Misanthropaea

Another Year Over...

Is That Lipstick On The Doll's Head? I Am Epilogue

In the final pages of Dark Mission, after having slogged our way through a dozen chapters that were almost somehow related to the subject and title of the book a little bit, we arrive, at last, at the Epilogue, rather unusually subtitled 'Richard C Hoagland', wherein Richard C Hoagland, founder of The Enterprise Mission, recipient of an Angstrom Medal, former science advisor to CBS News and Walter Cronkite, author of The Monuments of Mars, co-creator of the 'Pioneer Plaque,' originator of the 'Europa Proposal,' and principal investigator of The Enterprise Mission explains to us that he understands that the big picture he has illustrated in the preceding 508 pages of manuscript is imperfect.

This is much like saying hurricane Katrina was a spot of bad weather.

Part of the reason for the inadequate nature of the material, he confides, is that many of the astronauts involved in this intricate web of intrigue have had 'their own memories deliberately altered after seeing first-hand the wonders we have laid out here.'

Strange. I wish I could wipe this ponderous load of shit from my memory as well. Lucky astronauts...

The other blame goes to the fact that the investigation for this book, such as is it, conducted by The Enterprise Mission (et al) 'lacks the force of law' and does not offer the authors legal authority to fully deduce the truth.  Of course, how this also stops them doing proper research as well is not at all addressed.

Once he's done pointing fingers at everyone but himself for The Enterprise Mission's inability to conduct proper research or to provide adequate documentation or to helpfully explain the methodology so that others can easily replicate the 'striking' discoveries (as we are so often told we can), Hoagland explains that, as work on Dark Mission was coming to a close, the focus of Enterprise began shifting to

...several major "creeping breakthroughs" in our quiet, ten-year investigation of the moon

the first of which was the reported 2006 disappearance of the original Apollo 11 tapes. How, exactly, this incident constitutes a breakthrough-- 'creeping' or otherwise --is, of course, not fully addressed. In classic Hoagland fashion the subject is introduced, spelt out over some 22 additional paragraphs in excruciating detail, and summarily dropped with the vague notion that his argument has somehow been solidified.

I felt like Steve Martin in what would sadly be one of the last truly great John Hughes films, yelling at John Candy:  'And by the way, you know, when you're telling these little stories? Here's a good idea-- have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!'

In brief, the mystery of the missing Apollo 11 tapes is cunningly linked to the belief of Hoagland and Bara that all of the Apollo astronauts were sent on lunar recon missions to 'find the lost power of the gods that may have been left lying around... in the form of instrumentalities from eons past.'

You have no idea how hard it was to type that sentence with my eyes rolling all over the place.

Hoagland believes that NASA were up to something because, although colour television was readily available in the 60s, we sent 'crappy, low resolution black and white' cameras to record our historic first step on another world because NASA didn't want colour cameras anywhere near the surface of the moon to accidentally capture images of the 'glass-like lunar domes' and Obvious Mechanical Debris.

Apparently it is a little-known fact that black and white cameras cannot see giant glass domes or broken machinery. Only colour cameras can.

Whilst I largely agree with the assessment that we ought to have sent better quality cameras (since we had them), it is the reasoning I have trouble with. I do not doubt for a moment that there are things NASA haven't told the public, but I do not think that they sent black and white cameras on Apollo 11 because a secret cabal inside the administration was 'pulling strings.'  It's all conjecture with very little proof. Hoagland goes on to say that this decision by NASA only makes sense in light of the Enterprise Mission arguments that NASA is, for want of a better term, a black ops organisation operating beyond the pale of their ostensibly civilian charter.  Of course all of this talk of video quality or lack thereof flatly contradicts Hoagland's previous argument that the video images taken on the lunar surface were superior quality to what we have been lead to believe.

'All of the transmissions,' he writes, 'were run through a bandwidth limiting "low-pass" filter which dramatically reduced the image quality.'

Not a terribly convincing argument for your previous statement, Dick. In the end it is NASA who were responsible for the loss of the Apollo 11 tapes and surely the originals will never be seen again because the secret cabal operating inside NASA won't let them out.

The second breakthrough was the 'sudden, public availability of a veritable flood' of lunar photographs. Hoagland claims that moments before they went to press, NASA began flooding their various official web sites with amazing new Apollo imagery. Obviously, due to their secret Masonic network of covert operatives, NASA are deeply aware of the Feral House publishing timetable and have so very little on their plate that they exist solely to taunt and tease with their damned 'last minute' releases so that the information will just have to wait for Dark Mission II. Damn that NASA. Damn them and their public sharing of information.

'This immense amount of data, suddenly "dumped" on the web...' Hoagland insists, 'abruptly made possible Enterprise analyses never before practical-- starting with a one-to-one "calibration" of the validity of the entire database,' which sounds like it means something all very fascinating and scientific but ultimately says virtually nothing of any substance.

It is specifically mentioned, with regards to this wealth of information, that the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal was one of the recipients to benefit from these new-- 'literally thousands...' Hoagland emotes --of images from as far back as 2006 (which may hardly be defined as 'last minute').  This assertion seems to be entirely disproved, however, by the list of corrections and additions entitled the Journal Update File available at the Surface Journal itself, for those knowing where to look. (You need to scroll down past the 'Nail Soup' bit at the top of the linked page to get to the list of changes).

According to the Surface Journal Update File there were approximately 1o, maybe 11, updates made in 2007 prior to Dark Mission going to press (if one supposes that the book, available October 2007, went to press even as late as September 2007) and one of these updates included, on 16 September 2007, 'more than 30 new pan assemblies.' Beyond that, there are no updates listed in either 2007 or 2006 indicating a 'flood' of any kind, let alone a 'last minute' flood consisting of 'thousands of images.'

This niggling little detail aside, however, Hoagland points to these 'thousands' of photographs being, in his words, 'quietly leaked' by NASA-- without any fanfare, mind you --onto public places like the Surface Journal, (because, you know, quiet leaks of information are so often done with fanfare) allowed him to 'quantitatively test the information' in the so-called 'newly released scans' against the information he gleaned from Ken Johnston's 'pristine' 30 year old photos.

And if you sense the sound of a riding crop slowly being drawn into the air in aid of soon beating yet another dead horse, well...

Hoagland plunges us immediately back into the agonising morass which made 'Chapter Four: The Crystal Towers of the Moon' such a joyless odyssey through the Bog of Eternal Stench as he once again focusses our attention on the idiotic 'Mitchell Under Glass' image (it will be at the bottom of the left-side column on the linked page, because the direct link doesn't want to play nice for some reason).

I will not bother to repeat my previous assessment of this obtuse Enterprise 'enhancement' and why I feel it is spurious at best, as I believe I gave a full and reasoned counter argument, including a contextual visual record of crucial ancillary images conspicuously absent from the Enterprise data. Suffice to say that it is my considered opinion that the Enterprise version of NASA frame AS14-66-9301, the laughable 'Mitchell Under Glass,' represents a deliberate and nescient misrepresentation of common optical aberrations inherent in bright sun photography and an astonishing deficiency in essential deductive reasoning and critical thinking.

As if somehow believing he is providing indisputable validity to the ridiculous original Enterprise assessment of this image, Hoagland states that one of the so-called 'new' high resolution scans from the 'veritable flood' of photographs 'suddenly' available for public viewing was none other than AS14-66-9279. This is the very frame I used, you might recall, in Part 5 of Do You See What I See to illustrate that precisely the same lens flare and hazing seen in 'Mitchell Under Glass' was also seen in a number of other Apollo 14 images and that this evidence was largely ignored by Hoagland-- despite his assertion of having 'downloaded and microscopically examined' so many images --because it instantly negates his claims.

