Cordial Deconstruction

Observations from our shared single objective reality in a materialistic, naturalistic, & effectively macro-deterministic universe.

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Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 1 Season 1, Pilot

Posted by Karl Withakay on June 9, 2011

They were all Blue Episodes back then.

As always, an episode synopsis will be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent

Opening Theme Fringe Terms

The Fringe terms in the opening theme were:

Psychokenesis

Teleportation

Nanotechnology

Artificial Intelligence

Precognition

Dark Matter

Cybernetics

Suspended Animation

Artificial Intelligence

Psychokenesis

Dark Matter

Transmogrification

I guess the writers of the pilot ran out of fringe science terms and had to reuse three of them.  Frankly, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, dark matter, cybernetics don’t really qualify as fringe science.  The are legitimate, mainstream fields of research.  Teleportation on a quantum level is not fringe either, but anything on a larger level would qualify as fringe.  Suspended animation would fit nicely in the fringe category as well.  Psychokenesis, precognition, and transmogrification are just plain pseudoscience.

Yes, We Have COLOR TV in 2008!

The sign for the hotel at the beginning of the episode had Color Cable TV as one of the hotel features listed on their sign.  Um, when in the last 30 years did you see a hotel with a black and white TV, especially if they also had cable?

Olivia Dunham, FBI Interagency Liaison

Apparently inter-agency liaison is the position you assign the slow agents to before you transfer them to the Fringe Division.

Standard Level 4 Hazmat Suits?

I think the writers were thinking of Biosafety Level 4 biocontainment precautions, where level 4 is the highest level of precaution.  Hazmat suits come in levels A through D, where level A offers the highest level of protection.  (In Europe, hazmat suits are Types 1 through 6, with Type 1 offering the greatest level of protection.)

Fringe Division, On the Job

That plane would have been classified as a Biosaftey level 4 situation until they could determine what caused the deaths.  An unknown,  exotic , possibly infectious, possibly airborne, agent lethal to humans, for which there is possibly no known vaccine or other treatment was present inside the cabin.  If they couldn’t tow the plane to a hanger which they could then seal up, they would have probably done a better job enclosing the whole plane (or at least all hatches and exit doors) inside a containment tent system.  Also, they would never put people who had no experience with BSL-4 procedure inside that plane.  Someone might carelessly take a glove off and who knows what that could lead to?

Darwin Would be Disappointed

No wonder Olivia’s a liaison.  Olivia and Agent Scott are following up on a lead in a bioterrorism attack case where a plane load of people were killed by some unknown, possibly airborne bioagent, and they discover two mysterious, unlabeled gas cylinders in a dumpster.  What do they do?

A  Immediately call for a hazmat team to secure and investigate the cylinders.

B  Carefully secure the cylinders themselves for later investigation in the lab.

C  Hold the cylinders close to their faces and sniff them.

It’s a wonder Olivia manages to live through season one, let alone make it to season four.  (Sorry for the spoiler)

US Marine Corps Special Investigator

How was Olivia a US Marine Special Investigator?  Marine Corps criminal investigations are not the jurisdiction of the FBI.  Was she in the Marine Corps?  She had a 4 year degree, so if she was in the USMC, she should have been a commissioned officer, but US Marine Corps Criminal Investigation Division Agents are non-commissioned or warrant officers.  Major crimes are referred to the NCIS, and it’s possible the sexual assaults she investigated would fall under NCIS’s jurisdiction; was Olivia previously an NCIS agent?

Quote of the Show #1

Peter:

“Sweetheart, we all care about someone who’s dying.”

Your Tax Dollars, Hard at Work

That sure was a nice plane the FBI used to fly Olivia to Iraq to retrieve Peter in luxury; there’s no flying coach on a crowded Airbus for Fringe Division.

You’re So Transparent

As implausible as the transparent Agent Scott may seem, it’s not completely out in la-la land.  Check out this extremely cool frog picture from National Geographic via P.Z. Meyers:

It’s a Moo Point

Yes, any mammal’s DNA is pretty close to a human’s, but there are far closer matches to human DNA, and better animals for research applicable to humans than a cow, such as monkeys, chimps, mice, rats, and the proverbial guinea pig.  I think Walter just wanted fresh milk.  I hope he didn’t drink it raw, but that would qualify as fringe- or pseud-oscience.

Quote of the Show #2

Walter:

“The only thing better than a cow is a human, unless you need milk.  Then you really need a cow.”

Quote of the Show #3

Walter to Olivia:

“Of course, you’d have to have an electromagnetic probe place in the base of your skull whilst emerged without clothing in the old tank, and you’d be heavily drugged.”

Character Interaction and Dialog

From episode one on, Fringe has featured great character interaction and banter involving Walter and Peter.

Peter:

“The man who was just released from the mental institution, he wants to give you a drug overdose and stick a metal rod into your head and put you naked into a rusty tank of water.”

Walter:

“No, I don’t want to.  No, no, I’d rather not.  I’m just saying I can.

Assistant to the Liaison

If the liaison position is as crappy of an assignment as Broyles keeps implying, how crappy is it to be the assistant to the liaison?  I am convinced that Astrid must have backed her car over the FBI director’s dog to have been assigned as Agent Dunham’s assistant.

Cliché Time

This won’t be the last time Fringe features a basement lair accessed via a trap door hidden beneath a carpet.

