will take pictures and movies of the scenery, taking Earthlings on an extraterrestrial sightseeing tour.

"As Curiosity climbs toward higher layers, you'll see spectacular valleys and canyons like those in the U.S. desert southwest. The walls on either side of the rover will rise over 100 feet. The sights alone will be worth the trip." 

The Mars Science Laboratory mission will use 10 instruments on Curiosity to investigate whether the area selected for the mission has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for life and favorable for preserving evidence about life.

"The strength of Mars Science Laboratory is the combination of all the instruments together," Mitrofanov stressed.

The Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons instrument, or DAN, will scout for underground clues to a depth of about 20 inches (50 centimeters). 

DAN will bring to the surface of Mars an enhancement of nuclear technology that has already detected Martian water from orbit. "Albedo" in the instrument's name means reflectance -- in this case, how original high-energy neutrons injected into the ground bounce off atomic nuclei in the ground. Neutrons that collide with hydrogen atoms bounce off with a characteristic decrease in energy, similar to how one billiard ball slows after colliding with another. By measuring the energies of the neutrons leaking from the ground, DAN can detect the fraction that was slowed in these collisions, and therefore the amount of hydrogen.

Oil prospectors use this technology in instruments lowered down exploration holes to detect the hydrogen in petroleum. Space explorers have adapted it for missions to the moon and Mars, where most hydrogen is in water ice or in water-derived hydroxyl ions.  

Mitrofanov is the principal investigator for a Russian instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, the high-energy neutron detector (HEND), which measures high energy of neutrons coming from Mars. In 2002, it and companion instruments on Odyssey detected hydrogen interpreted as abundant underground water ice close to the surface at high latitudes. That discovery led to NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander going to far northern Mars in 2008 and confirming the presence of water ice. 

"You can think of DAN as a reconnaissance instrument," Mitrofanov said. Just as Phoenix investigated what Odyssey detected, Curiosity can use various tools to investigate what DAN detects. The rover has a soil scoop and can also dig with its wheels. Its robotic arm can put samples into instruments inside the rover for thorough analyses of ingredients. Rock formations that Curiosity's cameras view at the surface can be traced underground with DAN, enhancing the ability of scientists to understand the geology.

The neutron detectors on Odyssey rely on galactic cosmic rays hitting Mars as a source of neutrons. DAN can work in a passive mode relying on cosmic rays, but it also has its own pulsing neutron generator for an active mode of shooting high-energy neutrons into the ground. In active mode, it is sensitive enough to detect water content as low as one-tenth of one percent in the ground beneath the rover.  

The neutron generator is mounted on Curiosity's right hip. A module with two neutron detectors is mounted on the left hip. With pulses lasting about one microsecond and repeated as frequently as 10 times per second, key measurements by the detectors are the flux rate and delay time of moderated neutrons with different energy levels returning from the ground. The generator will be able to emit a total of about 10 million pulses during the mission, with about 10 million neutrons at each pulse. 

"We have a fixed number of about 10 million shots, so one major challenge is to determine our strategy for how we will use them," said Maxim Litvak, leading scientist of the DAN investigation from the Space Research Institute.

Operational planning anticipates using DAN during short pauses in drives and while the rover is parked. It will check for any changes or trends in subsurface hydrogen content, from place to place along the traverse. Because there is a low possibility for underground water ice at Curiosity's Gale crater landing site, the most likely form of hydrogen in the ground of the landing area is hydrated minerals. These are minerals with water molecules or hydroxyl ions bound into the crystalline structure of the mineral. They can tenaciously retain water from a wetter past when all free water has gone.

"We want a better understanding of where the water has gone," said Alberto Behar, DAN investigation scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "DAN fits right into the follow-the-water strategy for studying Mars."

Mars Science Laboratory Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena said, "DAN will provide the ability to detect hydrated minerals or water ice in the shallow subsurface, which provides immediate clues as to how the geology of the subsurface might guide exploration of the surface.

In addition, DAN can tell us how the shallow subsurface may differ from what the rover sees at the surface. None of our other instruments have the ability to do this. DAN measurements will tell us about the habitability potential of subsurface rocks and soils -- whether they contain water -- and as we drive along, DAN may help us understand what kinds of rocks are under the soils we drive across."

