Recommended Links of the Week (No. 722)

Plenty of science fiction for all tastes, Japanese women's wrestling, seppuku and the Great Attractor complete a Recommended Links of the Week packed with information, videos, and galleries. Enjoy!.

'Star Wars': The Great References George Lucas Drew From (Perhaps Too Much) to Create His Multimillion-Dollar and Influential Science Fiction Saga: "As if George Lucas had had a divine inspiration when conceiving his saga. Long-time fans know this is not entirely true. No popular genre works that way, and science fiction, between the explosion of pulp literature in the thirties and forties and the huge clash between Martians and youth culture in the fifties, much less. 'Star Wars' has a lot of debts, and today we are going to review some of them."

The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961): Filming and Curiosities of This Cult Film: "The film's plot is set in the early 1960s. After two simultaneous nuclear detonations at the Earth's poles, carried out by the United States and the Soviet Union, strange meteorological phenomena begin to occur on the planet. Reporter Peter Stenning decides to investigate the matter, and soon discovers that the nuclear tests have had a catastrophic effect on Earth. Due to its relatively modest budget, the film The Day the Earth Caught Fire is sometimes considered a B-movie."

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (1985): "The basic outline of 'Ender's Game' is very similar to that used before by Robert Heinlein in 'Starship Troopers' (1959) or Joe Haldeman in 'The Forever War' (1974): the training of young recruits in a wartime environment in which Humanity is playing its existence against alien invaders. As in those works, the military are presented as an all-powerful and manipulative institution that devours the bodies and souls of soldiers and officers. But beyond that basic framework, Card's is a story defined by a keen sense of both tragedy and inevitability as well as irony."

'Silent Running' (1971) by Douglas Trumbull: "Silent Running is a film that clearly drinks from both the environmental movement and the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The influence of the latter is especially notable because, as we have said, Trumbull had supervised its visual effects for the journey through the star gate (he also created the mutant virus of The Andromeda Strain). And, like 2001, the film is set in the environment of the gas giants of our solar system and fits –apparently– the parameters of hard science fiction."

David Bowie's Encounter with Science Fiction: "In 2013, David Bowie entered the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. His name thus joined that of figures such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Georges Méliès, Mary Shelley, or H.G. Wells. Transformed into Ziggy Stardust or through songs about space travel, Bowie dreamed of a world beyond our reality, and broke the limits of science fiction, bringing it to the stages of his rock concerts. His song 'Space Oddity' was used by the BBC that same year for the coverage of the launch and moon landing of Apollo 11."

Fists Up! The Women of Japanese Professional Wrestling: "American wrestling star Mildred Burke toured Japan in 1954. Her exhibitions were spectacular, but generated a certain hostility among a public that was not used to living in a country occupied by the Allied forces. In a symbolic act of revenge, joshi puroresu (women's professional wrestling) became a popular form of entertainment that combined contact sport and performing arts, and they even created their own championship to promote it. Under the acronym AJW (All Japan Women's Pro Wrestling), the first Japanese female wrestlers took to the ring to defeat their American counterparts."

The Guano Era: A Round and Cruel Business: "when the first cargo of guano arriving from Peru began to be unloaded at the docks of the English city of Southampton, the stench it gave off was so strong that many inhabitants of this English city fled to the hills. It was 1840, and that pestilent aroma marked the beginning of the fantastic guano era, as the dried excrement of seabirds is called. This fertilizer would breathe new life into the exhausted soils of Europe and the United States, where agriculture had to feed an urban population that never stopped growing at the call of industry."

The Rise of Bullshit Jobs: "A bullshit job is a job that is so unnecessary, even harmful, that even the person doing it secretly believes that this job should not exist. Naturally, they have to pretend: that's the stupid part, that somehow you have to pretend that there is some reason for this job to exist. But inside, you believe that if this job didn't exist, either nothing would change at all, or the world would actually be a slightly better place. When you talk about bullshit jobs, they think of jobs that are bad, jobs that are degrading, jobs that have terrible conditions, without insurance, etc. But even, the irony is that those jobs de facto are not bullshit."

Lightning Were Fleeting Drivers of Life on Earth: "The role of lightning in making nitrogen available for life on Earth may have been relatively ephemeral, according to a new study. The researchers found that the isotopic composition observed in experiments that reproduce the mechanism of nitrogen generation by lightning does not match that of nitrogen archived in the rock record of early Earth. This discrepancy suggests that lightning was not a significant source of nitrogen over time, as microbial life evolved."

'Seppuku': Dying to Show Loyalty or to Protect Honor?: "In many historical films, a scene appears with the ritual suicide of a samurai. Those who were defeated in combat often chose death to show their loyalty, but even those who were ordered to do so tried to show that they chose that fate to preserve their honor. In reality, there is no one who prefers to die; it is said that seppuku is a form of suicide charged with pride, but behind it there are certain facts that few know."

The Great Attractor: The Region of the Universe That Could Devour the Milky Way and Other Galaxies: "There is a region in the cosmos that attracts hundreds of galaxies. Known as the 'Great Attractor', it is a region with a terrifying force, which attracts these bodies at 600 kilometers per second. Located since the 70s, it is known to be the 'final destination' of billions of planets, stars, comets, cosmic dust. The Milky Way is also heading there, by the way. 'Our galaxy is heading towards something we cannot see clearly,' assures cosmologist Paul Sutter, from Stony Brooks University (USA)."

Thomas Midgley, the Most Harmful Inventor in History: "There are countless inventions that have improved people's lives and advanced civilization, but there are some that were initially considered great advances and later turned out to have a dark side. Like DDT, a miraculous insecticide that caused serious environmental problems; or plastic packaging, which pollutes from the ocean floor to the highest peaks on Earth. Although it is difficult to surpass the magnitude of the damage caused (both to human health and to the planet) by these two inventions: leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Interestingly, both were created by a humble chemical engineer named Thomas Midgley."

Videos

Tiburonga, time-lapse in spoken video, a test for non-musicians, Galton machine, why are we so tired?, Japanese blocking machine, the island of cats, cleaning coins from the wishing fountain, who said wheels have to be round?, Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Wizard of Oz, Avatar by Wes Anderson, fish in the middle of the forest, robotic dog in a dog competition, medley from The Little Mermaid, how wolves greet each other, the computer singing for the first time and the black sheep.

Galleries

Scribners magazine covers, tourist traps, Venice in the 70s, photos of the sun, the early years of aviation, dead man's fingers, hyperrealistic tattoos, Hubble images, more photos of Gia Carangi, the Animated Dump and the Visual Dump of the Week.

And here ends another edition of the Recommended Links of the Week, which is no small thing. Thanks for stopping by!