Xanadu, (Past) House of the Future

While looking through some lost Florida roadside attractions (at the nifty http://www.lostparks.com/), I ran across "Xanadu, Home of the Future."  Built using foam insulation sprayed inside balloons and using computers to control everything from lighting and windows to security and heating, this tourist attraction in Kissimmee (near Disney World) had sister houses in Wisconsin and Tennessee.  It was supposed to be a model for houses in the future.  Now, the houses are all shut down and demolished.  The Kissimmee house went last, closing in 1996 and torn down in 2005.  In between, someone visited the dilapidated ex-house-of-the-future and recorded the state of the site.  Attached below is the first of a five part YouTube series exploring the decaying remains of the house.

After watching this urban explorer check out the end of the house, I also found this video from the 1980s, showing a documentary of sorts about the "House of the Future" at its prime:

It's kind of a cool design.  I actually like some of the architecture, like the big central room with the tree, fountain, and balcony.  The upstairs rooms are are way too small, and I think no one thought through the idea of having these be for children: Children will eventually grow up and no longer fit in these rooms, but we hope the house will last more than one generation.  (Not that it appears to have survived very well.)  I did like the upstairs balcony 'though, and I love the master bath with hot tub and multi-directional shower.

I appreciate the computer control of the house, and I actually wonder why we don't see more of this in contemporary design.  As I try to maintain the temperature in my central-air-lacking apartment by raising and lowering blinds and windows, I've often thought that a computer-controlled system could optimize this much better (and more easily) than I can.  It would also fix the dilemma I have in the summer, where I want to leave my bedroom windows open at night to let the place cool off, but end up having to get up at (literally) the crack of dawn to close them again so I can keep the light out.  This appears to be part of what Xanadu's computers actually did.  Maybe someday.

Anyway here's a bit more history about Xanadu at Lost Parks: Xanadu, Home of the Future, Roadside America: The Last of the Xanadus, and Wikipedia: Xanadu Houses, for those who find this as interesting as I did.

The Counterweight Continent

I recently ran across this really interesting posting about Texas trying to harvest nuts from Minnesota to help destroy Texas public schools. The post contains some some really fascinating background on the history of cartography. (I actually mean that. It's really neat stuff. Go read it.)

A chunk of the discussion centers on old maps which show some gigantic landmass at the south pole (frequently much larger than Antartica), and how those maps probably came to be. (That is, if you don't assume they were accurate and made by super-advanced Atlanteans 10,000 years ago. Or aliens, I suppose.) One note in particular caught my attention near the end of the article:

Almost as soon as Classical Greek scholars figured out that the Earth was a sphere, they decided that it must have a land mass in the south large enough to balance out the known lands in the north. In part, this was a scientific opinion based on their lack of knowledge about how gravity and celestial mechanics functioned. At least equally important in coming to that conclusion was the belief that the gods would not allow the world to be asymmetrical.

A continent which counterbalances the masses of the known continents... now there's an idea I've run across before, but I first encountered it with regard to a disc shaped world:

"Since you are a wizard of sorts, you are of course aware that we live on a world shaped, as it were, like a disc? And that there is said to exist toward the far rim, a continent which though small is equal in weight to all the mightly landmasses in this hemi-circle? [...]

Rincewind nodded. Who hadn't heard of the Counterweight Continent?

--from The Color of Magic, by Terry Pratchett

Bugger all. It seems when I learn something new and fascinating, Pratchett has gotten there first and already inserted a joke about it into one of his books.

Superpowers

I was just purusing SuperDickery.com, which is a riot, and has as a central premise "Superman is a dick," supported by a wide array of Superman comics covers showing Superman being a... well, you get the picture. But it also includes a great gallery of ridiculous super powers, including heroes such as "Kite Man", and powers like super weaving and super ventriloquism. Which got me to thinking about a conversation I had years ago with a fellow grad student in which we tried to think up reasonably good, but unusual, superpowers we could have. I picked the power to locate any specific penny anywhere at any time. I thought this was reasonably good, actually. You could track anyone by just slipping one tiny penny onto their person. Tape a penny to everything you own, and presto--no more looking for the remote. And pennies are so ubiquitous, no one notices them, but pretty much everyone (in the US, anyway) has them. Plus you'd likely be able to find your keys when they fell out of a hole in your pocket because you probably dropped a penny at the same time, even if you didn't tape a penny to them. I think it's superpower which is just at the right level of being useful without being in any sense overpowered. My friend wanted to the power to inflict pain on men. I don't think she was joking, but I don't think she was really getting into the game, either. I suspect there were unspoken issues with some man or another in particular.