Information from DAN will also provide a ground-truth calibration for the measurements that the gamma-ray and neutron detectors on Odyssey have made and continue to make, all around the planet, enhancing the value of that global data set. 

Let's just hope that the life NASA might discover on Mars is not of planet Earth's creation.

BLOOD SWEAT AND LATEX 22

Blood, Sweat, and Latex: Getting a Foot (And Shaft) in the Door

For those of you new to the column, I’m revisiting formative events in my life that have made me what I am today: A Special Effects Make Up Artist looking for relevance in the 21st Century. I have completed one year at the California Institute of the Arts Film Graphics program, and I have returned for my second year, I have moved off campus and have a small garage shop to make monsters. I am nineteen years old…

My second year at CalArts, I ended up on Academic Probation. That was no easy task since students were not graded on an A, B, C, etc. scale. Instead, it was High Pass, Pass, or Incomplete. There was no “fail” but every two years (sophomore & senior) all students were “reviewed” by a board made up of a few faculty members.

It probably had something to do with my cessation of attending classes primarily because they truly weren’t much more than glorified “wrap sessions.” It would be unfair to mention faculty names, but I will mention some of the classes to illustrate what I mean.

I took a class called “Direct Animation” which the course description promised the manipulation of three-dimensional objects in front of a camera. To me, that is a description of Stop Motion Animation, right? It was finally something in which I had a passionate interest.

My first class, the instructor showed up late looking like he had just rolled out of bed – hair disheveled, red eyes. He gazed at us painfully and asked right out of the gate if we had had our morning coffee. When a majority of us had said yes, he then suggested moving the class to the cafeteria so he could get a cup of coffee and something to eat.

By the time he had his caffeine and a breakfast burrito steaming in front of him, he asked what we hoped to get out of his class. A couple of us spoke up and said we wanted to at least wanted to attempt some sort of Harryhausen-esque Stop Motion project. He just looked at us like we told him we hope to build a fusion reactor using an old milk carton and a tampon. The only real animation we accomplished (or I should say THEY accomplished) was manipulating small wooden blocks in front of a 16mm camera, while painting the surfaces different colors. I had been consistently absent for a long time prior.

I had a vision of my future and it was clear to me. I was going to make monsters goddammit, and I didn’t have time to fuck around with little wooden blocks. To me, it was just a waste of time. And believe it or not, that was one of the better classes! At least they did SOMETHING.

I spent my second year doing two things: working in the Life Support Office (Student Services – Work/Study job) and sculpting and casting monsters at home in my garage shop. It seems fairly arrogant at first reading, but I have a feeling that if I were to attend those same classes now, I’d still be frustrated. I suppose a tiger really never changes its stripes.

While attending school, I had the opportunity to meet a few individuals who would contribute to my professional career in some capacity or another. I’ve already mentioned James Cummins, but I also met Make Up Effects legend Tom Burman, fellow CalArts student Jim Beinke, and a then up and coming Make Up Effects artist, Mark Shostrom.

If there was one positive thing I could say about CalArts is that I met so many talented artists and good people that I’ve been fortunate enough to retain my friendship and communicate with over the years. This I wouldn’t change for the world. However, I still had my sophomore review to get through.

I packed my masks, drawings, storyboards, etc. and set them up on a table in the review room. I recall looking at all of my work and thinking: “Wow, it doesn’t seem like two years’ worth.” It should have been more, I guess? Or better? Or relevant? I don’t know but I was nervous. My review turned out to be with the Assistant Dean of the Film Department Myron Emery.

      

Myron looked like he could have stepped out of ILM when it was in Van Nuys, California. He had a thick head of red-brown hair, wire-frame glasses, and a big beard. His vocal timbre was reminiscent of Frank Oz, but that’s where the similarity ended. I had the pleasure of sitting through some of his experimental movies such asDecadence (which was footage of a Balinese dancer run through an Optical Printer 10 times….see? Decca Dance!) or L.A. Extremes (which was Optically treated footage of old, dried up, Los Angeles river beds…Get it? L.A. ex-streams!). I’m not kidding.