It is not my intention to belabour the the point or continue to dignify the lunacy of these imperceptive and demonstrably flawed suppositions, though I would like you to read the following quote very carefully, in light of the counter-arguments and photographic evidence I have previously provided, and consider what is being said:

Though, again, nowhere near as detailed as Ken’s pristine 30-year-old version, the correspondence of the major sky features in the two separate Apollo 14 images definitively, scientifically proves that the deep blue, ancient lunar glass dome-- seen arching over the Edgar Mitchell on frame 9301 --is not a photographic "fluke."

I’m sorry-- 'Scientifically proves?' That is the single most ludicrous and unsupported statement I have ever read. And, yes, it's not just Edgar Mitchell, but the Edgar Mitchell...

The authors of Dark Mission seem content to cast stones at others who wish to challenge the veracity of their 'image enhancements,' but frankly the only thing the references to these photographs prove is that they clearly don’t have any knowledge of the fundamentals of photography.

Pressing the boundaries of logic and reason even further, Hoagland states that 'after going through the entire newly-released ALSJ Archive for Apollo 14--' you know, the one for which there seems to be no clearly defined evidence '--I ultimately found four independent Hasselblad scans-- all showing the same general "towering glass geometry" visible on Ken Johnston’s original print. You can’t get much better scientific validation for a controversial optical phenomenon that four independent photographic confirmations!"

Wow. Four? Really? I found hundreds. All showing lens flare. And of course in typical Enterprise fashion there is no reference to just what the other two found images might be. 

One example I found can be seen to the left in Fun Quiz #3. I specifically pulled this photograph for two reasons: One because it ought to (by now) be somewhat familiar-- it is a companion photograph seen in a pan sequence from which Hoagland isolated his preposterous 'LM-Butt' image (the Lunar Module 'parked' beside a 'giant glass buttress') --and; Two, the identical lens flare to both 9301 and 9279, right down to the shape, style and relative positioning, is seen in the upper left corner-- not because it is photographic confirmation of giant lunar domes, but because it is light similarly bouncing round inside the same style Hasselblad EL camera.

The next casualty of common sense in the purported 'image dump' is AS15-88-12013 in which we are lead to believe that we can clearly see the full scale of the glass-like lunar domes. Hoagland flips it over, as I have done below, and directs our attention to the 'glow' encircling the lunar surface. This, he tells us, is some of the best evidence yet of miles-high glass structures because the moon-- which, according to Hoagland, has no atmosphere --would not glow round the perimeter like it is in this image and, quid pro quo, we have clear proof of ancient lunar domes.

Obviously he fails to mention that this image was taken, not by an astronaut hanging out the window of the rapidly departing Command Module, but rather taken through the window-- through two panes of glass each roughly a quarter-inch-thick --and with the sun at such an angle (look at the shadows, or lack thereof, in the craters) that the albedo was at its greatest. 

Strangely he also does not reference frame 11987 (an up-sun image showing similarly diffused light), or any of the other approximately 28 remaining frames at the end of this magazine which, to varying degrees, show some sort of diffusion, lens flare, or numerous window reflections, even the same sort of bluish dots which Hoagland so firmly believes denotes light reflecting off the giant lunar domes.

And, of course, the other dead horse beaten with the zealous glee of a drooling simpleton is 'The Spar'-- yes, again --and the surrounding 'glass-like matrix' which, of course, NASA knew were there all along but the astronauts couldn't see because the gold Mylar-coated visors on their helmets were especially 'tuned' by NASA to filter out the invisible glass.

Did I type that correctly? My eyes were rolling again.

And, anyway, even if they did see the glass and the Obvious Mechanical Debris (because they did not have their visors down all the time), their memory was erased of it later. I cannot begin to describe how I won't even bother with this imbecilic subject again...

Lurching clumsily to the next topic like a cocaine-fuelled Robin Williams monologue from a 1980s HBO special, we are told that another 'late development' (though clearly one not important enough to qualify as a 'breakthrough' it seems) was the 'sudden acquisition' by NASA of another image of the Face on Mars.

Just as they were 'closing out the book,' Hoagland says, NASA-- oh damn them and their efficacious nature! --finally got the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, equipped with the HiRISE camera, to fly over the Face and-- 'quietly,' you can’t forget 'quietly' --acquire new images, this time at a resolution of approximately 11 inches per pixel. With this higher resolution imaging, Hoagland says, it is now possible to prove the Face is an artificial construction because you can see rooms, and walls, and girders and well...

Oh, come on! You see them, don't you?

I admit that, if you squint a little, you can see what sort of looks like structures, but there is simply no way of knowing, given the nature of this picture, just what it is you are looking at.

Hoagland states unequivocally that 'The key to proper interpretation of aerial or satellite imagery of man-made ruins on Earth lies in noting the multiple examples of "parallel walls" and redundant rectilinear geometry,' virtually none of which is present in this image with the exception of a few squarish areas which could simply be pixels at this particular resolution.

Without the benefit of knowing how the original image was processed and manipulated, or which version of the image was used as the primary source material-- or if The Enterprise Mission used the imaging software available from the University of Arizona or if they just used Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro or a trial of Picasa --it is impossible to claim that these are ancient ruins.

It's untenable, I believe, to claim that at the current resolution and quality (such as it is) one can see with perfectly recognisable clarity such fine structural details as beams and girders.

Hoagland's addresses the limited quality of this image in Dark Mission, explaining, as one might suspect, that the Evil Puppet Masters at NASA (and their henchmen at UA who maintain the HiRISE site) have deliberately diminished the quality of Face acquisition so that adequate processing is impossible.

I often get the feeling that, in grade school, little Richie Hoagland was frequently explaining to his teachers in exhaustive and tangential narratives that his dog ate his homework.

At the HiRISE web site you can download a few variations of PSP_003234_2210 (oh surely you didn't expect Hoagland to tell you that, did you?), one of which is a fairly large (about 32MB) colour version of the Face and see for yourself the amount of detail available. On the right is a section of that colour image, at 100% resolution, from roughly the same 'chin' area seen in the Enterprise black and white. (I included the scale from the image so you can gauge the size of the area). 

Honestly, though I would still like to believe that the Face may ultimately turn out to be an artificially carved landform, similar to the Sphinx at Giza, I cannot accept (without unimpeachable evidence) that it is an artificially constructed landform or an entirely artificial building complete with hotel rooms, office suites, and observation decks. I just don't see it.

The much-discussed (on the internet and amongst the anomalists) Inca City image from 2002, even at an area of some 14000 metres larger than the Face, is far more compelling evidence of artificial internal structures (especially when compared as it inevitably is with Qoy Qirilg'an, the 'Khorezmian Fortress') than the ultra close-up and over-pixellated Enterprise images of Cydonia.  

Perhaps one of the more humorous bits in the epilogue, though certainly unintentionally, is a quote from Hoagland stating '...we at Enterprise immediately realized that trying to evaluate the potential artificial possibilities for this object (and it's surrounding structures)-- based on "what does it look like?"--were not only unscientific... they were pointless.'

Unfortunately they are not able to apply this same reasoning used for the Face to the 'miles-high glass-like lunar domes.'

Another (presumably) unintentionally hilarious quote is 'We have been proposing for over 15 years that the Face is, in fact, just such a massive assemblage of ancient, high-tech buildings,' which astute readers of this blog (both of you) will realise utterly contradicts the earlier assertion (originally referenced in Part 3 of this review) which tells us in no uncertain terms that 'No one, not even Hoagland, had expressed a specific belief that the Face or any of the other objects at Cydonia were artificial.'