Unanswered Question

Not to spoil anything for those just watching the show for the first time, but why didn’t Peter and Olivia remember each other?  Edit to add:  Why didn’t Olivia remember Walter?  Will season four actually answer this these questions?

Posted in Fringe, Quotes, Science, Television | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 22 Season 3, The Day We Died

Posted by Karl Withakay on May 7, 2011

A Gray Episode

As always, an episode synopsis will be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent

Neither Red Nor Blue

This episode’s credits were in all gray, with a unique set of words during the credits:

Cellular Rejuvenation

Thought Extraction

Cryptozoology

Neural Partitioning

Temporal Plasticity

Brain Porting

Dual Maternity

Chaos Structure

Clonal Transplantation

Water

Biosuspension

Hope

Hotty McHotterson

OK, red-headed Fauxlivia is hotter than regular Olivia, but Astrid with straight hair now takes the crown for me as the hottest woman on the show.  Wow, just wow.

Once And Future Product Placement

Apparently the Sprint Kyocera Echo is such an awesome cell phone so far ahead of its time that they’re still making it 15 years in the future.  Also, it doesn’t look like the launcher for the Android OS will be changing much in the next 15 years either.

Pop a Kappa

Apparently in the next 15 years (perhaps only if we use the machine to destroy the other universe), we discover at least five more types of radiation, asuuming we don’t skip any letters in the Greek alphabet.  Currently, epsilon rays are the last form of radiation named from the Greek alphabet.  There’s currently no such thing as Kappa radiation.

The Eyes Have it.

It looks like in the future it is possible to replace eyes, but it isn’t possible to make the replacement’s color match the other eye, unless Senator Broyles kept the color of the replacement different on purpose as some sort of personal reminder of whatever event caused the need for the replacement eye.

Yin and Yang

As I suspected, the two universes are tied together, and their fates are linked.  Destruction of one leads to the destruction of the other.

It’s in the Can

While we have wine in boxes now, it seems that may be the only way to get wine in the future, but vodka still comes in a bottle, while steak comes in a can.

Radioactive Signature

Strontium 90 is indeed a daughter product of nuclear fission, more from Uranium fission than from Plutonium fission.  It decays via beta decay with a fairly short half life of 28.8 years.  In order to track the “radioactive signature” of a radioactive element, you’d have to consider several aspects.  First would be the type of decay.  Strontium is essentially a pure beta emitter, and so is its daughter product, Yttrium 90.

However, there are numerous pure beta emitters, so we need something else to distinguish Strontium 90 radiation from any other pure beta emitters.  It helps a little that Strontium 90’s decay product is also a pure beta emitter, and Yttrium 90’s decay product is stable, because it means any other types of radiation detected, such as alpha particles or gamma rays, must be the result of some other radioisotope and not Strontium 90 or any of its decay products.  Eliminating readings inconsistent with Strontium 90 would likely mean excluding any readings including alpha or gamma radiation.

But we probably need more than that for a signature.  The half life isn’t quite as useful as you might think.  Unless you know the mass of the sample, the number of decay events can’t be used to estimate the half life because you can’t tell whether you have a small number of particles undergoing frequent decay, a large number of particles undergoing infrequent decay, or something in between.

I would think that this is where Sr-90’s decay product also being a pure beta emitter actually presents a problem.  If the daughter product was an alpha or gamma emitter, you could at least figure out the ratio of beta activity to other activity which would help identify the parent isotope and present a signature to track (assuming there weren’t any other radioisotopes or background radiation creating noise in the data, which wouldn’t be the case).

The energy of the beta particles would be useful as part of a signature, but you’d have to have some idea how much shielding (including air) there was between you and the radio-source to know how attenuated the strength of the radiation was.  The half lives of Sr-90 and Y-90, and the differences in the energy of their beta emissions would be useful, though.  You could measure the change in activity and energy of the decay particles over time.  All this could just maybe provide a trackable radioactive signature for Sr-90.

Some Things Never Change/ Non-Product Placement

So even in the future, some carriers will still have cell coverage issues in semi-remote locations like Reiden Lake.  Walternate must have been using a different carrier or technology to project his hologram to the cabin.  I’m not surprised that the Sprint logo wasn’t featured on a cell phone getting no signal.  Sprint should have paid to have AT&T’s logo on that phone.

Time Standing Still

Cars don’t change much in the next 15 years.

Adults seem to stop aging noticeably (other than the occasional touch of gray hair) after the activation of the machine.  Even Nina Sharp, who is likely around 65 in 2011 and would be about 90 80 in 2026, didn’t look a day older after 15 years of aging.

Misc Notes Partly For the Search Engines

Electrilight weapons

Fringe HQ is in Boston in the future.  (May 20, 2026)

Paleozoic era was 540-250 million years ago.

Theropods were members of the suborder of dinosaurs that included the famous T-Rex.

Olivia has controllable telekinetic powers in the future.

Was the name Moreau a reference to Dr. Moreau?

The title for this episode makes me think of Don McLean’s song, American Pie.  I wonder if that was partly the intention with the title choice.

Does The Retcon Make Any Unanswered Questions Moot (or Moo)?

If Peter never existed now, does that retcon give the writers an out from having to answer why Peter and Olivia had no memories of each other and the experiences they had together as children?

Will Peter be featured in Season 4, and if so, how?