Myron looked at my work and frowned. He asked what I was hoping to accomplish with it. I told him I wanted to have a career making monsters. He made some “artistic” suggestions where I could reinterpret my work and put it into a conceptual context, but I just wasn’t having it. I didn’t need a shove in the Avant-garde direction. Finally, Myron said to me, that I was wasting my time in school. If all I wanted to do was to make monsters for movies, I should ditch school and start working. It was the first and only good advice any faculty member atCalArts had offered.

By the end of the spring semester, my Work-Study was coming to an end; I had no plans to return to Louisiana for the summer. I had already moved all of my furniture and belongings to my off-campus housing and I needed to continue my work somehow and that meant getting some sort of a job. Seek and ye shall find. I ended up at a Carvel Ice Cream parlor. Seriously.

My summer job began with a training program, learning how to scoop/weigh the ice cream, learning the construction of different sundaes, selling ice cream cakes, etc. AND I had to wear all white. It wasn’t a BAD job, and it was keeping me in plaster and latex, but all of this changed one evening when Jim Beinke and some friends came in for a scoop of Carvel’s famous kosher ice cream.

Jim said that he had landed a gig called “Celestial Lords” which was going to be a stage show that needed all sorts of fantasy costumes, helmets, etc. and he asked if I was interested in helping him build all of it. It would be all cash, under the table. Hmmmm. Scoop ice cream or make specialty costume pieces? I quit Carvel that day.

What Jim hadn’t told me was that “Celestial Lords” was the official entertainment of the Gay Olympics that was being held in San Francisco later that summer. Not that I cared. Money was money. What it meant was that I was sculpting things like distended scrotums with balls that looked like two hand grenades and gas masks with long, phallic hoses that hung off of the front of them. Again, whatever. I was sculpting, molding, running, and painting things for PAY!

One late night, a producer showed up to check out our progress and convinced that we were on drugs left two lines of cocaine on a table for us. No, I didn’t touch it then and have never felt the need to try the stuff. Earlier that year, I had tried “magic mushrooms” with James Cummins and Steve Burg and found myself, stoned, driving around the then undeveloped Santa Clarita Valley, but that was the extent of my drug use.

By the time we had finished building everything, I had been speaking to Mark Shostrom who said he was looking for a roommate. I packed up everything in my car, leaving about 10 or so plaster molds in my friend, James Fuji’s garage (for what turned out to be a few decades) and moved to Pasadena.

The apartment was almost “shot gun” style with a series of rooms that sort of stacked up from the front to the back. The front room was Mark’s studio that resembled (what I imagined) Dick Smith’s basement shop must have looked like. Mark was a regular correspondent with Dick and had received stacks of notes explaining and suggesting techniques to accomplish specific Make Up Effects and Mark had been practicing.

I recall that Mark’s portfolio contained many effects that Dick had executed that Mark had done his best to emulate such as air bladders, age make ups etc. For a young apprentice, which I guess I was technically, it was right where I thought I was supposed to be. Mark had plenty of sculptures around and encouraged me to refine my sculpting and mold making techniques.

But it wasn’t all work. Mark used me as a practical guinea pig from time to time, once subtly aging me to mid-thirty to see if I could fool a convenience store owner into selling me beer.

It worked.

I was finally on the path but didn’t realize I was about to get knocked off of it, and I was going to get knocked off of it very, very hard.

NEXT WEEK: “Does wearing a witch make-up constitute cross-dressing?”

…And last time on Blood, Sweat and Latex: Howling American Werewolves and a Make Up EffectsExplosion

Shannon Shea, a native New Orleanian educated at The California Institute of the Arts, has enjoyed a 27-year tenure designing, constructing, and performing animatronic creatures and characters for Motion Pictures and Television. He has had the pleasure of contributing to such diverse films asPredator, Dances With Wolves, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Spy Kids, The Chronicles of Narnia,Drag Me To Hell and 2012’s Men In Black 3.

Not limited to the confines of Motion Pictures, he paints (having been shown in New York, North Carolina, and Los Angeles), sculpts, writes and authors a new blog about his motion picture experiences called Monster History 101. Recently, he was tapped by the Stan Winston School of Character Design to be one of their instructors for a lecture series entitled Garage Monsters. When not participating on Hollywood projects, he enjoys producing, writing, and directing his own short films including Hotel Superman, Blind Passion, and his current Internet project Phantom Harbor. Shannon lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Tracy, an Operatic Soprano and their daughter, Molly, who attends the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago

BLOOD SWEAT AND LATEX THE WITCHES

Blood, Sweat and Latex: Does Wearing Witch Make-Up Constitute Cross-Dressing?