I also remember a good conversation regarding the premise of massive numbers of random mutations granting superpowers in the X-men series. We reasoned that there would have to be a whole bunch of mutants with totally useless powers. Like the guy who can move his nose to any location on his body. Or a woman with unlimited flatulence. (Interesting combination, those two.)

My deep desire for a superpower 'though is to be able to teleport anywhere instantaneously. (And I've had this wish even since before I was living seven hours away from the significant other.) Consider the travel possibilities. (And say goodbye to admission fees at Disney World. :-) ) Commuting would be a snap. Live where ever you found a nice, cheap place, and work where ever you want to. Miss your favorite restaurant in another state? Have dinner there tonight. Or explore the restaurants in Paris, Hong Kong, or Sri Lanka. As an added plus, you don't even have to worry about whether you're walking in a bad neighborhood or not. If you don't like it or someone jumps you, just zap back home. You even have a good entrepreneurial opportunity: no one could beat your very expensive one-hour delivery service. (Although it might be in less demand in a world with e-mail.) Of course, if you're unscrupulous, there are plenty of opportunities to do anything you want, too. Have I spent too much time thinking about this? Yes, of course, but that's what I do. You should hear the elaborate plans I have for what to do if I should ever find a genie.

Worst. Movie. Ever.

I've been participating in the League of Dubious Film run by friends this summer. The first I saw with them was BeastMaster, which I have no objections to because, hey, Marc Singer in a loin cloth. (Interestingly, we discovered that there are parts of this movie no one had ever seen before because we'd all watched it on TV, and TV usually cuts out shots which include boobies, for example.)

But the second movie was something called Zardoz, starring (believe it or not) Sean Connery in an orange diaper with bandoliers. He's a member of the "Brutals", one of two divisions of the future human race. He's one of the Brutals who is employed by a floating stone head called Zardoz to exterminate as many of the rest of the Brutals as possible, until he decides to stow away in the head and meets the "Eternals" who live forever in the Vortex. The Eternals are apparently very advanced and psychic (or perhaps just prone to weird convulsions; it's hard to tell) but apparently have lost the technology from our time which allows women to keep their tops on. (There does seem to be a common boobie theme in many bad movies. I keep thinking of Joe Bob Briggs.) The immortal line from the beginning of the movie is the stone head roaring "The Gun is Good! The P*nis is Evil!" This lead someone to hypothesize early on that it was a lesbian movie, but we decided after watching for a while it most definitely was not. I finally decided it must have been made by fundamentalist Christians, because while they say it's evil, they obviously can't stop thinking about it for ten minutes.

But I have to give a warning here: The movie is much worse than it sounds. It could easily have been edited down by at least an hour and have lost nothing (except perhaps all the trippy drug related sequences with flashing lights and disjointed sounds and clips). The floating stone head takes up far too little screen time. There are no other lines which compare with the "Gun is Good!" line. The only point to the movie (although poorly made) is that humans shouldn't live forever. (Or perhaps it just wants to communicate that women have boobies, which was a better made point.) It's a truly hideous experience which no one should have to sit through. And yet amazingly, any film, no matter how bad, has its adherents. There are actually crazy people who think this is the greatest science fiction movie ever made.

That said, there are apparently movies that people have found more unpleasant to sit through. I've gotten some amusement out of reading through some of the reviews on BadMovies.org, which gives Zardoz three "droplets". (I think they're slime drops, but I'm not sure.) That ranks it as a middling bad movie. Some movies get only one (described as "A bad movie, even for me"), or a "skull" (described as "This is going to hurt, lots"). Personally I'm intrigued by the five droplet movies, such as Drunken Wu Tang, which is a Kung Fu flick featuring a watermelon monster. Check out the site; it has pictures.

Gender Genie

This post isn't nearly as weird as you thought it was. Or maybe it is.

It is not, amazingly enough, about a new approach to sex changes involving a lamp and a lot of rubbing. No, this is about a web site. Put the other thing out of your mind. No, seriously, I mean it.