Before Pandora's Box was opened by the misinformation provided in one almost insignificant image and I was forced to delve deeper into the background only to have my eyes opened to the painful truth that I was holding 548 pages of mostly elaborate faerie tales, I was-- by my own admission --stupid enough to look at a vast majority of the work of Richard C Hoagland and think that he was truly uncovering some marvellous things. To some considerably smaller degree, now, I still believe that, though I have always had my share of skepticism, particularly with regards to the lunar anomalies.  But the truth is I was gullible, and someone's gullibility is, in my opinion, exactly what Hoagland is (and has been) banking on.

I think Hoagland likes to present the illusion of this ultra-sleek scientific research facility staffed by people running hither and thither, poring over the microscopic details of NASA photographs, sifting through reams of dense and profoundly occult data, consulting a vast dark library of material, when in reality it's a guy in bad shorts at a cluttered desk.

(I found this image at UFOwatchdog.com by the way.)

Do the circumstances make the research any less credible? Not especially. What it does do, however, is put into perspective, I think, the manner by which much of this type of research is conducted.

Everything I have presented in this review (if it can be called that) has been done from the relative comfort of my laptop (and mostly part time because I have another job). Does it mean that my research is flawed? I don't think so. I believe I have presented, to the best of my ability, valid counter arguments and solid photographic documentation which ought to make one stop and think before blindly accepting Hoagland's often extravagant claims.

Besides, to quote Hoagland as his words were transcribed in the IRC log of his 1996 National Press Club meeting: 'You only have to have a home office computer and image software to scan and enhance the data.'

If that is the criteria established by The Master, then I have done exactly what was expected.

Having uncovered over the last few months just how fundamentally wanting and obtuse most of The Enterprise Mission's 'research' seems to be, I feel that my distant theory that Hoagland is an agent of disinformation for the very system he proclaims to rally against is coming into sharper focus. Horribly flawed research, inaccurate information, incomplete documentation, effusive H.O.G.W.A.S.H. and, more than anything, just plain bad science tends to cast all anomaly hunters in a bad light. It runs the risk of making anyone look like a crackpot if they claim to see something in the photographs from NASA, or the ESA, or whomever. 

It seems to me that someone like Hoagland, who insists that he be an indispensable and integral part of 'the conversation' can do far more irreparable harm than good to the anomalist community with these outrageous and unsupportable claims.

The arrogance to believe that fallible 'research' and equivocal 'analysis' is somehow flawless or impervious to question and should be wilfully accepted or fully endorsed not only by the public but by the scientific community, or demanding that fallacious 'evidence' be peer reviewed without providing the specific means to do so strikes me as saying:

If I went round saying I was Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

Don't ever for a moment think that I am saying Hoagland is a crackpot. I'm not. I think that, for the most part, he's a pretty smart guy. What I am strenuously criticising is bad evidence and bad science. A fairly massive chunk of Dark Mission is barely representative of acceptable Scientific Method.  It's little more than observation and hypothesis with the other critical steps in the essential process completely missed out. That's not science. And if you ever want to be taken seriously and not be laughed out of the room, you have to present better science.

Think of this as a performance review. If I am expected to believe, then I want better performance. There is potential there. It just needs to be used and used correctly.

Tell Me What's A-Happening...

There had to have been a moment, I think, when M. Night Shyamalan, sitting down with Barry Mendel and Sam Mercer, executive producers of nearly all of his previous films, finally revealed the denouement of his proposed film 'The Green Effect' and felt a thick, weighty silence stretch out for an excruciating fraction of eternity. Eventually either Mendel or Mercer would have suddenly shaken their heads as if waking abruptly from an unexpected nap and asked

'What?'

in a manner which would have suggested they didn't believe they had heard correctly.

Behind them someone would have undoubtedly made a strangled snickering sound (followed by a sharp and none-too-covert 'shushing') as Night shifted uncomfortably in his seat and darted his eyes nervously to the side before responding, 'The-- the plants. The trees and stuff.'

'Plants.'

'And the trees.' He would have cleared his throat dryly.  'The trees, too. All of them. And shrubs.'

Inhaling sharply, adjusting notes, one of the producers would have sat up in his seat and scratched the back of his neck: 'So... Are you thinking CGI trees, or... what? Guys in suits?'

'What?' Night would have seemed bewildered.

'Well for when the killer trees attack--'

'Oh no,' Night would have shaken his head, shifting in his chair as another muffled snicker came from someone.  'I just want to suggest it-- like Hitchcock would have done. Just trees swaying in the breeze, all spooky and stuff.'

'And the people just fall over dead for no reason?'

'Well... I...' his mind would have raced momentarily. 'I could make the plants make people kill themselves. That would be cool.'

'So...' Mendel or Mercer would have tried to clarify, 'you want to make an ecological statement feature.'

'But we could market it as an apocalyptic thriller,' Night would have thrown in. 'Maybe change the title to  something real ambiguous or something-- like "Something's Happening" or whatever; maybe cut a trailer that sells it as a huge mystery...'

'But how does it end, Night?' One of them would have asked. 'I mean, you can't have people kill off all the plants.  Or do the plants kill everyone first? Are we talking another Cloverfield where all the stars die?'

'Oh no,' Night would have shaken his head again. 'I figure they just kill a few. You know, to teach us a lesson; get back at us for global warming or something.'

'But why--?' One of the producers would have began and then waved his hands dismissively: 'Yeah, you know, let's just not even go there. Just don't even bother to explain it. It would be better if you didn't. Leave it a mystery...'

And so it is that after the excruciating 91 minute duration of this film one sits staring at the black screen, seconds before the end credits roll, and repeats the phrase from my imaginary dialogue: 'What?'

After the agony of The Village, I really didn't think that M. Night Shyamalan could (or would) be so bold as to rapidly produce yet another in a growing line of completely mindboggling stinkers. I largely ignored Lady In the Water after the debacle of The Village and because of scathing early reviews. And had I not been intrigued by the ambiguity of the trailer for The Happening, I would never have plunked down $15 for the DVD. But, it successfully tricked me. And now he's got my money and I lost 91 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

The marketing for this film incessantly impresses upon the potential viewer that this is 'M. Night Shyamalan's first R-rated film.' Unfortunately that is about the only thing that can be said in its defence. In fact the entire nexus of the film being R-rated seems to centre on killing off one of the Obligatory Irritating Children halfway through the story, the impact of which is later diminished (if not cheapened) by endlessly discussion of it in the special features. It feels as if the only reason this stupid film exists was so they could shoot a little black kid in the head. The deaths in this film are as pointless as they are gratuitous.

One scene in particular, a zoo keeper (one guesses) getting torn to pieces by lions, is pointlessly gruesome and yet, in how it is played out, an absolutely ridiculous waste. It is seen (in a crowded diner) on a customer's iPhone (in amazingly unnatural pristine video), presumably either being shown on the news (which it would never be, given the graphic nature of it) or having been uploaded to YouTube (which, given the clearly apocalyptic nature of the film, seems like a pointless waste of someone's time if everyone was about to die). After watching it, the characters react as if they had just seen a car commercial. There is no horror, no being taken aback-- just moving blandly on to the next shot.

To say that this film was shit is really selling it short. It's actually ponderous self-indulgent shit that apparently cost $60 million. Seriously. Sixty million. That's not only embarrassing, but it ought to be considered a crime against humanity. $60 million for what? The stars?

Zooey Deschanel (as Alma) must have assumed that she had been cast to play one of the trees in this film and was probably confused by the fact that she had some words to say.

She spends the entirety of the film in sort of a listless, zombified state, staring in empty confusion at nothing in particular and delivering grippingly memorable dialogue like 'What's happening?' and 'I'm scared' and then running once in a while.

Of course Ms Deschanel's acting chop has always run the emotional gamut from A to B in almost everything I've seen her in (which is blissfully few films) so I imagine that this role was quite a stretch for her, all that weird talking and stuff. Her acting style has been called 'unique' in some reviews. I have not decided whether these reviews were praising her abilities, bashing them, or attempting to safely straddle the fence to remain in good favour. Perhaps calling it 'unique' is Hollywood-speak in the same way that, in the South, when someone says 'Well bless your heart...' they are actually saying 'Dumb as fuck.' 

