In other news...

[Cygnia]

Rescue cat returns the favor, alerts sleeping owner to apartment fire

[tkdguy]

Another historical building is damaged in a fire.

 

Shuri Castle burns down

[Michael Hopcroft]

A new book as has been released with some of the clearest color photos surviving from World War II.

 

The few photos they printed with the article are relatively tame, but the article states that many of the ones in the book "have the power to shock" even in 2019.

 

 

[Cancer]

Measles does more than kill by itself

 

... it can induce the immune system to lose immunities already obtained.

 

So skipping the MMR vaccination is a bigger form of race treason than previously appreciated.

[tkdguy]

This is horrifying: New Delhi has a severe smog problem.

[Cancer]

Is the "crop burning" the burning of actual crops, or is it "stubble burning", the burning of not-useful parts of the plants after harvest?

[Lord Liaden]

The story specifically mentions "stubble."

 

I'm old enough to remember when some large American cities got nearly this bad, before air pollution regulations were instituted. Los Angeles was particularly infamous for smog. But if those cities were as populous back then as they are now, it would have been even worse.

[Cancer]

Ah.  Now that I'm home I see that.  Big chunks of the linked page were blocked on my workstation at the office.

[csyphrett]

heard on the radio: Woman gets five years for writing sick notes for other people's kids

CES

[Cygnia]

Thousands of rare 'ice eggs' found on beach in Finland

[Michael Hopcroft]

A new movie about Vietnam is in production starring James Dean. There's just one catch -- he's been dead for sixty years. So the producers, with the cooperation of his estate, is creating a CGI version of the cinema icon to play the role in the film alongside human actors.

 

Needless to day, actual actors who are still alive are furious. People like Chris Evans, Elijah Wood, and Robin Williams' daughter Zelda have told twitter they are extremely concerned about resurrecting dead actors when there are innumerable living ones available. (Zelda has special cause to be worried, because her father was such a unique star that if it were possible to use his image many producers would be sorely tempted to do so.)

 

Of course, actors like John Wayne have been digitally inserted into commercials for some time. It was just as controversial then. And dialogue and photos of Laurence Olivier from early in his career were used to represent Dr. Totenkopf the villain of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, although no attempt was made to recreate Olivier in the groundbreaking CGI-heavy film.

 

I'm with the actors on this one. This possibility opens a can of worms that could have bad results for a lot of people on the creative end of Hollywood.

[pinecone]

This could cause young actors in Hollywood to face exploitation like that of comic books, finding they signed away the rights to themselves for all of time.

[Hermit]

Also with the actors. 

 

 

[Starlord]

Isn't this the same thing as recreating Peter Cushing for Rogue One?

[Lord Liaden]

58 minutes ago, Starlord said:

Isn't this the same thing as recreating Peter Cushing for Rogue One?

 

There is an important difference. Cushing was digitally "resurrected" for a role he'd already played in an earlier movie and was iconically identified with. This digital James Dean has been "cast" as an "actor" in a movie he had nothing to do with when alive, not as himself or in a role he played before, but as a completely new character.

[Starlord]

I don't see much difference really, as long as the estate is being paid and has the right to nix the performance if they don't approve.  It's still a dead actor being digitally recreated for a role.  Weird times we live in....

 

PS:  I do think we will start to see actors writing permissions for this into their wills and such.

[Cancer]

Monday morning (US time) there is a transit of Mercury.  Where I am, it will be in progress at sunrise and continue until about 10AM.

 

Transits of Mercury are problematic.  The angular size of Mercury is too small for you to be able to see it with the unaided eye.  But this event is Mercury passing in the front of the Sun from our point of view.  Put those together and that means that in order to see it, you need to stare at the Sun through a telescope, which I DO NOT RECOMMEND.

 

(Never look at the Sun through any magnifying or light-collecting apparatus, unless it's been set up by a professional.  Even then, make the pro look first before you try it.)

 

There are several ways to see this event safely, but it takes significant safety precautions and continuous attention.  This can be done, but if you haven't done it before, you are taking an unwarranted risk.  I have been in the dome with a telescope pointed at the Sun, when the heat melted the cement in the eyepiece and parts of the lens fell on the floor.  Fortunately, no one was looking through it at the time.  If you're really interested in this event, see if a local museum or educational institution is hosting a viewing session for it; those are much more likely to have the requisite equipment and expertise.

 

Transits of Mercury are uncommon (very roughly several years to a decade between them), but occur much more often than the less-than-once-a-lifetime frequency that transits of Venus have.  The next transit of Mercury after Monday is in 2032.

[Pariah]

2 hours ago, Starlord said:

I don't see much difference really, as long as the estate is being paid and has the right to nix the performance if they don't approve.  It's still a dead actor being digitally recreated for a role.  Weird times we live in....