Posted in Fringe, Gray Episode, Product Placement, Science, Television | Tagged: , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

Reply to a Comment on My Schrödinger’s Cat Post

Posted by Karl Withakay on May 1, 2011

Commenter your wrong left the following comment to my Deconstruction post on Flash Forward’s mishandling of the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment:

“Ok, you seem to have completely missed the point here. The point of Schrodinger’s cat is precisely about quantum probability, which you have stated, and you seem to have a knowledge of this thought experiment and what it means. The thing that is really getting to me is the fact that the point is still being made in almost exactly the same way, but you are quibbling over the fact that it is not explained fully and mentioned the radioactive isotopes and the Copenhagen interpretation. Surely a 10 minute conversation about this thought experiment would waste time in the programme and really doesn’t matter. The nitty gritty stuff is for scientists, not for people just watching some action on television. Don’t get me wrong I love reading physics as much as any studious person, but it really doesn’t matter in the slightest that he didn’t go into every single little detail regarding the experiment. Stop wasting your time complaining and read more physics, you’re obviously interested in it. Not only that but you’ve wasted my time having to correct your ignorance.”

What follows is my reply to that comment, which I felt was worthy of it’s own post.

It would appear to be you who has completely missed the point and demonstrated your ignorance on the topic.  By substituting a poisoned sardine for the decay of a radioactive isotope, quantum probability has been eliminated from the thought experiment and has been replaced by a regular non-quantum, deterministic event.

Further, when the physicist states that the observer gets to choose whether the cat is alive or dead, that is not quantum physics and the collapse of the quantum waveform, it’s a philosophy of a post modernist subjective reality, dependant on the perception and will of the observer.  In quantum mechanics, the observation of the cat in the original thought experiment collapses the quantum waveform and solidifies the current state of the cat; it does not choose which state the cat is in, which is what the physicist in the TV show said.

The writers completely misunderstood the thought experiment, and got it wrong on two key points.  They replaced a quantum probability with a deterministic event, and then gave the observer a choice in the end state of the cat rather than the observation only being a choice to create the end state of the cat with no ability to choose what that end state was.

It is acceptable to boil a scientific concept like quantum probability and decoherence down to a form the average TV viewer can understand, but only if it remains relatively accurate in the key points.

I have not wasted my time at all, and if you have wasted you time is not my fault.  It would seem that I have either read more physics than you, or I have at least better understood and appreciated the nuances of what I have read.  It also seems that you either failed to pay attention while reading my post, or you were unable to understand they key points of my post.   If by reading this reply you better understand the key points as to why the writers got the thought experiment wrong, then you have not wasted your time at all either.

And by the way, you’ve spelled your name wrong if your intention was to say “you’re wrong” rather than talk about a wrong that I posses.  I normally don’t quibble about simple spelling mistakes, but I would think if someone takes the time to compose a 181 word statement claiming someone  is wrong on a matter of quantum physics, that they would take time to make sure they haven’t confused “your” with “you’re”.  Such a mistake hardly adds to your credibility.

Your comment has been Cordially Deconstructed.

Posted in Critical Thinking, Criticism, Flash Forward, Followup, Science, Television, This Blog | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 21 Season 3, The Last Sam Weiss

Posted by Karl Withakay on April 29, 2011

A Blue Episode

As always, an episode synopsis will be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent

Blatant Product Placement

Gee, the backup camera on the cars sure was cool.  If only I had a way of knowing what model car that was so I  could get one…

You know, there’s a distinction between product placement and writing elements into a show just to feature products and their features.  Showing that a person is driving a Ford Focus by the camera pausing on the car’s name plate is a product placement.  Intentionally inserting a scene where a car backs up just so you can show the backup camera of a Ford Focus is artistic compromise.

Today’s Winner of the Darwin Award Is…

What kind of idiot gets out of his car during a freak electrical storm like the one in this episode in order to see what’s going on, even if he thinks the storm is over?

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Lightning does strike cars, and being insulated from the ground by the tires does not make much difference.  Just as lightning is powerful enough to travel through the air to the car, it can also arc from the car to the ground.  What keeps you safe in a car that is struck by lightning is the metal skin of the car conducting the electricity around you.  (Sorry fiberglass bodied Corvette owners.)  If you are in a car and lightning is striking around you, the advice is to pull over, shut the engine down, and keep your hands in you lap and wait for the storm to pass.

Wait, What Did He Just Say?

Sam Weiss (not to be confused with Samwise Gamgee):

“It’s not a doomsday device, but it’s acting like one.”

Uhh, isn’t that exactly what everybody so far has been thinking it is, a doomsday device?  It does present the intriguing possibility that the devices were not designed to be doomsday devices but were intended for some other purpose.  Perhaps they are really anti-doomsday devices indeed to fix problems like the ones caused by Walter, and Walternate is using his device incorrectly.

 Are You Sure You Have a PhD in Physics?

Astrid:

“Walter this can’t possibly be safe.”

Walter:

“Nonsense, I’m fully insulated.”

So were the cars, Walter.  The lightning has enough current to overcome the resistance of the air, I don’t think Walter’s rubber boots and gloves are going keep him safe.  Rubber tires don’t keep cars from being struck by lightning, and Walter has no metal skin to harmlessly conduct the electricity around him, though that didn’t seem to help the people at the beginning of the episode very much.

Top Notch Care

How come no alarms went off when Peter ripped off his monitors?  The display went flat line, and not one alarm went off?  I know the hospital was overwhelmed by the large number of lightning victims, but it sure took a long time to notice the monitors had flat lined and their patient was missing.  Apparently Peter could have actually arrested and died, and nobody would have noticed for quite a while.