In stark contrast, Mark Wahlberg's Elliot seems to feel that 'innocent confusion and terror' are best portrayed through a high-pitch E-minor whine, which made it seem as if he was delivering every line like Wally Cleaver saying 'Aw but gee, Dad! Me and Lumpy were gonna go out and play some catch!' Although he does have the benefit of having the best line in the film, such as it is, when he realises that he's talking to a plastic house plant.

I won't spoil it for you.

In the special features there is an 'alternate opening' which Night claims was 'this huge fight' between Alma and Elliot and which comes off as an unwatchable whine-fest of some of the most cardboard acting I have ever seen. It even beats out Avery Brooks of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 as Most Placid Characterisation Ever. Night claims that this scene was cut because all of the information in the fight is revealed throughout the film and so it was redundant. One would have to hazard a guess that the real reason it was cut had more to do with bad acting than the fact that it foreshadowed the overall plot, as it opens with trees swaying in the breeze.

For some reason John Leguizamo (as Julian) is in this film as well; wasted talent who is given a barrage of useless dialogue which serves only to clue the audience in on needless backstory (the fact that Alma is a little twat who cheated on Elliot) which is completely superfluous to the needs of the film.

Having served the purpose of establishing information thoroughly irrelevant to the story arc (although one guesses that it was supposed to create in the audience an emotional bond with Elliot and Alma, something to make us care about what happens and 'humanise' the tale) Julian promptly dumps his daughter (another Obligatory Irritating Child) on the protagonists and, wisely, kills himself at the earliest possible convenience, thereby lightening the character load and saving face for the inevitable Ice Age 3.

Most advocates of this film say that this was 'a parable,' or has 'deeper meaning' or that M. Night Shyamalan's made in 'on purpose' as take on Hitchcock's The Birds. I can clearly see the parallels except for the part where The Birds was a brilliant and disturbing film made by a master at the top of his game.

Some have argued that The Happening will challenge you, make you think. This is true. It was a challenge to sit through it all and it made me think that I had just pissed away $15 and 91 minutes of my life.  Others have stated that it was just a fun B movie made with A-list actors.

As a film fanatic and someone with a wealth of useless knowledge about B movies amassed from more than thirty years of experience, allow me to offer my own take on what separates a 'fun B movie' from a gruelling sixty million dollar experiment in self-indulgence. A fun B movie with A-list actors is David Cronenberg's The Fly, Joel Schumacher's Lost Boys or Flatliners, Orson Welles' A Touch of Evil, Kenneth Branagh's Dead Again.

There is a certain je ne sais quoi to a proper B movie-- a certain Wessonality --that The Happening utterly lacks in heaping great wodges, and that distinction usually ends with the words 'Starring Wings Hauser!' or 'Only on DVD!' 

B movies are the rich fodder keeping alive the Sci-Fi Channel and Cinemax; they are the movies you end up taking home from the video store because all the good films are checked out and you don't want to have wasted the trip; they are the cinematic equivalent of secret elephant burial grounds where washed up actors go before fading completely into obscurity; they are where WWF 'wrestlers' get to be gritty action heroes or where aspiring actresses do nude scenes they regret later if and when they become famous; they are where former porn stars try to go straight or when they are so used up their orifices resemble aircraft hangars or, as Borat states 'hangs like a wizard's sleeve'; where Playboy models (like Sydney Moon, A.K.A. KatieFun789) quickly learn that they will never be as big as Pamela Anderson or Anna Nicole Smith and will wallow forever in soft-core American Pie knock offs for all eternity before they end up in porno or married to Gene Simmons.

And the chasm between between fun and faeces is wide and deep, very like an old porn star. Truly bad B movies can range from pioneering schlock like Roger Corman and his made-in-an-afternoon low budget crap to masters of gore like Herschell Gordon Lewis. But what makes a B movie absolutely extraordinary, what can elevate it to classic status and make it memorable is that little extra spark of madness. 

Directors like the poor delirious Edward D. Wood Jr or his buddy Phil Tucker believed with all their hearts that they were making films on the same type of grand scale as David Lean. They poured their hearts and souls into making some of the worst films imaginable and yet could not understand why they were being crucified or mocked for their efforts. They were unrepentant for their mistakes because they didn't believe they had made any and strove even harder to prove their critics wrong-- resulting in hilariously awful cinematic gems.

When you believe you are making a Star Wars level masterpiece and the result is a couple of pie plates dangling on fishing line, you are deluded. And often your films are pee-your-pants funny by complete accident and gives the world such bittersweet moments as Tor Johnson's 'Now is time for go to bed' line of dialogue. You can't set out to make a bad film on purpose. People who do often fail miserably at it because it so obvious that the attempt was to make a 'cult' film.

As a literary parallel, it is why H.P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson or, more contemporaneously, Clive Barker are considered masters of the horror genre: their command of language, their ability to elevate the often absurd into epic, terrifying proportions that continue to haunt you years later is what makes them different than, for example, Stephen King ('Oh, here he goes again!') who is basically sitting around a metaphorical campfire with a flashlight under his chin. Yeah, it's okay. It's short-term visceral pleasure. But does it last? Not so much. Good on him, though. He's wealthy at the expense of 'Constant Reader,' and if that's the only important thing well, then, he's achieved his goal.

Good schlock has heart and soul. It has an integrity behind it, though often misguided. Anyone attempting to recreate that feel on a 60 million dollar budget is missing the point entirely. Do it for 60 thousand dollars, then we'll talk. In the meantime, to argue that it is a 'fun' B movie is radically missing the point. And to compare it to Hitchcock is slander.

A perfect example of how not Hitchcock this is: because they think New York is under attack, everyone flees the city and eventually Elliot, Alma, and the Obligatory Irritating Child make it to a secluded farmhouse, owned by Mrs Jones (played spectacularly by the hugely underutilised Betty Buckley) where they are informed for some reason that there is an old shack out back that has a 'speaking tube' run between it and the main house. You can hear people in the shack just like they were standing in the same room with you, Mrs Jones tells them. Then she goes and smashes her head on the side of the house.

The point in broadcasting or telegraphing the 'speaking tube' would be, one would think, so that it can be used later for a critical plot point, some twist in the events, a vital moment of deus ex machina. Where Hitchcock would have woven the speaking tube into the story in some seemingly random fashion and then pulled it out about the time you were relentlessly on the edge of your seat screaming 'The tube! The tube! Use the fucking tube!' at the characters, Night introduces it clumsily and uses it ineptly.

Elliot, shortly after Mrs Jones inspects the side of her house and smashes out some windows by smacking her head into them, discovers that Alma (who, it is established, hates children and does not necessarily want them) is suddenly and uncharacteristically playing with the Obligatory Irritating Child out in the shack. Why? Who knows. Clearly, though, Alma has not heard the banging and shattering of glass-- or Elliot whining out for her --but Elliot, on the other hand, hears Alma and the OIC perfectly well from several rooms away. He has to run and find the special room where the tube is to get Alma's erstwhile attention.

This is called a 'logic gap.'

Hitchcock, at the end of The Birds, creates and prolongs the tension as the protagonists, believing their ordeal may have subsided, finally and with great trepidation creep from their safe haven and gingerly navigate their way through a sea of thousands of watchful birds to an escape vehicle. There is a sense of foreboding that walking out unprotected amidst this vast avian army might not be the wisest choice, and even as the car finally crawls slowly away we are never quite certain that this is the end of the story.