There is apparently a program called the Gender Genie which will attempt to guess if the author visits the "Buoys" or the "Gulls" room at Cap'n Jack's Fish Shack, Argh. Alas, I'm afraid it's not completely consistent with my writing, although it seems to be right more often than half the time, so it may be on to something. Perhaps the confusion is a sign that some of my favorite writers whom I try to emulate are of the girly persuasion. Or maybe it can just tell I have The Gay.

Of course, if you read this because you're interested in transgendered fairy tales instead, try looking up "The Girl Who Pretended to be a Boy", included in The Violet Fairy Book, which is even available free as a Project Gutenberg etext. I aim to please.

Handkerchiefs

I received a genuine paper faith handkerchief in the mail from a church, because "someone connected to [my] home needs God's help and blessings." I was supposed to print my name and my "most pressing problem, by faith" on the handkerchief, and place it by the bed while I slept. Then the next day I was supposed to mail it back to them. And lest you doubt, these handkerchiefs apparently have amazing powers! According to the letter, people have had fathers and husbands stop drinking, had a son get out of jail (I'm assuming legally, but they weren't clear on this), had their home fixed up, gotten a check for $3,500, gotten big financial blessings, gotten $5,000, and gotten a check for $2,500. (There seems to be kind of an interesting pattern to a lot of these.)

I figured my most pressing problem at the moment was the rotten sinus problems I've been having for weeks, so I put that down and went to sleep. (I always do everything strange churches tell me to do in the mail.) Of course, having a handkerchief handy right by the bed when you wake up in the middle of the night with sinus problems leads to only one conclusion, and now I'm not sure if they really want the handkerchief back....
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(1) Oh come on, now, you didn't really think I was serious, did you? The "handkerchief" is a printed 8x10 piece of paper. Like I really need paper cuts on my nose in addition to bad sinuses. Or that I'd actually listen to a church, for that matter.

(2) I remember these used to go out as "prayer rugs", I think. They've apparently now found a bible passage that sort of ties in with what they're doing, so they call them "faith handkerchiefs" now. (Acts 19:11-12, if you're interested. It looks to me to be a "We must hold high his holy gourd!" type of interpretation if I ever saw one.)

Longevity Advice from the First Emperor of China

I recently saw an interesting documentary on the first emperor of China. (Which refers to the man who originally unified all the different parts of China. "Unified" being a euphemism for "conquer", or in other words, kill everyone who says you don't get to be Grand High Poo-Bah.) He's responsible for both the Great Wall and the famous terra-cotta warriors, which were set to guard him in the afterlife from all the enemies he made from doing all that "unifying". (Does that make him a "uniter", not a "divider"?)

Interesting thing is, while his tomb was being built, he apparently decided he'd rather just stay in this life, and was in search of immortality. While he searched, he wanted to at least prolong his life as long as possible. Advice from his doctors? Have a lot of sex and eat a lot of mercury. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that the doctors were secretly trying to kill him, either.

What strikes me is this: What will people in 2000 years think of our longevity advice? You know, all this stuff like "exercise", "eat lots of vegetables and fiber", "avoid sugar, salt and fat", etc. What if this is all considered just as ridiculous someday? Who wants to take a risk like that?

Think I'll have a pizza for dinner.

Overheard in a Wal-Mart Men's Room

As we join our hero, he stopped off at a Wal-Mart to make a pit-stop while he decides whether to eat out or go home after furniture shopping. A man with small child enters the room...

Child: There's a short one; I can do it myself!
Man: Ok, here... no, don't hang your ass out¹... there... and don't touch it², you'll get cooties.
Me: (begins to struggle against silent giggles)
(long pause)
Man: And don't pee on my foot.
Child: Sorry!
Me: (exits almost shaking, and wanders the floor for a few minutes chortling.)

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¹ Interestingly, the thing with pants and small children seems to be a theme. I can remember hearing a man chastising a small child in the stall of a rest stop on one of my driving trips this year: "What did you take your pants off for? Nobody takes off their pants to go potty in a public restroom, that's disgusting."

² No, I don't know what "it" referred to, as I wasn't looking that direction, but I'm assuming he meant the urinal. If it was a different "it", then I understand why the child was having trouble with, uh, direction.

Weird Literature

In searching for something on Half.com, I ran across the following, which I present with only the comment that I find it very weird:

The Differential Calculus As the Model of Desire in French Fiction of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Kenneth C. Hockman Hardcover, 1997 - Not in stock.