In 1983, the California Institute of the Arts, being a liberal arts college in, what was then, a remote part of the Santa Clarita Valley had garnered a few reputations. It was not unusual to see helicopters hovering around the dormitory on weekends because of the “clothes optional” pool (if you enjoyed seeing naked hippy-types). There were also the drugs. It was well known that on the west side of the dorm building was the “fourth floor walk up” which was the only floor not accessible by an elevator. I visited that corridor once and it was like walking into an opium den. The air was thick with marijuana smoke and half of the dorm room doors were open all of the time. However, I believe what CalArts had become most infamous for was their Halloween party.

Every year, attending students and alumni who were fortunate to call in early and request tickets would gather in the Main Gallery room for a party that resembled something out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. You name it; it was there. I can best illustrate with this short story:

My first CalArts party began at a Denny’s across the I-5 freeway. Knowing that there would be no “solid” refreshments (unless you include magic mushrooms) a group of us decided to eat dinner before we attended the party. We bumped into some fellow students who had just left the party who warned us: “Don’t bother standing in line to see what is in the box. It is just a guy masturbating.” Okay. That was a good tip.

When we arrived at the party, lo and behold there, in the middle of the room, was indeed a big box about 6’x 6’ x 6’ with one door in the back, and one window in the front. There was a line of people queued up to look into the window. Every now and then, a naked guy would exit the box and another would enter to continue the entertainment.

And then there were the costumes.

They ranged from conceptual to the professional. One year, a woman walked around dressed like Jesus Christ “crucified” to a full-sized crucifix made of soft mattress foam painted to look like wood. Since it was the early eighties, seeing ultra-punk-rock-Road Warrior-types slam dancing was not unusual. I recall one individual simply standing against a wall holding a flashlight that shown into his opposite palm on which he had written “Happy Birthday.” I think I’ve given you a rich enough mental picture on which to draw.

That autumn, things were slow at our house. I worked on my own creatures from time to time, but I was forced to get temp agency work for the Bank of America just to make ends meet. No offense, but working in the financial world just heaped more depression on what was already becoming a desperate situation. When things appeared at their bleakest, I got a call from James Cummins asking if I was interested in going with him to the CalArts Halloween party.

I hadn’t seen any of my friends from CalArts in months. To them, I had fallen off of the edge of the world. I thought it would do me well to see some friendly faces for a change, and I truly missed their company. Even though CalArts wasn’t the right school for me, now that I was on the bumpy road to my vocation, the comfort and camaraderie of an institution now looked appealing. The grass is greener…

I agreed.

Then James dropped this bomb: “Hey, I was thinking we’d both go as witches!”

What? Witches? Are you kidding? Aren’t witches supposed to be female? Aren’t male-witches normally called Warlocks? James laughed and expressed his opinion that witches were a-sexual and besides, they would be cool costumes to make. This was years before actor, Robert Picardo, would portray Meg Mucklebones in Ridley Scott’s Legend, so in a way, we were cutting edge. I agreed. After all, it was better than reviewing ATM card requests at the bank.

We started out by life casting our faces and teeth. This decision had been made about a week before the party so we knew we didn’t have a lot of time for construction. Once we had our facial casts we went to work on our masks. We decided to produce one-piece foam latex masks that we would glue down rather than a series of complex over-lapping prosthetics. It was cruder, but faster and truthfully, who was going to know the difference besides us?

Not an artistic recreation of the author.

James, at the time, was tall and thin, so his sculpture had a pointed nose and chin. A scar ran down from the forehead across the eye and down the cheek. A bulged fake eye protruded from the damaged socket. It looked like I would be driving that night. I was shorter and tubbier so my witch looked a bit like the actor Karl Malden with a bulbous nose and a few well-placed warts. James, being the more experienced make up artist, set a one day limit on the sculptures because we’d have to mold them, run them in foam, paint them and finish them in record time.