Shyamalan, on the other hand, now has Elliot, who is separated from Alma by a yard full of swaying grass and whispering evil tree boughs, decide that he has to be with her. He marches out into the yard, as does Alma, and-- oh... wait... Hey the trees don't kill them. Huh. The evil must have passed.

Then back in a strangely very empty New York, Elliot and Alma have apparently decided to single handedly repopulate the eastern seaboard because Alma has just discovered she is pregnant.

The end.

And then you sit and stare at the screen and suddenly shake your head as if waking abruptly from an unexpected nap and ask

'What?'

in a manner which would suggest you didn't believe you had heard correctly.

M. Night Shyamalan must have worked out the dialogue and plot details of this film with Midori-san, the blogging house plant.  And if he conceived this film as an homage to Hitchcock specifically and The Birds in general, he should have taken better notes in class. He would have known that classic Hitchcock placed the protagonists in a state of heightened tension to draw the audience in for a cathartic moment.  He might have understood that, for example, if you have your characters find safe haven in an old farmhouse, it is only after having abandoned their car on the other side of the woods. Only to then do they discover that it was the woods doing all the killing and that the only way to get out of this mess is to get back to their car-- back through the evil killer trees. You make it clear that they have to face something horrifying, a metaphor for passing through the underworld if you want to go all Joseph Campbell.

The makers of The Blair Witch Project understood this.  So did James Cameron with the classic 'Oh shit' moment in Aliens when Ripley inadvertently stumbles into the queen's lair and finds herself surrounded by hundreds of alien eggs. Even M.Night Shyamalan recognised this and used it quite effectively in Signs. Unfortunately he seems to have forgotten the underlying point of a 'horror' film, which is to horrify-- and not just with lame writing, pointless gore, and stupid dialogue.

Honestly, the only thing that probably could have saved this film-- apart from being re-written, re-cast, re-shot, and completely re-edited into a good film made by a director who understood the genre --would have been to end it with a memorable chase scene accompanied by a toe-tapping rendition of Yakety Sax as the screen faded to black.

It would have left the fate of Elliot, Alma and the Obligatory Irritating Child wide open, in keeping with the apocalyptic theme of the film, and I wouldn't have felt so thoroughly ripped off in every imaginable way.

One can only hope that, with a little time to reflect on what went so radically wrong the first time through, M. Night Shyamalan will see the error of his ways and return to this subject again at a later date with the anticipated sequel:

 

Is That Lipstick On The Doll's Head? Colour My World

On Wednesday, 13 December 1972 at approximately 3:58 GMT on a balmy 102 degree afternoon, the sun burnt down from the unrelenting obsidian sky, casting the lunar landscape in hard shadow. Approaching from a South-Easterly direction across the rolling achromatic hills of Taurus-Littrow, Apollo 17 Mission Commander Eugene Andrew Cernan and Harrison Hagen (Jack) Schmitt finally arrived at their 'collision course with an even more unbelievable and mysterious destiny'-- a spot lying in the shadow of the Lincoln Scarp and the North Massif officially labelled Geology Station 4 but soon to enter the popular vernacular as Shorty Crater.

Clambering from the Lunar Rover, Cernan and Schmitt quickly set about tending to a few essential 'housecleaning' chores, as their rover ride over some of the more hummocky portions of the valley had kicked up a considerable bit of dust which needed to be wiped off their equipment before their truly remarkable Rendezvous With Drama could begin.

Having neither seen nor adequately photographed (nor even bothered to comment at all upon) the dizzyingly vast invisible entrance that didn't lead into the absolutely imaginary gigantic artificiality of the South Massif 'arcology,' these two intrepid explorers were definitely fully prepared for what was to come.

As they finalised their station prep, Jack Schmitt, still near the rover, promptly noted that, close to an enormous boulder on the rim of Shorty there was a large section of orange-coloured soil.

Excited by this find, as any professional geologist naturally would be, Schmitt began taking numerous samples-- digging a trench to determine the depth of the colouration and to contrast the surface discovery with the deeper and undisturbed layers of regolith --as Gene Cernan took a series of colour photographs to document the find.

It would later be determined, once the samples had been returned to Earth and fully analysed, that the soil was 'of basaltic debris' mixed with fine-grained orange and black volcanic glass containing approximately 8% titanium-- or, more specifically, TiO2, or Titanium Dioxide.  As a comprehensive analysis of the lunar regolith material falls beyond the pale of this discussion, I might recommend some light reading directly from NASA itself or (if you don't trust such a clearly biased organisation) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison course notes for the Fusion Technology Institute or perhaps the more breezy Feldspathic Mare Basalts paper from Cardiff University which tell you everything you could possibly ever need or want to know about lunar samples. At present it is only pertinent that we understand the basics.

In the richly periphrastic pages of Dark Mission, Richard C Hoagland, founder of The Enterprise Mission, recipient of an Angstrom Medal, former science advisor to CBS News and Walter Cronkite, author of The Monuments of Mars, co-creator of the Pioneer Plaque, originator of the Europa Proposal, and principal investigator of The Enterprise Mission implores us to believe that

...there was plenty of evidence all around these two obviously awe-inspired astronauts that areas in the vicinity of the Lander were artificial…but now in ruins.

And though it is not overtly stated in the text, the inference is that the so called 'totally melted and oxidized titanium' was (or is) somehow directly linked not only to all of the Obvious Mechanical Debris scattered hither and thither everywhere the 'obviously awe-inspired astronauts' went but also to the composition of all of the 'artificial buildings,' and of course to the doll's head.

Yes the orange soil contained Titanium. However, the tiniest, barest minimum of cross-referencing shows us that titanium is a corrosion-resistant element. So the idea that this is 'heavily' oxidised (that is rusted or corroded) titanium is a bit of a reach. If you followed the link you will note that the most common form of titanium is titanium dioxide (and for you chemically minded individuals that means it has two atoms of oxygen), which is what was discovered in the lunar soil samples, and it is sometimes used in the production of white pigments. It is also used in cat litter to remove odour.

I feel that in Dark Mission we are being asked to believe that this area was some ancient lunar smelting station, or that everything in sight is made of titanium.  At the very least it seems we are being given the idea, albeit indirectly, that along with all of the other Obvious Mechanical Debris there is a vast field, one would guess, of unalloyed titanium fragments spread rusting in the smouldering sunlight on the desolate (and airless, by the way) lunar plains-- the last vestiges of a devastating explosion or some other cataclysmic event. 

The truth is, as previously noted, titanium dioxide is a relatively common element-- the seventh most abundant element known, so I've read --and often found in many rocks or even beach sand. The fine-grained orange and black 'titanium-rich' glass was formed, as most geological analysis agree, through standard volcanic activity some 3 to 4 billion years ago and was then dug out and deposited in its current position when Shorty Crater was formed (later) during a meteoric impact.

If, however, the orange and black glass discovered by Jack Schmitt were indeed little bits of metal scattered widely from the presumably apocalyptic devastation visited upon a prior civilisation, then one would have to start examining everything around for some form of context. Remember that discussion?

Thankfully nothing changes very rapidly on the lunar surface. No air, no wind, no rain to wash away and make new-- just the periodic meteor impact to scoop out new holes and splatter regolith everywhere.

So where is the context? This isn't like driving along a highway and seeing a blown tyre or a single tennis shoe cast forlornly onto the berm. And if it was, one would still expect there to be-- barring further massive impacts on the lunar surface --some sort of context; there would still be bits of road, perhaps an old mile-marker, some vague indication that there was once intelligent design at work. There would be something to elevate the nature of the region-- the essential form --from the randomness of chance.

There would be, to use a HOGWASH term, a 'rectilinear arrangement.'  Rather, there is a giant crater with a rock that looks like a doll's head and mile after mile of rolling grey and desolate valley floor.

