Project McConaughey Overview List

MCL5
Interstellar

MCL4
Contact

MCL3
We Are Marshall

MCL2
Failure to Launch

MCL1
Tropic Thunder

Project McConaughey, Report 1: Failure To Launch

Welcome to the re-launch of my science blog, which has been dormant for almost the same amount of time my child has been alive. Coincidence? I think not.

So, you're asking: what science news was so compelling that Silvershoes felt the need to get back to blogging? Answer: none. In fact, there is nothing serious about this post. I have developed a new hobby I'm calling Project McConaughey in which I rate the movies of the actor Matthew McConaughey on a five-level rating scale. This scale is inspired by my recent work in the atmospheric sciences and is loosely analogous to the Saffir-Simpson hurricane categories or NOAA's Space Weather Scales.

The McConaughey Scale is based on the Index of McConaugheyness (IM). Although the index is still under development, it depends on these three basic concepts

• The amount of time McConaughey is onscreen;
• The intensity of McConaughey Charisma being exuded;
• The extent to which said Charisma is being employed to affect the actions of another character.

I expect this definition to be refined as the project progress. It was developed based on my recollection of the movies Contact and Tropic Thunder, and also recent viewings of Interstellar and We Are Marshall. Each movie will be assigned a McConaughey Level (MCL) based on the IM of the movie. For  IM values sorted as [(1,2) (3,4) (5,6) (7,8) 9], the assigned MCL will [1 2 3 4 5], respectively. Based on recollection, I have assigned the following preliminary MCL's: Tropic Thunder, MCL1; We Are Marshall, MCL 3; Contact, MCL4; Interstellar, MCL5 (HE'S SAVING HUMANITY, PEOPLE).

It seemed appropriate to mark the official launch of this project with the 2006 McConaughey/Sarah Jessica Parker vehicle Failure To Launch. I don't intend to give a full review of each movie, but I do think we can gain some quick insight into the movie from the first and last images of McConaughey, so you can expect to see that for each entry. Here they are for Failure To Launch:

So in this movie, McConaughey plays not quite a lovable loser, but a "thirtysomething slacker," Tripp, who is still living at home. Sarah Jessica Parker's character Paula is hired by Tripp's parents to basically make him grow up by falling in love with her. Under the scientific principle "Garbage In, Garbage Out," the plot ends up as stupid and contrived as you might expect. Let's just say you'd probably have to pay me to make small talk with Tripp, too. Of course Paula "unexpectedly" falls in love with Tripp, leading to happily ever after and Tripp swimming with a frickin' dolphin. The chemistry between the two actors is middle school level at best. Really the only redeeming qualities of this movie are the supporting actors: Terry Bradshaw, who is quite funny as Tripp's wannabe bohemian dad, Kathy Bates, who plays Tripp's mom to perfection, and Zooey Deschanel, playing to type as Paula's wacky roommate. Given the lack of motivation of the character and his general mediocre appeal, the intensity of McConaughey Charisma of this movie remains pretty low throughout. Combined with the character's lack of motivation to do much of anything, the Index of McConaugheyness comes out to 4. That puts it at MCL2.

The master list for the project can be found here. 

Bonus for the initial post: this shot of Jim Carrey as Matthew McConaughey on Saturday Night Live. Nailed it.

Hello, editor....

I know not every article will be perfect, but can't one hope to avoid errors in the first sentence?

With the advent of a series of satellites intended for a variety of communication and navigation purposes and with transmitters from 136 MHz to 1600 MHz, the importance of the phenomenon known as scintillation [...] becomes of importance.

Particle physics in the oilfield

This at a time that US investment in particle physics research is plummeting:

Geneva, 9 May 2008. A Protocol to the 2006 Cooperation Agreement between Saudi Arabia and CERN was today signed at CERN by H.E. Dr. Mohammed I. Al-Suwaiyel, President of the King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology, on behalf of the Government of Saudi Arabia, and Robert Aymar, Director General of CERN , in the presence of H.E. Ali I. Al-Naimi, Minister of Petroleum and Mineral resources and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Saudi Aramco, H.E. Dr. Ibrahim A. Al-Assaf, Minister of Finance and a delegation of representatives of Saudi universities and Saudi Aramco.

