Life in the Dust

Conditions: Cold, Bright

No Matter Where You Go...

The Mars curiosity rover has been spending some time analyzing a rock, with the idea being that they’d pick a nice bland rock to help calibrate the rover’s instruments. But it turns out you can’t even trip over a rock on Mars without discovering something.

The rock turned out to be anything but ordinary, scientists reported last week. It is unlike any Mars rock previously examined and more like an Earth rock.

And as for the pile of windblown dust and soil that the rover spent weeks analyzing? It was not dry as dust, but contained water.
[...]

The rock was alkaline, similar to a well-known but uncommon type of rock called mugearite, which is found on volcanic islands like Hawaii. “People say that less than 1 percent of the rocks on Earth are alkaline,” Dr. Stolper said. “If you plopped down on Earth, you wouldn’t find something like this likely randomly.”

- nytimes.com/

Well that’s kind of cute. Assuming the Curiosity rover is actually on Mars, and didn’t accidentally crash land in Hawaii and no-one noticed, there’s even more proof of the similarities between the two planets.


Film Review: 2 Guns

You know, I’m going to miss Tony Scott. He was always one for a finely-built and enjoyable action film, and 2 Guns reminds me a lot of his style. Directed by Baltasar Kormákur, who did Contraband last year (also with Mark Whalberg) the style and tone of this film is right out of the old school Tony Scott playbook. Whalberg plays a Navy operative on a secret mission to steal a large amount of drug money from a Mexican kingpin. He’s teamed up with Denzel Washington, playing an undercover DEA agent, who also is wanting to get the money in order to put the kingpin away in jail. Each one doesn’t know the other is undercover, and each is happy to stab the other in the back. Where things get really interesting is when both men get betrayed by their respective authorities, and find out the money they stole actually belonged to the CIA, and of course that the other guy is not who they said they were.

So it’s a twisty convoluted plot about character reversals and reveals, full of cool action sequences and dusty vistas. And under it all is this surprisingly great chemistry between the two leads. Denzel is at his laid back best, full of style and swagger, betrayed and angry as everything changes around him. And I don’t think I’ve seen Whalberg be this impressively cool, he’s all wired and edgy, with a fast talking sass that fits him very well. The two play off each other brilliantly with lots of natural dialogue scenes amid the gunplay.

What I liked about this film was how it doesn’t play to the obvious cliches. Characters get betrayed, things get complicated, romance fades, and people put in danger where they don’t get saved by the good guys. It’s an example of doing a very solid job with a solid idea, and letting the natural charisma of the actors shine through. I think there’s a bit of the old movie magic going on with this one, a film that on paper might have been a bit flat is actually elevated by actors and director to a very enjoyable piece of entertainment. Four waffles out of five.



- Peace out