Hoagland wants us to believe that there is artificiality, but there is no context to support such an argument. From the air, we can determine that a place like Machu Picchu was an artificial construct because it stands out-- even after hundreds of years of sitting unoccupied--as being thoroughly unlike its natural surroundings.

It looks more and more artificial the closer one gets to it, and, as a result, the more context it begins to have when compared against its surroundings. One can determine the shapes of buildings, homes, temples, streets and passages.  In the midst of the lush and thriving environment of the Peruvian highlands (which often tend to reclaim with alarming rapidity the fastidious labours of humankind) it continues to maintain a sense of artificiality.

Not so Taurus-Littrow.

Floating above this enormous mountain-ringed valley one sees it as flat and grey with hundreds of craters spotting the landscape. But once you begin to get closer to the surface, it begins to look amazingly flat and grey with hundreds of craters spotting the landscape. Except that at surface level your sense of scale and distance is thrown off by the generally colourless expanse of regolith. And it certainly doesn't help one's sense of disorientation that the sun is shining brightly in an ink black sky.

As an example of this disorienting nature so often commented upon by Apollo astronauts, compare an image of Shorty Crater taken on approach to an assembled panorama where its full scale can be judged. I believe you can get a good sense of just how terribly your depth perception is effected on the moon.

In Dark Mission, we are told, however, that the published images (and the available television footage) of the lunar landscape taken during the Apollo 17 mission do not match the descriptions provided by Schmitt and Cernan. In proof of this, Hoagland points to a comment from Command Module pilot Ron Evans (the third member of the team who is virtually ignored) where it is stated that, 'You know, to me the Moon's got a lot more colour than I'd been led to believe.'

How this statement is supposed to justify Hoagland's thesis escapes me. The discussion in the text of Dark Mission where this quote is used specifically deals with the 'crenulations' commented upon by the astronauts on the surface and how we can't see them very well-- or at all --in the photographs or in the televised footage which, therefore, constitutes conspiracy. The fact that Ron Evans' colour comment has nothing whatever to do with the crenulations and thus no relevance to Hoagland's argument doesn't stop him making it seem as though these features were at the forefront of every conversation Schmitt and Cernan had, when it reality they mention it roughly twice during one EVA.

Though the 'crenulations' were discussed in the previous segment, it is worth noting that in July of this year a story appeared in Nature which indicates that the early moon may have had generous amounts of water, but the volcanic glass mentioned in this report (as well as the orange glass of our present discussion) is still consistent with the formation of the moon and not with later vanished civilisation or colonisation. Water on the moon would thrill Hoagland and give credence to his 'layering model' for the crenulations and of the 'completely artificial' South Massif, but even the Nature article suggests that the water boiled off fairly quickly. And the process by which the moon gained this water is still largely debatable.

Clumsily clinging to the Ron Evans statement, Hoagland expects us to believe that the television footage of Apollo 17 was better quality than the 70mm still photography, explaining this conundrum by saying that NASA have aired substantially improved video footage in recent years on NASA Select TV that then proves his 'arcology model.'  The supposed rationale behind this argument is that the 'new footage,' as Hoagland calls it, now 'tends to strongly imply' that the massifs are 'in fact "hollow, titanium-glass truss structures."'

There is again no explanation as to precisely how he was able to ascertain-- from a television image --that a mountain roughly eight miles away from the camera was made of 'titanium-glass truss structures,' but I would wager that, if he had one, it would be spectacular. Nay, stunning.

I shouldn't even need to point out that broadcast television itself has vastly improved from 1972 and Mister Obvious wins the 'Oh Really?' Award for this nonsensical line of  'reasoning.' Yet he goes on to say that he and Bara were now certain that Apollo 17 had some mysterious connection to Bush's 'Space Initiative' and hypothesises that James Garvin (Chief Scientist at NASA, who clearly has nothing better to do with his time) was exhibiting the 'real data' on late night NASA TV to see if anyone would notice the 'tremendous difference in quality' or to signal to the so-called 'in-crowd' that NASA had other intentions behind 'suddenly' returning to the Moon.

Go ahead. Laugh. I did.

Hoagland confidently concludes that

If the Mission of Apollo 17 was to secretly confirm the artificial nature of the Taurus-Littrow Valley, it overwhelmingly accomplished its "hidden mission."

Just how this 'hidden mission' was accomplished isn't exactly explained, strangely enough, though it all seems to centre on the doll's head.

As Schmitt and Cernan went about busying themselves with collecting and documenting the orange volcanic soil, staring up at them from the abyss of Shorty Crater-- I mean just sitting there in the middle of the hole in perfectly plain view along with all of the various bits of blatantly Obvious Mechanical Debris, seeming to taunt the two Apollo astronauts with its total fakeness -- sat this 'artefact.' 

To the authors of the beloved American classic Dark Mission, this discovery is tantamount to something like the Holy Grail, or at least one of the other relics Brother Maynard carried with him.

Hoagland states that upon this discovery, 'As his mind grappled with that incredible possibility' (that this was a head), he thought back to 'the kind of "unbelievable" things' the astronauts had seen during EVA-2, like, you know... well, like all the 'unbelievable' things.

As evidence of the 'unbelievable' artificial objects 'all around these two obviously awe-inspired astronauts,' Hoagland points to two of Gene Cernan's comments: the first, made at Nansen Crater (143:22:08 in the Apollo Surface Journal), as he photographed the South Massif--  'You know, I look out there, I'm not sure I really believe it all' --and the other-- (nearly 29 minutes later at 143:50:54) 'Isn't that something? Man, you talk about a mysterious looking place' --made during the traverse to Station 3 (an area seen in AS17-138-21077 and in the next 15 photographs immediately thereafter).

As we have already addressed these statements more fully in Part Five of this review, suffice to say here that they have clearly been taken wildly out of context and have nothing whatever to do with Shorty Crater-- nor any other 'unbelievable thing' seen by the astronauts.

Immediately ignoring this minor difficulty, Hoagland suddenly lunges headlong into the idea, grasped as if by magick from thin air (much like the superhuman ability to see 'titanium-glass truss structures' miles from a television camera in a thirty-six year old video), that this must be a robot head. And not just any old robot head, mind you. Oh no. This is just like C3P0!

And, frankly, by now we have caromed so far off of the Yellow Brick Road as to be in danger of smashing into those creepy talking trees as the remainder of the chapter bounces from one crazed supposition to another, all the while never stopping to specifically address or explain just how the 'Mission of Apollo 17 was to secretly confirm the artificial nature of the Taurus-Littrow Valley' or precisely how 'it overwhelmingly accomplished its "hidden mission."'

So how is it that we actually arrive at this image described in Dark Mission as having--

indented, stereoscopic, rounded inset eyes.

Camera lenses.

Just like...C3P0

--as Hoagland insists? And how does he determine that the 'indented' and 'inset' (the same thing, by the way-- redundant much?) 'eyes' are in fact 'Camera lenses?' By taking 'Composits of other frames,' of course. Though no explanation is provided as to why a 'composite' needed to be done, what purpose it serves, or anything mentioned about how it was accomplished, Hoagland was able to produce an image of just exactly what this object isn't.

As an experiment to prove that this 'enhancement technique' serves virtually no quantifiable or justifiable purpose in studying the object in question (given the fact that there at least seven other images of it available for research), I chose a random neighbouring rock not too terribly far from the doll's head, overlaid the same image from four different photographs (AS17-137-20993, 20994, 20995 & 20996, just so you know) and adjusted the opacity and colour balance of the various layers and quickly learnt that Spaceballs was a much bigger and more popular hit that I had previously been lead to believe.

In proving this to be an actual artefact, though, and not something just totally made up through pointless 'enhancement,' Hoagland says he soon determined that the doll's head was roughly the same size as a human head by 'looking at the context panoramas,' images which, just so we understand, are composited or pieced together to make a whole image out of fragments.