When the molds were in the oven, curing the foam latex, we made crooked teeth directly fabricating gums indental acrylic over our teeth casts rather than sculpting, molding, and casting them. James had left over acrylic teeth from Strange Invaders so those were pushed into the acrylic gums before they set. Voila! Witch teeth in moments!

Then, it was off to the Salvation Army to find appropriate wardrobe. I don’t recall what we purchased, but I do remember that it was layers of things that were used to create the costumes. And, we managed to find some old wigs. James kept looking out for trinkets and props for both of us. There were no Spirit or Halloween Adventure stores for us to pilfer so unless we purchased something lame and plastic at K-Mart, we had to go with something found or….eaten.

“Ah!” James exclaimed. “We need to go to Kentucky Fried Chicken!” Honestly, I couldn’t imagine anyone needing to go to Kentucky Fried Chicken, however…he had a vision.

We ordered a bucket of chicken, returned to my garage, sat and had an eating marathon until we had a pile of chicken carcasses in a big kitchen pot. Yes, it was as disgusting as it sounds. We boiled the bones until all of the flesh and connective tissue dissolved and then set them out to dry.

Using coarse twine, we assembled necklaces out of the bones. Then we painted and punched hair into our masks. Distressed press-on nails, made our fingers claw-like and we decided to wear sandals to expose our toes and feet hairy to increase the weirdness of it all.

I recall one night Mark Shostrom walked into the garage and found us working on our costumes. He pulled me aside to ask why the hell we were dressing as witches? Weren’t witches supposed to be female? I shrugged. We were already committed.

The night of the party, James and I had all of our materials assembled. We glued our masks on ourselves and painted the exposed parts of our skin to match. Donning our wigs, James put on a leather, wide-brimmed hat to finish off his look, and then felt around, half-blind to get into the front seat of my car. As he sat down, he turned to me soberly and said, “As long as we don’t break character, no one will think this is ridiculous. So, whatever you do, stay in character!”

Ridiculous? THEN, he brought up that this idea was ridiculous!?

After a week of non-stop work, eating all of that chicken (which had resulted in diarrhea), purchasing clothes from the Salvation Army, NOW he was saying that this could all be ridiculous?! I wanted to strangle him, but I decided to see it through.

I already had the damn wig on.

We arrived at the party and James’s plan worked. We were unrecognizable, however, we could distinguish our friends. In croaking voices, we’d call them by name, beckoning them over to us. It was hilarious watching them approach, hesitantly, with narrowed eyes asking, “Who is that?” We never let on until we were ready to leave, then suddenly we identified ourselves to uproarious laughter. It was a complete success.

A couple of days later, I was talking about the Halloween party with my ex-dorm mate, Steve Burg (who had been dressed very effectively as a Blue Meanie from Yellow Submarine). He told me that the reason for the success of witch costumes was that no one could figure out who those two ugly women were at the party. After all, weren’t witches supposed to be female?

Next Time: “Career Reset”

…And Last Time on Blood, Sweat and Latex…: “Getting a Foot (And Shaft) In the Door“

Shannon Shea, a native New Orleanian educated at The California Institute of the Arts, has enjoyed a 27-year tenure designing, constructing, and performing animatronic creatures and characters for Motion Pictures and Television. He has had the pleasure of contributing to such diverse films asPredator, Dances With Wolves, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Spy Kids, The Chronicles of Narnia,Drag Me To Hell and 2012’s Men In Black 3.

Not limited to the confines of Motion Pictures, he paints (having been shown in New York, North Carolina, and Los Angeles), sculpts, writes and authors a new blog about his motion picture experiences called Monster History 101. Recently, he was tapped by the Stan Winston School of Character Design to be one of their instructors for a lecture series entitled Garage Monsters. When not participating on Hollywood projects, he enjoys producing, writing, and directing his own short films including Hotel Superman, Blind Passion, and his current Internet project Phantom Harbor. Shannon lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Tracy, an Operatic Soprano and their daughter, Molly, who attends the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago

SNAKE OIL CONSPIRACIES

Everyone has heard of a little thing called the ‘Placebo Effect’. If you haven’t, it’s a psychological process whereby the act of simply doing something (or eating something) that you’ve been told has a beneficial effect (health, taste, etc) tricks your brain into feeling that effect. It’s something unscrupulous salespeople have been taking advantage of for years with things called ‘snake oil’ scams. It’s been thought these types of scams died out a while ago, but it appears they didn’t. Their PR department only got better…

6.

