Hasta La Gadget!

Movie Review Jackie K Cooper
“A Million Ways To Die In the West” (Universal Pictures)

Seth MacFarlane is the creative force behind the new movie “A Million Ways To Die In the West.” He co-wrote it, produced it, directed it and stars in it. Therefore any praise should go to him, and any complaints should also be aimed his way. The praises may be few but the complaints are going to be many. This movie is a flop and a half, and it shouldn’t be.

MacFarlane had a chance to make a funny, funny film and he blew it. Instead of using the comic humor he possesses, he deigned to thrown in every sophomoric joke and situation possible. Instead of using the comic resources of his cast, he submerged them in puerile situtions and bodily function humor.

At the center of the film is Albert (MacFarlane), a likeable sheep rancher who has found a reason for happiness. Her name is Louise (Amanda Seyfried). Alas Louise decides to dump Albert in favor of the smooth and slick Foy (Neil Patrick Harris). With a mustache business all his own he can provide Louise with some of the pleasures of life.

This plunges Albert into the depths of despair, but just when all is bleak he meets Anna (Charlize Theron). Anna is the wife of the notorious and ferocious outlaw named Clinch (Liam Neesom). He is off terrorizing another town, leaving Anna alone to her own devices. This allows her and Albert to strike up an instant friendship, while she conveniently forgets to tell him she is married.

This plot framework should be plenty substantial, but MacFarlane the director tears it down and stomps it to bits in order to give us boatloads of profanity, gross situations and and an endless supply of dull comic routines. To show how desperate he is in trying to inject some humor into his story, MacFarlane enlists the aid of Bill Mahr and Gibert Gottfried who appear as dull and duller.

There are some good points to this movie. The musical score evokes the triumphant spirit of the old west, and the photography shows the majesty of the setting. Plus you can just stand and stare at Theron and be transfixed by her beauty. She even manages to give us a bit of a character in Anna, but not much. MacFarlane fills her mouth with such foul language that we never get a real sense of who she is.

The movie is rated R for profanity, violence and brief nudity.

MacFarlane manages to show us there are a million and one ways to die in the west. The extra one is being bored to death.

I scored “A Million Ways To Die In the West” a fatal 4 out of 10.

Jackie K Cooper
www.jackiekcooper.com 

As a U.S. experimental particle physicist, I helped discover the Higgs boson with the CMS collaboration, and we still have much to learn about what we found as well as what else could be out there waiting to be found. Particle physics is a rich field of study that searches for the smallest components of the universe and how they interact with each other. Questions include how the cosmos is expanding and what we can tell about the beginning of the universe and how it got to be the way it is. Theorists and experimentalists have been, and continue to be, very busy trying to provide a framework and describe what the universe is. Tools of study include accelerators that collide particles together at high energies (the energy frontier), accelerators that can produce a high intensity of particles to study rare processes (the intensity frontier), and detectors that look for particles from space (the cosmic frontier).

In the U.S. we have been fortunate to have funding from the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to pursue this research, and the U.S. physicists are still recognized as world leaders in this field. Around a quarter of the physicists in the CMS collaboration are funded by the U.S., and significant detector and accelerator contributions to CMS and the LHC came from U.S. funding. The larger DOE contribution to particle physics is now at about $750 million a year, but it has been reduced by about 25 percent from 10 years ago, as each year there is less and less. This is significant funding from the taxpayer for fundamental research that we are quite thankful for. However, the continued decrease in funding has led to some hard choices, and the U.S. may not enjoy a global leadership position in this field much longer.

The particle physics community realizes that substantial planning needs to take place to ensure that the best physics is done with the investment of the government. The Division of Particles and Fields in the American Physical Society started a community planning exercise in 2013 to help plan the next 10 years of particle physics investments in light of the Higgs discovery, new information about neutrinos, and new information about dark energy and the accelerating universe. The DOE/NSF then received a report last week from the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5), which followed up on the community planning exercise. The P5 panel was given target budgets to meet and told to prioritize the potential contributions. The five science drivers in the report are:

• Use the Higgs boson as a new tool for discovery.
• Pursue the physics associated with neutrino mass.
• Identify the new physics of dark matter.
• Understand cosmic acceleration (dark energy and inflation).
• Explore the unknown (new particles, interactions, and physical principles).

To enable these drivers, hard choices were made, and recommendations for funding have been given to DOE and NSF. The lowest budget scenario was considered “precarious,” where “[i]t is close to the point beyond which the US would … lose its position as a global leader in this field….”

I encourage you to find out more about the exciting science to be done. I hope that after this significant planning exercise, our field will be able to make the case that we are good stewards of the public money, have an exciting program that benefits humanity, and will receive more positive news from the budgets to come.

Love is so easy to recognize sometimes. On Tuesday of last week, Mike, my mother’s boyfriend of seven years, called me to let me know that he would be asking her to marry him. I’m not sure that he was really asking my permission, because he knew what he wanted and was determined to get it. But to be honest, I would have gladly granted him permission any day!

