Wondering what really happened in the Sherlock finale? Click here (but only if you’ve seen “The Reichenbach Fall”). (CHT Mark Gatiss.)
Author Archive | Roderick
The (Very) Thin Green Line
The Guardians of the Universe, the bosses of the Green Lantern Corps, have divided the universe into 3600 sectors, each under the jurisdiction of one (originally) or two (currently) Green Lanterns.
This is obviously absurd. But let’s pause for a moment to consider just how absurd it really is.
Current estimates place the number of galaxies in the universe at somewhere between 100 billion and 500 billion. So let’s say 300 billion. That means that each sector has, on average, about 80 million galaxies in it.
Suppose you’re a Green Lantern scanning your sector for signs of trouble. Suppose further, absurdly, that scanning an entire galaxy takes only one second. At that rate, it will still take you two and a half years to scan your entire sector.
Just watch this video and think about trying to police the entire universe with a force of 3600 (or 7200) cops:
Now back in the 1970s there was some confusion at DC about the scope of the Guardians’ authority; while usually described as the Guardians of the Universe, they were occasionally described instead as merely the Guardians of the Galaxy (not to be confused with Marvel’s super-team of the same name). There was even a silly plot point once where the bad guys removed Earth from the Green Lantern Corps’s jurisdiction by yanking it out of the Milky Way.
This certainly makes more sense, but still not much. The number of stars in the Milky Way is thought to be roughly the same as the number of galaxies in the universe; so it’d still take two and a half years to scan a single sector, if scanning at the rate of one star system per second.
No wonder there’s never a Green Lantern around when you need one.
Scholastic Achievement Test
More juvenilia: Whether What Is Transcendent Is Dependent (unsuccessful parody of medieval philosophy, age 19). Adam Smith says somewhere that a sculpture of an animal is more impressive than a sculpture of a chair, because a sculpture of a chair isn’t sufficiently different from an actual chair; a similar criticism applies here.
Cordial and Sanguine, Part 19
I have a new post up at BHL: Eudaimonist Libertarianism. Not too hot, not too cold – like lukewarm porridge, it’s just right!
Atlas Shrunk, Part 9: Atlas Shrugs Again; So Do I
It’s been announced (timed to coincide with Rand’s birthday) that part 2 of the Atlas film trilogy is going ahead.
I wish I could be excited about this. But I found part 1 so lackluster that I haven’t even bought the dvd yet, despite having spent decades fantasising about an Atlas film. (I’ve probably missed my chance to get the now-recalled dvd box with the blurb praising “Ayn Rand’s timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice.”) Rand is such an intensely cinematic writer, and the film over and over turns away from her cinematic choices (even in cases where constraints of time and budget would have permitted following them) in favour of something less interesting.
Still and all, I’m mildly pleased that the project will continue. I guess I prefer a completed mediocre Atlas adaptation to an uncompleted mediocre Atlas adaptation.
Who Copies the Copymen?
DC is producing a prequel to Watchmen.