Though this observation regarding the size of the doll's head is more or less accurate, I was able to figure out the same thing by simply comparing a shot of the head taken from frame AS17-137-21000 and one of Jack Schmitt from AS17-137-21010 . Although it diminishes the importance to say 'I compared two different photographs' as opposed to saying 'I looked at the context panoramas to confirm the correlation'  which is much more effluent and sounds way cooler. 

And then of course we advance to the wild supposition that, because the head was roughly human sized, 'Cernan and Schmitt could have brought it back.' Of course I don't know about you, but when travelling anywhere, I always leave room in my luggage for the occasional severed head. Surely NASA are smart enough to think ahead too.

Ha! 'Ahead.' Think ahe-- never mind...

You may have noticed by now that the doll's head (or even the Barf-rock) images I've used throughout this review do not look very much like those used by (or borrowed, where indicated, from) the Enterprise Mission. Apart from the periodic need to re-size an image to have them fit better in the smallish blog space, I have not tampered with the original frames (other than adjusting the colour balance of the aforementioned Barf-rock) because they are already in colour and I see no solid point, other than for purposes of clarity, to manipulate or 'enhance' the data beyond reasonable means.

Though previously addressed, it is worth briefly repeating that the Apollo 17 astronauts-- and in this particular instance regarding the head photography, Gene Cernan --used modified Hasselblad EL cameras and specially made 70mm Kodak Ektachrome MS SO-368 exterior colour reversal (i.e slide) film, ISO/ASA 64.  In case you don't believe me, feel free to check the Apollo 17 Index for yourself. The reason it was specially formulated was so that the traditional emulsion-- typically silver halide salts and sometimes even titanium dioxide for special usages --would not boil off in the vacuum of space.

And for another helpful photography tip it is good to know that the 'Film speed required for most general weather photography (clouds, sunset, halos etc) is generally 100 ISO. This is a good trade-off between film speed (slowness, actually), high-resolution, and practical use (fast enough for most daytime photography without tripod, if you don't have one with you).'

This way you understand that ISO 64 is a reasonably 'slow' film which, though probably not the best option for lunar photographs in retrospect, does have the trade-off of being a fairly high resolution film. That being said, one must wonder why, if the ISO 64 Kodak slide film provides acceptable high resolution images, was it necessary for Hoagland to composite multiple images of the doll's head to create such a convoluted result? The 'details' are not improved by this technique. All this manipulation creates is false data. Of course we must recall that we have been told the actual surface photography was apparently crap compared to the superior television quality, so perhaps this is the justification.

The details of how one of the Enterprise Mission doll's head images was radically and wrongly manipulated is explored very well and very fully by Expat at The Emoluments of Mars, and I encourage you to read it. For purposes of our discussion, it is sufficient to explain that Hoagland says in Dark Mission that:

Color enhancements… showed that the "head" had a distinctive red strip around the area where the upper lip should be, a feature that clearly appeared to be painted or anodized on the object.

Okay. So let's play along. As the title of this series dares to enquire, is that lipstick on the doll's head? If so, then why, in these 'enhancements,' does the rest of the surrounding regolith suddenly have red bits in it as well? Is that lipstick too? Is this C3P0 or is it a lunar love doll? Seems a little weird for a robot-- especially a protocol droid --to be ornamented with red lips. Actually, come to think of it, that's kind of creepy. Reminds me a little bit of The Master's fruit-punch mouth (What? No link?) If this is supposed to be a remnant from a vanished civilization, why is this doll's head the only thing around other than the Energiser Bunny plush toy and the probable hippo mask? What the hell kind of civilisation was this and just what exactly went wrong?

And how has the colour managed to survive for however many thousands of years after the impact that created Shorty Crater? Surely whatever sort of devastation that was visited upon the moon and violently gouged out such a massive crater would have burnt off or stripped away a mere paint job. It was searing enough to create volcanic glass and it clearly left Obvious Mechanical Debris and made the OMD virtually indistinguishable from other rocks. Yet it left virtually unscathed a supposed titanium alloy head with vestiges of red lipstick painted on it.

When one compares the original NASA images against the Enterprise Mission and/or the Dark Mission 'enhanced' versions of (one would imagine) the very same photographs, more than anything you have to question not only the purpose behind such image manipulation but the veracity of the end product as well. In the Emoluments of Mars link, Expat states that he directly asked Mike Bara twice for some guidance on how to achieve the same end result (which Bara says anyone can duplicate) as those seen in Dark Mission, relating

On the first occasion Bara replied that he was "not prepared to do your homework for you", and on the second occasion he replied "you don't know anything about how images are processed." Mr. Bara is neither polite nor helpful.  

As I have stated, the practical nature of such radical manipulation makes very little sense. Except for the part where Hoagland and Bara are laughing all the way to the bank with this nonsense and I just have a stupid blog that nobody really cares about, so what do I know-- even though I have now written the equivalent of my own book on the topic by now? Clearly this does not constitute 'informed criticism' though.

Taking from frame AS17-137-21000 an area that is roughly the same region seen in the EM/DM 'enhanced' image and enlarging it to approximately the same size as that (600 pixels from the original 300 pixels) you can see there still appears to be a head-shaped rock in it but, just beginning to stand out, if you look closely, are the actual pixels of colour making up the image. Remember, despite the fact that the original photograph is from Kodak high resolution slide film, all of the 'enhancement' work is done with a digital reproduction.

Though I can hear you sighing from here, colour photo paper is generally made of three layers of emulsion-- yellow, cyan and magenta (and there are 'supporting' layers as well) --and the images we see are made up of little dots of colour. Go look at an old photograph with a magnifying glass. Go ahead. I'll wait.

And whilst the fabulous world of Kodak Ekachrome processing differs slightly from traditional print making, the end result is the same. So when you take that photograph and digitise it, you make a copy of those little dots of colours-- which is one of many reasons why some scanned images look complete shite and you have to fix them. Your new digital image is now pixellated, a discussion we have already had.     

And the larger you make the image, the more colours start to pop out. In this case, red. And of course in you can also see pretty greens and blues in that sinister 'day for night' Enterprise version as well. Does that automatically mean that the lipstick on the doll's head is, in fact, lipstick? Hoagland very specifically states in Dark Mission (wherein the doll's head is highlighted as 'Color Fig. 28' that the 'Red stripe is not an artifact of image processing.'

I beg to differ.

A lot.

At the resolution being worked with, even when using high resolution images available from the Apollo Surface Journal or from prints ordered directly from NASA, and given the type of savage over-enhancement being done, the red stripe absolutely is an artefact of image processing.

Once you have ramped up the pixels to absurd proportions-- and well before you can even start tampering with the hue and contrast or colour saturation --the image is degenerating into so many blobs. Red in particular is splashed about like some Whatever Happened To Baby Jane freak show.

Of course I'm sure that I 'don't know anything about how images are processed' either.

Concluding that this object could not be a human or humanoid skull-- because any type of organic material would have either incinerated in the cataclysmic event that created Shorty or broken down after prolonged exposure to hard vacuum (although paint would have, of course, survived) --leads Hoagland to the assertion that it must, therefore, be a robot.

Yet within two paragraphs of suggesting that this artefact is a titanium replica of something akin to C3P0, replete with indented-- and inset --camera eyes and painted lips, Hoagland abruptly shies back from this idea, apparently realising that it was probably a bit too science fictiony-- a little too 'out there' --for more moderate tastes of the anomalist community, and quickly replaces this 'theory' with something vastly more palatable to the mainstream: 

He begins to extrapolate, from the 'ground truth' available at Taurus-Littrow, that this is no mere protocol droid, but an object much like Commander Data's head as seen in a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode entitled Time's Arrow-- right down to the Type R Phase Discriminating Amplifier, one imagines --in which the information stored in the android's positronic brain helps save the world. (By the way, he says of this episode that the characters are shown Data's 'disassembled' head, when in fact they are shown a disembodied head. I'm just sayin.)