The following Sunday night’s impromptu wedding, though a long time coming, was going to happen in a very non-typical way. This wasn’t a walking-down-the-aisle-in-a-white-dress-with-flowers type of ceremony. My mom and my new stepdad would be getting married in a hospital room, where the two would make a promise to love one another in good times and bad, and the meaning of “in sickness and in health” would immediately make itself clear.

Mike recently received his second cancer diagnosis within two years — first esophageal cancer, which he beat, and now AML (leukemia).

My mom, while not a nurse by profession, would soon assume the role of caregiver yet again, to a man for whom I know she would not hesitate to provide anything that he may need, and I’m certain that he would do the same if the roles were reversed.

All of this sudden wedding talk really opened my eyes to a few things. First, it immediately reminded me of the love that the two of them share for one another. While I’ve referred to Mike as my stepdad for quite some time now, legally it’s now legit, though I didn’t need legality to know this!

But with the talk of leukemia, and knowing that none of us really knows when our time is up, I got to thinking: What if I were in that same hospital room, needing care, and wanted to share my last moments or days of life with someone who had been by my side through it all, but the law said I couldn’t?

Sometimes I just don’t understand how the law can tell me whom I can love.

In that hospital room in south Louisiana, a display of love took place. I saw two people promise to keep loving one another no matter what.

Somehow, in the stillness of the 10 or so people gathered in the hospital room (I was present via FaceTime), I was instantly reminded that love knows know boundaries, so love should not have to face limits.

If something had happened to Mike before the wedding, my mom, though already having walked this road with him once, would have been left with no legal say in the final moments of the man she loved. Immediately I realized that my mom could relate to why I will one day want to marry the man I want to spend every minute with, even “in sickness and in health.”

Honestly, I’m not sure of the point of this post, besides to show people that love is love no matter whom it’s between or in what stage of life it’s pursued, and that denying someone the right to love whom they want just doesn’t make sense.

It killed me not to be there to see my mom and Mike finally become one, but even through a jittery wi-fi system love makes its presence known and is evident.

As Mike said, this was the first day of many, many, many more that they will spend together, for love knows no bounds, and I believe that Mike will beat this too, just like he beat his last diagnosis.

See the clip of the ceremony that I shot over FaceTime below! (Thank God for technology!)

For anyone who still feels the need to get involved in restricting who can love whom: I hope you realize that love is universal, has no limits, and should never be legally kept from anyone.

Don’t you think? As my mom and Mike said, “I do.”

I bet I can guess the first thing that comes to your mind when I say Cloverfield: “SHAKY CAAAAAM!!” It’s so excessive it can be a little bit of a problem, and some endeavoring internet hero tried to fix it. The result is a Cloverfield that’s unwatchable in a completely different way.

Read more…

(Recasts with climbers assumed dead, adds details)

By Jimmy Lovaas

SEATTLE, May 31 (Reuters) – Six climbers who disappeared three days ago on Washington’s Mount Rainier are not expected to be found alive, the National Parks Service said on Saturday after search teams found their scattered gear.

Search crews for Mount Rainier National Park found climbing and camping gear in snow more than 3,000 feet (900 meters) below the last known position of the six climbers and also picked up distress signals from the group’s avalanche beacons, said Fawn Bauer, a Mount Rainier National Park spokeswoman.

The climbers appear to have fallen or got caught in an avalanche of snow, rock and other debris, Bauer said. No bodies have been located, she said.

“We don’t believe there was a viable chance for survival,” Bauer said. The climbers’ gear was found at about 9,500 feet (2,900 meters) on a steep and dangerous area of the mountain, she said.

The climbing party, including two guides from Seattle’s Alpine Ascents International, set off on Monday for a five-day ascent along the north face of the glacier-streaked mountain. They were last heard from via satellite phone on Wednesday evening when they had reached an elevation of 12,800 feet (3,900 meters) in the Liberty Ridge area, Bauer said.

All was fine, they said, although they noted some bad weather seemed to be moving in, according to Bauer. Their plan was to hike to the top of the mountain on Thursday, she said.

A rain and hail storm swept through lower elevations of Mount Rainier National Park from late afternoon to early evening on Wednesday, with snow at higher elevations, she said.

Alpine Ascents’ website describes the Liberty Ridge hike as “one of the most technical and physically demanding climbs we do in the lower 48 states.”

Alpine Ascents contacted the park service on Friday afternoon to report the hikers missing, Bauer said. They were due back on Friday and the park service waited until first light on Saturday to begin searching, she said.

The park service dispatched a helicopter with two climbing rangers on Saturday and three additional rangers were doing a ground search on Liberty Ridge, Bauer said.

Bauer could not give details about the hikers’ identities. An employee with Alpine Ascents declined to comment, referring questions to the park service.

An active volcano, Mount Rainier rises 14,410 feet (4,392 meters) above sea level and dominates the Seattle skyline. (Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Writing by Kevin Murphy; Editing by Jonathan Allen and Sandra Maler)