Fighting Terror With Voodoo

In this post-9/11 world (we get a journalism hard-on just writing that) it is impossible to get on a plane without wondering if the suspicious dude in seat 4B is carrying a bomb. Terrorists can store explosives in toothpaste rolls, water bottles and even shoes! Hundreds of lives are at stake, which instantly precludes any rational thinking on the subject.

Booga-boo!

In late 2009, the TSA ordered $165 million worth of full body scanners, and Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport just activated 17 new scanners to monitor flights leaving for the US. That’s a ton of money, but we guess no price is too high for the safety of our nation’s tourists and drug smugglers. Except those scanners don’t work, at least well enough to justify the price tag.

“I don’t know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747,”

That’s what Rafi Sela, former chief security officer for the Israel Airport Authority, had to say about the full-body scanners the Canadians paid a quarter-of-a-million a pop for. He should know; Mr. Sela helped design the security for Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport. Something tells us Israel has a little more experience dealing with terrorism than Canada.

Then again...

It’s worth noting that these full-body scanners would have done nothing to detect the failed 2006 liquid bomb plot or the 2005 London train bombing. They couldn’t have stopped the underwear bomber, and the machines can’t even detect objects stuffed inside the body. For a moment there, we were worried we’d have to get creative with our coke smuggling.

Fooling the TSA and Canada is one thing, but conning the entire Iraqi army is another. A UK-based company named ATSC has made eighty-five million dollars selling the ADE-651 bomb detector to Iraqi security forces. This wonder-gadget is capable of detecting everything from TNT to elephant ivory. It allows security forces with minimal training to scan whole cars in a manner of seconds, which gives them additional time to devote to being ridiculously corrupt.

The only problem with the ADE-651 is that it is basically an empty box, powered by magic. This space-age detector doesn’t even have a battery. Instead, soldiers are expected to walk in place for “a few minutes” to charge it. The US Army has stated openly that the devices do not work, but Iraqi Major-General Jedad al-Jabri swears by his voodoo-sticks

5.

Facial Recognition Technology

What were you doing when the towers fell on 9/11? Most Americans over the age of 12 or so have an answer to that question. In the case of Joseph Atick, founder and former C.E.O. of a company named Visionics, the answer was almost certainly “masturbating”.

Tell us that isn't the most unsettling thing you've pictured today

While the rest of the American economy was busy furiously shitting itself, Visionics saw its stock price triple just a week after 9/11. Joe Atick took the nation’s greatest tragedy in recent memory and used it as a platform to sell his own special brand of snake oil. He sent a mass email out to the press that afternoon.

Visionics specialized in facial recognition technology, or FRT, which works by analyzing images taken by security cameras to find and reveal terrorists before they can strike. A computer program looks at the security footage, measures some of the nodal points on your face, and then compares it to a database of known terrorists.

FRT systems from Visionics and other companies quickly spread to at least two major (Tampa, Florida counts as major, right?) American cities, as well as potential Terrorist Targets like Ellis Island and D/FW Airport. Great! So we’re safe, right?

Well, maybe not. It turns out there are serious problems with facial recognition technology. And when we say “serious problems” we really mean “it barely works at all”.

A government study found a 43% rate of false-negatives for subjects aged just 18 months from their pictures. That means FST systems fuck up almost half the time under ideal circumstances. The same study found that changing the camera angle just 45 degrees rendered the software completely useless. The ACLU took a look atpolice data from the city of Tampa and found that not a single suspect from the database had yet been identified, although there were tons of false positives.

We're 68% sure the kid on the right is bin Laden

So the fancy facial recognition technology that nations around the world have spent millions and millions of dollars on only works under tightly controlled circumstances, and even then it doesn’t work very well. Oh, and also it sometimes it might accidentally tell the police that you are Muhammed bin Dickwad and send a van full of FBI agents after you. But hey, at least we’re safe from every terrorist with a crystal-clear picture on file.

4.