He promptly returns to the 'And Therefore Because of Its Size, the Astronauts "Could Have Brought It Back"' scenario, once more pointing to the ample 'off-camera' time (yes, again) which Schmitt and Cernan seemed to have had during their time at Shorty Crater. Although there is no evidence for the assertion, he seems to believe that they 'could have' jumped down into the crater and absconded with the head, despite the 'tight time table' they were on. Taking this completely unfounded hypothetical suggestion at face value for a moment, let's examine very quickly the so called 'ground truth' for ourselves:

If you watch the available video (clip 145:23:48) or read through some of the transcripts, it's fairly clear that Schmitt and Cernan are at Shorty for some thirty minutes.  All you need to do is add up the time charted on the Surface Journal entries (for example 145:23:48 is mission hour, minute, and second) and you can determine with reasonable certainty that there wasn’t much time for shenanigans.

Most of the time you can see the astronauts doing their work. Periodically we can see Cernan or Schmitt 'disappear' from view as the television camera investigates the region, but you hear them constantly-- absolutely everything. Ed Fendell does spend a lot of time panning across Shorty Crater and into some of the shadows at the rear of the crater. I'll admit that. (Maybe he was trying to see what the curious looking object pictured here was, something I spotted on the far rim.)  Eventually, though, he pans back to the astronauts.

There is no time during these few minutes when the camera is panning about that the astronauts could have jumped down into the crater to pick up the 'head.' Not without being either incredibly fast or amazingly stealthy, or being able to predict every movement the camera (guided off-world by Ed) would make.  And if they did dip down into Shorty, where are all the footprints? The camera gets a pretty clear shot down into the target area of the crater just minutes before the astronauts move on, so where is the evidence that the 'head' was collected? 

Towards the end of video clip 145:27:50 (or at approximately 5 minutes and 41 seconds in the longer clip), Gene Cernan asks 'What’s wrong with the TV? Aren't you watching this?' as the camera he has just cleaned and adjusted for a pan has become stuck viewing the front end of the Rover.   Hardly sounds like the actions or concerns of someone about to sneak off for clandestine activity. And you can still see Jack Schmitt collecting samples behind him.

NASA admin are chattering in the background, in the meantime, about time constraints and not paying much attention it seems. They are concerned that, due to the length of time spent at Nansen and Ballet Crater, the astronauts are pressing the limits of their walk-back constraints-- meaning that if they spend too much more time at Shorty and don’t get a move on and keep to the schedule, they might not be able to walk safely back to the LM in case of emergency like the Rover breaking down.

I find it strange that the desire to have the reader believe that Schmitt and Cernan (or 'Schmidt' and 'Cerman' as they are sometimes referred to because, you know, the research and documentation is so thoughtfully prepared) were quite clearly on a clandestine reconnaissance mission born in absolute secrecy behind the closed doors of NASA and funded by an unknowing American public, or that the idea of artificiality on a massive lunar scale simply fails to stand up to even modest scrutiny.

Clearly there is no solid evidence of artificiality, either in the Taurus-Littrow valley, in the neighbourhood of Shorty Crater, or at Nansen.  Hoagland desires to point us to such 'anomalous' item as 'the Spar¹' (the object said to be leaning against the East Massif or Mons Vitruvius) or bad photography riddled with lens flare to indicate artificiality yet produces nothing of substance.  His proof is, at best, as ethereal and surreal as the stream of consciousness externalisation of his internal monologue which, at the sufferance of the reader (and of his own credibility), leads Hoagland to speculate that obviously Apollo 17 had some 'mysterious connection' to Bush's 2004 'Space Initiative' plan and the doll's head was likely the key.

Could the data stored deep inside of the doll's head have been exactly like the world-saving time travel information that was found in Commander Data's positronic brain!? Moreover, could this be the whole reason we abruptly stopped going to the moon after 1972? And was this information--

why Gene Cernan...

scowled at President Bush!?

A NOTE:

1) Listed below are some more random photos of the East massif found whilst conducting research for this segment. Notice the complete lack of a 'Spar' or any other anomalous feature in the region of Mons Vitruvius, especially the utter lack of the huge lunar domes. Once again I ask, why would someone spend so much quality time not only painstakingly editing out something in these photos (especially with 1970s technology) but taking such an extraordinary amount of time to actually sift through absolutely every single image captured during the totality of the Apollo 17 mission that might contain any sign of this massif? Seems a daunting and, frankly, absurd task given the option of simply saying that on a voyage of discovery to the moon we might have actually discovered something...

http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-133-20353.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-133-20354.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-146-22445.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-146-22446.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-146-22447.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-147-22580HR.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-147-22604.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-147-22605.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-147-22606HR.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-147-22583HR.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-147-22582HR.jpg

Empty Words, Empty Head

Early this afternoon, GW Bush stood before a small cluster of reporters in San Antonio, Texas and explained to them (and the cameras of CNN) that he understood that the American people are asking 'Why, whuh-whuh-why, are you helping Wall Street?'

His learned response to that basic question theoretically asked by our presumably stammering nation was '...because, er, had we not done anything, people like the folks behind me would be a lot worse off.'

It isn't too terribly often that I sit staring at the television like an animal trapped in headlamps, mouth agape, and it took me several seconds to recover before I shouted

'WHAT!?'

at the screen in absolute outrage.

Those 'folks behind' him weren't some fly-covered Third World skeletal children with bellies bloated from starvation or some teary-eyed jobless and homeless family thankful for another day of meagre  survival-- they were some fucking Wall Street cronies in Armani suits and designer silk ties grinning greedily because their good buddy GW just saved their pampered backsides and fucked everyone else in the process. As if to throw salt in the wounds, he says he just talked to some struggling small business owners to hear their stories. Wow. I can just imagine how relieved those poor destitute Wall Street boys were to finally steer clear of those whinging 'small people' and wipe that low-life muck off their Gucci's.

I can't even begin to articulate the level of disgust I'm experiencing. I am absolutely trembling with fury. And as if to make matters worse, this pestilential little fuck couldn't even remember when he signed the fucking bill! Because, you know, three days ago is like ancient fucking history!

Small People Got No Reason or What I Learnt From HR 1424

Thank the gods that our illustrious House of Representatives has seen fit to sell out the 'small people' (as they called us) on 'Main Street' for the benefit of the cry-baby cunts on fucking Wall Street.

It's heart-warming to know that all these financial wizards can rest easy now the government gave them the bail-out they so richly don't deserve. 850 billion dollars. Jesus Fucking Christ.

So what lesson do we learn from this? That if you are fabulously wealthy and gamble big and find yourself in utter and devastating crisis that, if you cry loud and hard enough, the Fed are going ride in on their big white dramatic horse to give you the largest possible hand-out imaginable in history so that you can keep your over-paid job, your big fancy houses (too numerous to mention), your over-stuffed bank account, your precious beach resorts, your super-sized retirement funds --all of the extravagant amenities you have come to rely upon-- and the rest of us, the 'small people,' who work hard, struggle to make ends meet doing honest labour, who try to keep our businesses afloat or try to get ahead in this sky-rocketing economy, can see our savings dry up, lose our business, lose our jobs or watch them go over seas, lose our homes, our cars-- everything we have struggled to have in our tiny little 'small people' lives --and live in fucking boxes under a bridge somewhere.

Thanks. I'll remember that this Christmas when I have no home. Perhaps it will keep me warm inside knowing Wall Street continues to have it good as the rest of us take the biggest fucking of our lives...