Are You REALLY Sure You have a PhD in Physics?

Walter:

“These two magnets create a magnetic field between them.  As a result, these iron filings line up in a pattern consistent with that field.”

Walter is explaining his demonstration wrongly.  In Walter’s demonstration, each magnet had its own magnetic field, and the iron filings lined up with the magnetic field lines of each field.    The filings would be lining up even with only one magnet.  The intersection of those patterns indicates the overlap of the two magnetic fields.  Also, if Walter had re-agitated the table after bringing the two magnets together, he would seen that the magnetic fields combined rather than disappeared, and the pattern would have look something, like this.

Security By Acme Solutions

Why would the alarm system be controlled by breakers in the regular breaker box?  How secure would that be?  I would think they would be on their own, secured bus with a battery backup system so the system could still be active in a power outage.

Secrets Of the Ancients

That paper was remarkably flexible and robust for something that was presumably thousands of years old.

What If You Believe Really Hard?

Olivia:

“But believing doesn’t make it true.”

Please tell that to the Birthers.

Quantum Entypement or Just Telekinetic Typing?

Just curious, how would they be able to tell the difference between Olivia controlling the typewriter in the other universe, causing the typewriter in our universe to work, and her just controlling the typewriter in our universe?

Oh, God!

The quote in the magazine Sam was reading,

“I love to sing.  And I love to drink Scotch.  Most people would rather hear me drink Scotch.”

is from George Burns.

Official Personnel Only, No Exceptions

I know you’re in the loop on everything that’s going on right now, and you might prove invaluable, but I’m sorry, you aren’t an official member of the Fringe team.  You aren’t allowed to come along and try to help save the universe.  There’s liability concerns, after all.

Product Placement Question

Does Fox give the writers a list of things (like a Sprint tablet or Ford backup camera) that they have to figure out a way to work into the episode each week?

Are You Sure You Know What Exponential Means?

Walter:

“Exponential microquakes building towards a massive event.”

If they were building exponentially, they wouldn’t remain micro for very long.

Did they Use Giant Rubber Gloves?

How did they move the device when it was protected by a force field that wouldn’t allow even a pen to touch it?

Unanswered Questions

What did Peter want to show Walternate when he went to Liberty Island?  Was it important or significant to the future resolution of the plot?

Why do Peter and Olivia have no memories of each other as children?

Posted in Blue Episode, Fringe, Product Placement, Science, Television | Tagged: , , , , , , | 16 Comments »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 19 Season 3, Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

Posted by Karl Withakay on April 15, 2011

A Blue Episode

As always, an episode synopsis will be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent

Yeah. 220… 221, Whatever it Takes -or- Do Not Reset or Power Off Your Olivia

I know the effect of dimming lights and blown breakers added drama, but wouldn’t you make sure you had enough current capacity to properly power your mind transfer device?  You always get a warning not to shut down or reset when saving a game on the Xbox360 or flashing the ROM on your computer or electronic devices.  Who knows what could happen if you lose power when in the middle of a consciousness transfer?

Did You Make Sure To Select the Right Volume?

How do you make sure your soul transfer machine transfers the right soul anyway?  What if Olivia had ended up in the body of the bearded guy on ice?

Does This Rat Seem Like that Other Rat to You?

Who knew rats had souls?  How exactly would you tell that a rat had the soul of another rat inside it?  I guess you would use the magic soul reading EEG for the rats just like you do for people.

First In, First Out?

Why is it that the natural host soul (which is presumably better anchored to the host brain) is the one to be lost rather than the invasive guest soul?

Chi, Why Did it Have to Be Chi?

Bellivia:

“OK, what if we try and activate her Chi”

Walter:

“Acupuncture?”

Bellivia:

“Yes, we try and stimulate her seventh chakra.  Pure consciousness.”

First of all, Chi and Chakras are related but different forms of vitalistic woo.  As for acupuncture and Chi points, studies have shown that the location of needling in acupuncture is irrelevant.  (They have also shown that it doesn’t matter whether you penetrate with needles or just poke with toothpicks.)  Chi points have never been demonstrated to exist, and their origin lies more with astrology than with anatomy.  Chi is a prescientific, concept based on vitalism, devised before the modern understanding of the circulatory, respiratory, and nervous systems.

The Emulator is Legal, But are the ROMs Copywrited?

Walter:

“Whole brain emulation.  It’s another one of Belly’s old projects.  It describes how an inorganic host can house organic material.”

I think the writers are getting confused and mixing up concepts here.  If William Bell has an incorporeal soul that is independent of his old brain, as it must be since his body is now dead and his soul has moved into Olivia’s body, then that soul cannot be considered organic.  If the mind is exclusively the result of the organic brain, then there is no way to transfer the mind or soul.  Though it could be possible to copy the mind, the original would be left behind in that case.

More Mental Confusion

Mind, soul, brain, consciousness, the writers seem to randomly interchange these terms so much that it becomes difficult to tell what they’re actually talking about at times.  Are they going into Olivia’s mind to look for her consciousness or going into her brain to find her mind/soul.  The language seems clear that they are going into her mind to find her consciousness, but that means her mind is there and reachable.  Is there a danger that her consciousness will disappear while her mind is still in her body?  Is the danger that her mind will follow her consciousness if it disappears from her body?  Is this all just an elaborate excuse to do an Inception episode?

Astrid Farnsworth, M.D.?

Should Astrid really be supervising the whole LSD trip into Olivia’s mind all by herself?  What if one of them seizes, arrests, or experiences some other form of serious complication?