Snake Oil and the Justice System

Can you imagine what the invention of a perfect lie detector would do to society? No more faking sick to go out and party, no convincing the officer you were burning incense, and no preaching against gay marriage while fucking male prostitutes in exchange for crystal meth.

Some people think this brave new world is just on the horizon. Recent studies indicate that fMRI brain scans may be the future of lie detection. India just convicted a woman of murder based on the results of an MRI lie test. No Lie MRI, a California-based company, is pushing to make the technology standard judicial procedure here in the US.

Finally, a futuristic crime-fighting option that doesn't involve Tom Cruise

fMRI stands for functional magnetic resonance imaging. Basically, it is a giant machine made of magnets that maps your brain by measuring the flow of oxygenated blood. The bits of your brain that are being used most heavily will have the most blood. If you can isolate what lying does to the brain, you just have to scan for that. So there you have it; science has invented the perfect lie detector.

A few decades earlier would have been great but hey, whatever

Unfortunately, there is almost no evidence that fMRI technology can detect lies in any meaningful way. There are only around a dozen peer-reviewed studies of the techniques used by companies like No Lie, and none of them involve very large sample groups.

All lying is not created equal. Subjects in the fMRI studies were given envelopes with $20 bills and playing cards in them and told to lie about identity of the card in order to keep the money. You wouldn’t approve a cancer treatment based on tests involving a few dozen healthy people. Why assume the brain of a middle-class college student being ordered to lie in order to win money would act the same as the brain of a serial killer with well-rehearsed story and his freedom on the line?

Daniel Langleben is a psychiatrist whose research is the backbone of No Lie’s techniques. He is the scientist who conducted the best-known study on fMRI lie detection.

"There are many questions that need to be looked into before we know whether this will work as lie detection”

People start to lose their ability to think rationally as soon as you surround them with fancy technology. That’s why Apple Stores make money hand over fist, and its why people are lining up to believe in the infallibility of fMRI lie detectors. Polygraph machines aren’t very impressive to look at, but an fMRI gives you sexy color scans of a person’s brain.

In fact, a graduate student at Yale recently published a study which showed that inserting the words “brain scans indicate” into a ridiculous explanation for some psychological phenomena made it more believable to the average layman. In doing so, he proved something Star Trek screenwriters have known for years; the difference between science and magic is mostly semantic.

3.

Sunscreen

In 1918 the Bailey Radium Laboratories launched Radithor, a product made from triple-distilled water infused with the radium 226 and 228 isotopes. Radithor was hailed as a cure-all by its users until they all mysteriously died of radiation poisoning.

Don't worry guys- it's certified!

Thankfully, Radithor is a relic of the last century. Quack snake oil peddlers may have gotten away with some ridiculous things when our grandparents were in diapers, but people today are much more discerning. At least until someone in a lab coat says the word “cancer”.

BOOGA-BOO!

8,650 people in the United States died of melanoma, the deadliest type of skin cancer, in 2009. Summertime PSAs and middle school health teachers lead us to believe that we could avoid the same grisly fate by slathering on enough high SPF sunscreen to make us look like a Bukkake film extra.

While it’s true that tanning is about as retarded as drinking radium, the idea that sunscreen will protect you from skin cancer needs revision. A study released in May 2010 showed that 92% of sunscreen lotions on the market are completely ineffective.

One common sunscreen additive, retinyl palmitate, has been found by the FDA to speed up skin lesions and act as a photocarcinogenic. Oxybenzone- a chemical you’ll find in Coppertone and a ton of other big-name sunblocks, has been linked to contact eczema and breast cancer. But hey, at least you’ll be safe from melanoma!

Yay?

Unless you aren’t. If you listened in health class, you know to look for a sunscreen with an SPF above 30. Unfortunately, SPF only measures the sunscreen’s ability to block UVB radiation. UVA radiation causes skin cancer but doesn’t leave sunburns, and most major sunscreens don’t block it.

And it gets worse. The FDA has yet to create any regulations for how sunscreens are allowed to indicate their UVA protection. As a result, tons of sunscreen manufacturers have started marketing their products as having “broadspectrum” protection. This would seem to indicate that the sunscreen protects you against both types of ray, but it is actually a completely meaningless marketing term.
Until the FDA gets off their ass and sets a standard, you have no real way to know if your skin is protected.