The objective of the Protocol is to provide the operational framework as required for the execution of a range of specific tasks under the Cooperation Agreement in order to build a growing high-energy particle physics community in Saudi Arabia that eventually will participate as a visible member in the global scientific community collaborating at CERN.

Saudis know they must work on having a life after oil. When the US gives up leading the way in any and all research, what will we have left?

source: Interactions News Wire #32-08 (9 May 2008)

Whoopsie

This sinkhole opened up a few days ago in Daisetta, TX. It's an old salt dome that probably had the oil pumped out from underneath it and has now decided to collapse. According to the Houston Chronicle, some local teenage girls have taken to calling it the "Sinkhole de Mayo." Clever!

picture credit: James Nielsen/Houston Chronicle

Don't listen to anything this man says

Robert Zubrin, author of Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil, starts out a recent interview on DailyKos with this whopper:

This year, the USA will import 5 billion barrels of oil. At $100/bbl that is $500 billion dollars taxed out of the US economy by the collection of foreign governments known as OPEC, some of whom are using it to promote terrorism directed against the United states and numerous other countries. When George Bush took office in 2001, we were paying $90 billion per year for foreign oil. So the Bush administration has effectively responded to 9-11 by increasing our financing of the enemy fivefold -- and now we are actually paying OPEC more than we are paying our own defense department (the US DOD budget this year is about $435 billion).

A few "minor" details to point out, courtesy of the US DOE's Energy Information Agency:

1) We import 5 billion barrels of "total crude oil and products," but less than 4 billion barrels of actual crude oil. "Products" includes things that are already refined, such as gasoline, kerosene, and even liquified petroleum gas.

2) Only about 1.9 billion barrels of crude oil come from OPEC countries.

So 1.9 billion barrels times $100/barrel is $190 billion dollars to OPEC - not, in fact, more than we pay the defense department. This does not leave me inclined to believe any other figures or comparisons Zubrin quotes.

Oh, and one other thing. Only about 800 million barrels come from the Persian Gulf, with roughly 200 million from Iraq, so say $60 billion dollars. I know terrorists can come from any part of the world, but to the American public it means the Persian Gulf. Hyperbole, anyone?

This I can agree with, though: "the Bush administration has effectively responded to 9-11 by increasing our financing of the enemy fivefold."

A 30-minute round trip to space!

XCOR Press release

That explains a lot

From The Onion:

March 19, 2008 | Issue 44•12

HOUSTON—According to an official NASA report released Saturday, nearly 32 percent of all prayers exiting Earth are deflected off satellites orbiting the planet—ultimately preventing the discharged requests for divine intervention from ever making it to the Gates of Heaven. "After impact with the satellite, these diverted prayers typically plummet back into the atmosphere, where they either burn up or eventually land, unanswered, in a body of water," the report read in part. "Of the remaining prayers, research confirms 64 percent fail to make it past the stratosphere because they aren't prayed hard enough, 94 percent of those with enough momentum are swallowed by a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and 43 percent are eaten by birds." The report concluded that, of the 170 billion prayers issued last month, one made it to God, whose reply was intercepted by a hurricane and incorrectly delivered to a Nigerian man who reportedly did not know what to do with his brand-new Bowflex machine.

Road trip!

If only Geneva were within driving distance of Atlanta:

On 6 April 2008, CERN will open its doors to the public, offering a unique chance to visit its newest and largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), before it goes into operation later this year. This scientific instrument, the largest and most complex in the world, is installed in a 27km tunnel, 100 metres underground in the Swiss canton of Geneva and neighbouring France. CERN will open all access points around the ring for visits underground, to the tunnel and the experiment caverns. On the surface, a wide-ranging programme will be on offer, allowing people to learn about the physics for which this huge instrument is being installed, the technology underlying it, and applications in other fields.

Source: Interactions News Wire #21-08 (18 March 2008)