She’s Got a Lot On Her Mind

That’s a very large, complicated, and involved world that Olivia’s mind was generating.  No wonder her consciousness was suppressed, it was too busy generating a dream consisting of a large portion of the United States with a cast of at least thousands of people in it.

Peter, I Made a Skid!

Normally, that would have a different meaning coming out of Walter’s mouth.  Enough said.

A Mind Scanner Darkly

It seems like they did the animation just for scenes involving Leonard Nimoy as Bell.  Nimoy had retired from acting, but he returned for Fringe and to voice Sentinel Prime in the next Transformers movie.  It’s almost like Nimoy will only do voice acting work now, so they animated his scenes.  The other option presumably would have been to make Bell a large transforming robot from another planet.

Explosive Decompression?

Hydrogen filled rigid airships typically cruised at about 3,000 ft, with the highest altitude achieved by a hydrogen filled rigid passenger airship being 5,500 ft on the Graf Zeppelin’s maiden voyage.  As far as I can find from very limited research, explosive decompression does not even begin to be a concern until sometime around or after 15,000 ft.  That guy should not have been sucked out of the zeppelin like that.

Mostly For the Search Engines

The ECL82 is an actual vacuum tube used in record players with crystal pickups.  I’m not sure why Walter’s digital soul computer would need one, or where he would plug it in.  Perhaps Walter was looking to mellow out Bell’s soul a little bit.

Fear Is The Mind Killer

The resolution seemed a little anticlimactic/ Deus Ex Humana to me.  All it took to resolve the situation was for Olivia to become a Bene Gesserit.

Product Placement

It’s strange.  The SPRINT tablets I see online and in the stores don’t seem to have SPRINT in GAINT LETTERS across the top to let you know they are SPRINT tablets like the one in the show did.  I wonder if it was supposed to be a product placement, kind of like an in-show ad or something?  🙂

Posted in Blue Episode, Fringe, Product Placement, Science, Television | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 18 Season 3, Bloodline

Posted by Karl Withakay on March 25, 2011

A Red Episode

As always, an episode synopsis will be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent

Mostly For the Search Engines

I believe Viral Propagated Eclampsia (VPE) is a form of elampsia that exists only in the alterverse.  It is apparently not usually associated with women who have experienced preelampsia, like eclampsia is in our universe.  The virus that causes VPE is dormant until pregnancy and undetectable until the 10th to 11th week.  VPE is apparently nearly 100% fatal for both mother and child if the mother tries to carry the child to term and deliver.

What Are The Odds? Part I

No mention is made as to how the virus is contracted, nor of why having a sister that was a carrier of VPE would put you in the highest risk group of possible carriers of the VPE virus with an 80% chance of having the virus.  The virus can’t be contracted from the mother during pregnancy, as mothers with VPE can’t successfully deliver children, and no mention is made of Fauxlivia’s mother (or father) having it anyway.  So why would a having a sister being a carrier of the virus put you at an 80% risk of carrying the virus?  Is there a genetic component that makes you vulnerable to contracting the virus?  It would have to be carried on the X chromosome.  If it was a dominant gene that caused the vulnerability, and it came only from her father, her odds of being vulnerable would be 50-50.  If it was recessive and came both from her father and her mother (who did not have the problem because she carried only one copy of the recessive gene) the odds of her having the gene would be only 25%.  I don’t see how it could be genetically related and Fauxlivia’s odds of being a carrier be 80%.  Maybe if I thought about it for a while, I could come up with some complex combination of multiple genetic factors that could come out to an 80% risk for Fauxlivia when her mother did not have the problem, but nothing comes to mind off the top of my head.  I suppose it could be some environmental exposure that has to occur during childhood or puberty, such that if Rachel was exposed, the odds are 80% that Fauxlivia was exposed.

Menacing Liquids for Injection

They always seems to be strongly colored in colors other than red don’t they?  Blue, green, orange, they never seem to be red or clear or light yellow, like most of the liquids I see injected or fed into people by medical professionals in the real universe.

Take a Pill, Pretty Please With Sugar On Top

So, the abductors have state of the art medical equipment and supplies, and they expect the patient they are restraining against her will to take a pill to render her unconscious?  Is their some reason they couldn’t just inject her or use an IV to deliver the sedative?

White Rabbit/ What Kind of Pill is That Anyway?

The Nurse told Fauxlivia that she should start feeling the effects of the pill right away, but pills don’t work in a matter of seconds, and an instantly dissolving medication would make spitting the out the pill that was placed in her mouth very difficult.

Do Mentats have an Autism Spectrum Disorder?

I think it’s a really interesting attention to detail that Mentat Astrid tends to avoid eye contact with whomever she is talking to, similar to what is typical of someone with Autism or Asperger’s syndrome.

What Are The Odds? Part II

Mentat Astrid:

“I’ve reviewed the traffic for a three block radius around Agent Dunham’s residence.  There’s an anomaly.  The same commercial vehicle has cruised past her building six times in the past week.  The chances of that are 1 in 760,000.  It is a clear statistical outlier.”

Boy the Alterverse sure is a strange place, because in our universe, it’s very common for commercial vehicles to take the same route on a daily basis.  Maybe the cabbie had a regular fare that always took the same route past Fauxlivia’s building every day.  This just strikes me as a forced way to conveniently work the cabbie into the episode.

Mr. Cobblepot’s Opus

In the Alterverse, Opus is a peahen and not a penguin.