 

PS:  I do think we will start to see actors writing permissions for this into their wills and such.

 

It's really not that far from Avatar, where most of the movie wouldn't have required the actors' actual presence.

[Lord Liaden]

No, Avatar was a very different situation. The actors were present, just not in the digitally-created environments shown on screen. Every actor I've seen or read who was involved in "performance capture" calls it an extension of makeup, one which captures the nuances of their own performance. The Avatar actors knew what their roles were and agreed to them beforehand. This "digital James Dean" has no say in this role; moreover, it's a film set in the Vietnam War, and Dean was known to be firmly anti-war. Avatar digital characters, like those in the recent Planet of the Apes movies, could have been convincingly portrayed in no other way. The producers of this new movie could have cast any living actor in this role, but they wanted James Dean.

 

Yes, living actors could stipulate in their wills that they refuse to allow their likenesses to be used in this way. What about the host of famous actors already dead, who never made such provisions because they never imagined this situation? Or those whose images are owned by companies rather than controlled by their families, which includes James Dean?

 

To me this slope looks very slippery.

[Starlord]

Convicted murderer claims life-sentence was served when he died.

[Hermit]

14 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

No, Avatar was a very different situation. The actors were present, just not in the digitally-created environments shown on screen. Every actor I've seen or read who was involved in "performance capture" calls it an extension of makeup, one which captures the nuances of their own performance. The Avatar actors knew what their roles were and agreed to them beforehand. This "digital James Dean" has no say in this role; moreover, it's a film set in the Vietnam War, and Dean was known to be firmly anti-war. Avatar digital characters, like those in the recent Planet of the Apes movies, could have been convincingly portrayed in no other way. The producers of this new movie could have cast any living actor in this role, but they wanted James Dean.

 

Yes, living actors could stipulate in their wills that they refuse to allow their likenesses to be used in this way. What about the host of famous actors already dead, who never made such provisions because they never imagined this situation? Or those whose images are owned by companies rather than controlled by their families, which includes James Dean?

 

To me this slope looks very slippery.

 

The Dead are stealing our Jobs could be an actual concern for actors of today. I'm also not sure I'd feel about what this does to the artform, if I may use that term without being pretentious. Instead of a vast array of possible moments, they're going to 'cut and paste' the same expressions, slivers of the same performances, and use them again and again? Even with actors who had a large numbers of movies under their belt, wouldn't you eventually run out and risk noticeable repetition? 

Even with actors who had a large numbers of movies under their belt, wouldn't you eventually run out and risk noticeable repetition? 

Even with actors who had a large numbers of movies under their belt, wouldn't you eventually run out and risk noticeable repetition? 

and wouldn't that get annoying after awhile?

 

This worries me on both an ethical and aesthetic levels

[ScottishFox]

3 minutes ago, Hermit said:

This worries me on both an ethical and aesthetic levels

 

Actors will have to be much more careful about signing away their likeness for movie rolls.

 

Sorry Mr. Rock, we won't need you for the next 5 installments of Fast and Furious.  We're going to use a digitally created version of you to save on payroll costs...

 

 

[Hermit]

3 minutes ago, Starlord said:

Convicted murderer claims life-sentence was served when he died.

 

Though Schreiber signed a "do not resuscitate" agreement years earlier, medical staff called his brother in Texas who told them, "If he is in pain, you may give him something to ease the pain, but otherwise you are to let him pass," according to court records.

 

Huh. I was going to wave it off entirely until this part.  It might feel to him like he had earned his reprieve naturally only to be cheated of it.

 

[Hermit]

2 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

Actors will have to be much more careful about signing away their likeness for movie rolls.

 

Sorry Mr. Rock, we won't need you for the next 5 installments of Fast and Furious.  We're going to use a digitally created version of you to save on payroll costs...

 

 

 

Having seen where Intellectual Property flows, I'm also worried about our cultural heritage ended up in the tight fisted hands of a near monopoly.

Contracts for young actors who yet to make a name might have a 'we get to use your image forever clause' and as this is their only chance to break in, they take it. Then they make it big and realize they're getting milked forever after they die and the company owns their image.

 

I think a real test will be if it gets cheaper and easy enough that small studios can do it, and  years down the road takes say, Walt Disney's face and uses it in a way that Walt Disney wouldn't approve of. 

[BoloOfEarth]

8 minutes ago, Hermit said:

I think a real test will be if it gets cheaper and easy enough that small studios can do it, and  years down the road takes say, Walt Disney's face and uses it in a way that Walt Disney wouldn't approve of. 

 

I think a real test would be if deceased famous politician's face was used to promote members of the opposite party.  For instance, if Ronald Reagan's children (at least two of whom are fairly liberal) allowed his image to be used to promote a Democratic presidential candidate.  Then I'd bet a new law barring such use of digitally-reproduced images of the dead would get pushed through toot-sweet.