The best protection your skin can get

2.

Drowning Big Brother in Data

HOLYFUCKPANIC! The CIA is monitoring the Internet and your credit cards. They have a record of every purchase you ever make. The NSA records every Google Chat session and the Treasury Department randomly combs your garbage for shredded documents. Big Brother is out to fuck your face and not even the strongest bear mace will hold back his advances.

Dick Cheney, moments before running down a pregnant gazelle and biting through her jugular

There’s no shame in being freaked out about the government gathering data on you. The Department of Homeland Security actually buys consumer history reports from third party collection firms so they can know who to screen at borders. Constant Internet access and the viral growth of social media has put more information about you into the public sphere than ever before possible. You might as well be standing naked in front of a picture window.

Discretion is the better part of boredom

Of course, when everyone in the damn country stands naked in front of their picture windows it sort of loses its impact. One naked person is an oddity, but 400,000,000 naked people is just a bland sea of obesity and track-marks. While privacy advocates abhor the idea of mass data mining, the truth of the matter is that there is anonymity in a crowd.

In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Science Foundation released a massive reportabout the effectiveness of the government’s data-mining techniques. The title says a lot; “All Counterterrorism Programs That Collect and Mine Data Should Be Evaluated for Effectiveness, Privacy Impacts; Congress Should Consider New Privacy Safeguards.”

Having all the data in the world can’t help you to draw accurate conclusions on it. Data-mining programs have ahuge rate of false positives, which wastes millions in law enforcement dollars and makes it more difficult to pin down real threats.

The interconnected nature of the modern world means that you can draw a line between pretty much any two people on earth, if you torture the data right. The NSA’s entire spying program is based around the idea that terrorists can be revealed by their communications patterns. If you spend a lot of time talking to dangerous middle-eastern men about guns and bombs, you’re probably a terrorist. But you could just as easily be Donald Rumsfeld.

The 9/11 Commission concluded that ample evidence of the attacks existed ahead of time. In Cory Doctorow’s words, “…the American intelligence community knew in advance that the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were in the offing, they just didn’t know they knew it.”

Data-mining works well for credit card companies trying to detect fraud, but terrorist attacks are more complicated. Mining vast reams of purchase data to try and pick out the next McVey is like looking for a needle in a haystack that may not actually have a needle in it. Right after 9/11, the NSA investigated thousands of tips. Virtually all of them lead to “dead ends or innocent Americans.”

Government agencies continue to expand their data-mining efforts every day. All this raw info keeps Big Brother too busy tracking down bullshit leads to notice which sex toys or rare hallucinogens from Canadian labs you buy. Your privacy is safe but, thanks to data-mining, you may not be.

1.

A Ton of Actual Medicines

Every person’s body is different. An obese 40-year-old women will be less affected by pain meds than an emaciated 20-year-old basement-dwelling nerd. Your lifestyle, dietary and drug habits all change how you will react to drugs. Doling out prescriptions is a science of trial and error.

Diddy mao, doc!

No medication is going to work on everyone 100% of the time, but some of them don’t work at all. A 2008 study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that the popular diabetes drug Starlix was only “marginally” effective in slowing the development of type II diabetes. A popular high blood pressure medication, Diovan, was found to have no effect on your odds of developing heart problems.

Take 500 mgs of snake oil and call us in the morning

While Diovan and Starlix may not make you healthier, at least your kids can’t get high off of them. A 2009 study in the UK by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency showed that products like Day Nurse and Sudafed had “no robust evidence” of working on children.

It’s worth noting that over three million Americans between 12 and 25 have used an over-the-counter cough medicine to get fucked up. While many of those cases were probably hippies getting safely stoned in the backs of their Volkswagen vans, even more of them were kids. While that’s hilarious in a South Park episode, actual toddlers are dying from overdoses of this “medicine” with no evidence of effectiveness.

Popular ADHD medications also suffer from the same problem of not working at all. A study on the long-term effects of drugs like Concerta and Ritalin found that they had “no demonstrable benefit for children” in the long term.

ADHD drugs aren’t benign snake-oil either. They can stunt a child’s growth and weight and may impair thinking ability. But hey, at least little Johnny will shut the hell up.