No HIPPA in the Alterverse?

I suppose it’s possible that Fauxlivia signed a release to allow the doctors to disclose her private medical information, sucha s the fact that Fauxlivia was positive for VPE to her mother.  I’ll have to ask Polite Scott if it would be OK to disclose that kind of information without a release form in that situation, if the mother had been present during the examination.

Well Secured

Fauxlia wasn’t secured to the gurney very well.  There was a lot of play in those wrist straps.  Considering that her upper body wasn’t strapped down or restrained, it looks like she should have been able to reach the wrist restraints with her teeth.  Of course, if she was properly restrained, the stage would wouldn’t be with the scalpel on the floor for her later escape.

It’s All Part of the Plan

I think it’s clear the Walternate was lying when he said the pregnancy wasn’t part of the plan for Fauxlivia’s mission.  It seems likely that the child may be a substitute for Peter in the universe destroying doomsday machine.

Someday a Real Rain Will Come and Wash all this Scum Off the Streets

Travis Bickle was the main character in the movie Taxi Driver, which in this universe, was a Martin Scorsese pictue, but in the Alterverse, it was a Francis Ford Coppola picture.  Either that or O’Charlie is worse than Lincoln at movie trivia.

More Forced Cabbie

Again the show finds a way to force the cabbie into the episode.  Of course he can get there faster, cabbies know all the shortcuts.  I really liked the cabbie character in previous episodes, but his his presence in this episode is really forced.  It seems unnatural and unnecessary.  I assume they are laying the groundwork for a later and more relevant appearance of the cabbie character.

What Are the Odds? Part III

“Accelerated pregnancy” must be not especially uncommon in the Alterverse, since everybody seems familiar with the concept, and nobody is surprised when it is mentioned.  However, how come nobody has ever stumbled across accelerated pregnancy as a solution for a pregnant woman with VPE?  Apparently something lead Walternate to think it might work.

Should I Just Leave this Comment Out?

Hey, I’m a heterosexual guy that finds Fauxlivia to be pretty hot.  I can’t help wondering if hoping that the show runners will go for realism here by making Fauxlivia’s boobs bigger due to the pregnancy.

I Don’t usually Comment On the Previews for the Next Episode, but…

I know I’m not the only one who thinks next week’s episode looks a little like a rip-off of the movie inception.

Posted in Fringe, Red Episode, Science, Television | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 17 Season 3, Stowaway

Posted by Karl Withakay on March 18, 2011

A Blue Episode

As always, an episode synopsis will eventually be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent

Soul Rape/ The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul

I hope I’m not the only one who considers that what William Bell did to Olivia without her consent constitutes an immoral assault against Olivia.  He slipped her the soul magnets into her tea without her consent, which constitutes an assault by itself.  The purpose of the magnets was to facilitate the seizure of her body and suppression of her consciousness against her will, another assault, both legally and morally.

I proclaim “Bellivia”

…as the name for Bell possessed Olivia

Why the Funny Voice?

I guess I have to accept that the funny voice was so we could tell when it was Bellivia and not Olivia, because I can’t really think of any other good reason for Olivia’s body to talk with a funny voice when Bell is controlling it.

I Proclaim “Nerdly”

First, let me just say, I have street cred here, so I can get away with calling someone a nerd.  I’m going with the name Nerdly (or NerdLee or Nerd Lee if you prefer) for our universe’s version of Agent Lincoln Lee with the thick, black framed glasses and conservative clothes & haircut.

Location, Location, Location

I’ve probably asked this before, but why hasn’t Walter moved his lab to Massive Dynamic where they have many more resources available, or at least decked his lab out a little more now that he’s the owner of a multi-billion dollar corporation?

Physics 102 (Literally 2nd Semester Physics, After Motion and Kinematics)

Walter:

“In performing the tests, we noticed something odd in the molecules of Miss Gray’s body.  They didn’t want to come apart.  They were held together by an unusually strong electromagnetic bond.”

Lee:

“I’m Confused.  You’re saying her body is held together by magnetism?”

Bellivia:

“Well, we’re all held together by magnetism.  Our molecules are like theses hematite rocks.  Magnetism is what keeps us from flying apart.  It’s what keeps us solid.”

Walter:

“In Miss Gray’s case. The attraction was almost unbreakable.  Uh, it’s a miracle she left behind any blood at all.”

Ok, let’s set things straight here.  Magnetism and electromagnetism are not the same thing.   Magnetism is property of materials that respond at an atomic or subatomic level to an applied magnetic field.  Electromagnetism is one of the four fundamental interactions or forces in nature.  Electromagnetism is responsible for molecular bonds, not magnetism.  Out molecules are not held together like ferromagnetic hematite stones.

Stronger Molecular Bonds = Dead

If Dana Gray’s molecules had unusually strong molecular bonds, her molecules would have a very hard time undergoing chemical reactions.  Chemical reactions are all about the breaking and forming of molecular bonds.  If the bonds of Dana’s molecules were so strong that they are nearly impossible to break, they wouldn’t’ be able to undergo the chemical reactions necessary to support life, and she’d be dead.  Consider the following in support of the notion that even minor changes to chemical properties can be detrimental to life:  While we generally state that different isotopes of the same element have identical chemical properties, this is not 100% accurate.  For all practical purposes, most isotopes of the same elements have indistinguishable chemical properties, but in rare instances, there is a detectable difference.  One such instance is with Deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen.  Normal hydrogen has no neutrons in its nucleus, but deuterium has one neutron in its nucleus.  The chemical properties of deuterium are very close to those of regular hydrogen, but they are not 100% identical.  The properties are different enough, that water with at least one atom of deuterium (heavy water) is slightly different from regular water.  If as little of 25% of the water in the human body is replaced with heavy water, heath problems such as sterility occur. At 50% concentration death occurs, due to inhibited cell division due to the altered bond energy in the deuterium-oxygen bond.

An Innuendo Too Far

Hey, I’m a healthy, heterosexual male, and I appreciate a hint of girl on girl action as much as anyone, even if I know it’s not going to happen (even though one of the hot actresses is gay), but the milking comment by Bellivia was a little creepy.

It’s All Energy, Man…

Nerdly:

“Life force?  You mean like a soul?  Is that even a scientific concept?”

Bellivia:

“It’s best to try to not be reductive.  I mean After all, every living thing is just bundled energy.”

Any so is a rock, and a block of ice, and a cloud of hydrogen (e=mc^2).  No souls there.

Not In an Unfringified Universe

Peter:

“If Dana Gray was struck by lightening twice, do you think that would help to explain whye she was overly electromagnetic?”

Bellivia:

“I suppose that’s possible.  The ions due to multiple lightning strikes could cause her molecules to become supercharged.”

Walter:

“And possibly intensify the electromagnetism, why do you ask?”

The elementary charge carried by electrons and protons is one of the fundamental physical constants of the universe.  You can zap someone with lightning all day long and its not going to change the behavior of molecular bonds or behavior of the electromagnetic force.

Remedial Phone Trace 101

FBI Phone Trace Guy:

“Can’t run a  trace unless the line’s open.  She has to pick up.”

OK, apparently the FBI assigns their technical flunkies to Fringe division work.  For a physical land line, you don’t need to do a trace if you have the number; you just look up the address in the phone company’s database.  For a CELL PHONE, you don’t need to do a traditional trace at all if you know the number of the phone.  Even if the GPS function on the phone is switched off, as long as the phone is on and able to receive calls, you can do a reasonably accurate location of the phone by determining which cell towers it is registering with.  They should also have been able to tell that the phone was moving at a reasonable velocity and determine the general path it was taking by observing it switching between towers as it moved.

Superman’s Suit is Super Too?

How come Dana’s Clothes weren’t singed at all by the explosion?

Science!

Bellivia:

“As a scientist, I like to believe that nothing just happens,”

OK, so far, so good, cause and effect, that’s from science…

“that every event has some meaning, some sort of message.  You just have to be able to listen closely enough to hear it.”

Whoops, you lost me here as to how that has anything to do with science.  You just jumped into philosophy, which is fine.  It’s just not science anymore.

Please Set Your Phone to Vibrate, or Set a Non-Ringy Ringtone, Mr Potter.

Is Bellivia going to swap with Olivia every time an angel gets their wings?

Posted in Blue Episode, Fringe, Science, Television | Tagged: , , , | 13 Comments »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 16 Season 3, Os

Posted by Karl Withakay on March 11, 2011

A Blue Episode

As always, an episode synopsis will be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent

Network 101

Those shapeshifter memory discs didn’t look like they were arranged in a daisy chain wiring pattern.  In a daisy chain, each device is hooked to the next device in series, like links in a chain.  Those discs looked more like they were wired in a centralized topology.

Product Placement

Well Thanks to Fringe, we now know that Olivia’s Ford can read text messages aloud to you.  At this point, if they have any chance of helping get Fringe renewed for another season, I’ll put up with the blatant product placements.

Counterbalance

Well, I think I know how they achieved counterbalance.  The boots are weighted.

I think Peter means something more like counter-buoyancy or counter-weight.  The thieves weren’t balancing against an opposing weight on a pivot or working with a center of gravity, they were countering the mystery buoyancy.

Let My Cameron Go

The bad guy in this episode was played by Alan Ruck, probably best known for his portrayal of Cameron Frye in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off.  He also played the captain of the Enterprise B in the horrible movie Star Trek: Generations, but I won’t hold that against him.

Dead Weight

What was the point of testing the body for lighter than air gases like helium?  In a non Fringified universe, for buoyancy, the buoyant force on an object is going to be equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object, meaning that you would have to displace enough volume of air with helium, such that the mass of the air displaced has to be greater than the mass of the body to be lifted + the mass of the lifting gas.  There’s not nearly enough volume in a human body to achieve buoyancy by traditional lifting gas no matter how much (or how little) helium or hydrogen it contains.

The World’s Heaviest Element

Osmium is the world’s densest element, but it is not really correct to refer to it as the heaviest element.  When you refer to the weight of an element, you are usually referring to it’s atomic mass, as in the combined number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus or it’s atomic weight, which is basically the average atomic mass of a sample of the element.   At this time, the world’s heaviest element would be Ununoctium.  The world’s heaviest stable element is Lead, although Bismuth-209 has a half life so long (nine orders of magnitude greater than the current age of the universe) that it can be considered stable for all practical purposes.

Sure, Shoot Me Up!

Would you let some stranger you met in a gymnasium shoot you up with some mystery juice that he told you could cure your incurable condition?  I’d be a little worried that I’d wake up in an alley several hours later with my pants around my ankles and my wallet missing.

Ice Hot, Doctor, Ice Hot!

If extremely cold temperatures melt the Osmium, is the boiling point below absolute zero, and therefore unachievable?  Is there a limit to how cold you can get it by applying unlimited heat, or is it possible to get it colder than absolute zero by supplying enough heat?

Elemental Mistake

I think the writers got their elements mixed up. Lutetium (9.84 g/cm^3) is rare, but is not even as dense as lead (11.34 g/cm^3), let alone Osmium (22.59 g/cm^3), and it does not come from meteorites.  It think the writers were thinking of Iridium (22.56 g/cm^3), which is very nearly as dense as Osmium, is also rare, and is found in meteorites.  In fact, it is the relative abundance of iridium in the K-T boundary of 65 million years ago that provide support for the theory that an impact  of a comet or asteroid lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

I Am Your Density

Density does not equal strength.  Gold is very dense (19.3 g/cm^3) and also very soft.  It would make horrible armor protection.  Why would you work with “two of the densest elements on earth” when trying to make a material to protect aircraft from ground fire?  Strength to weight ratio is the key for aircraft, not density.  Titanium (4.51 g/cm^3) is used in the A-10 to protect the pilot from enemy fire .

Posted in Blue Episode, Fringe, Product Placement, Science, Television | Tagged: , | 7 Comments »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 15 Season 3, Subject 13

Posted by Karl Withakay on February 26, 2011

A Mostly Blue, 80’s Episode

As always, an episode synopsis will be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent.

Plan Vs Improv?

Am I the only one who thinks the writers changed their minds about why Peter wasn’t returned to the Alterverse?  I got the impression in episode 15 of season 2, Peter, that the reason why Peter wasn’t returned was that Walter’s wife couldn’t stand losing Peter a second time, and Walter couldn’t bear causing his wife to lose their son a second time.  Now we see that they want to return Peter, but have been unable to do so.  It seems like the writers decided this works better for the overall story arch.  I’m not really complaining, but I’m curious if anyone else has the same impression.

Periodic Anachronisms

The regular periodic table on the wall in the Walter’s office was wrong for the years 1985 and 1986.  (I am assuming it may be 1986, since this is 6 months after the Peter episode set in 1985)  The regular table went up to element 117, with the elements up to 111 having their current, official names.  The circular table was also wrong, going upto elemnt 118, with elements up to 109 having their current, official names.  The names for elements 104-109 were not finalized until 1997.  Bohrium would not be shown as Bohrium on any periodic table in 1986, as the proposed name at the time was Neilsbohrium.  The name Bohrium was not proposed until 1994.  The name for the element 108 was not proposed until 1994, and element 109 was not even discovered/ synthesized until 1994, so there couldn’t have even been a proposed name for it yet.  It’s not important to the plot, but it’s a glaring error by the showmakers.

A Toy Store For the Ages

The original Battlestar Galactica aired from 1978-1979 and was cancelled after one season.  The Battlestar Galactica board game was put out by Parker Brothers in 1978, and it would not have been on the shelves of a toy store in our universe in 1985 or later.

The Real Ghostbusters cartoon ran from 1986-1991, so those toys are OK.

The Rubik’s Cube was introduced to the toy market in 1980.  I remember it having a pretty long run at being in toy stores, but 1986 is probably a little late for it to be so prominently featured in a toy store.

The game console being played was an Atari 5200, recognized by its distinctive controller.  By 1986, the video game industry was in a slump, and the 5200 had been discontinued back in May 1984, and it would not have been in toy stores in ’86.

CORRECTION PROMPTED BY  COMMENT BY DeRa1s:  The video game controller is for either a 2600 Junior or 7800 and not a 5200 as stated above.  The game box leaning on the side of the TV was for the 2600 version of Joust, and not the 5200 or 7800 versions.  The cartridges in front of the TV were 2600 cartridges, which would be consistent with either an Atari 2600 Junior or Atari 7800, as the 7800 could play 2600 cartridges.  The graphics were clearly not that of the 2600 version, though.  It could be either the 5200 version or the 7800 version, but Joust was not released for the 7800 until 1987.  An Atari 2600 Junior or 7800 would not be anachronistic in 1986, but the version of Joust on the screen would be.

No Necessarily Anachronistic

The Betamax VCR format was introduced by Sony in 1975, and by 1980, had been completely overtaken by its rival, JVC’s VHS format, which controlled 70% of the North American market.  However, Betamax retained a following as it has slightly superior picture quality and resolution compared to VHS.  It’s not unlikely that someone like Walter would have continued to use Betamax in 1986, or that he would obtain a new Betamax setup in that year.  It seems though, that the writers are implying Walters Betamax is new as a technology, which would be incorrect.

Anachronistic Displays

The readouts on the green, monochrome CRTs were way too sophisticated for 1986.

Did Peter Bring Some Board Games with Him From the Alterverse?

Quizzard was released in 1988 in our universe; Peter has a copy in our universe in 1986.

Aren’t You Supposed to Be Dead?

Strange that it never occurred to Walternate and his wife that Peter might be dead already.  He was deathly ill the last time they saw him, and they knew he didn’t have long to live.  It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that 6 months later, he might not still be alive, regardless of who kidnapped him.

Bishop Dynamic, Home of Broken Windows and Deaf or Dead Employees

I recently took a tour of Cape Canaveral, and from what I have been told, Bishop Dynamic is way too close to the shuttle launch pad to be safe.  At that distance, windows would shatter, cars would flip over, and people would probably be killed by a shuttle launch.  I was at a location about twice as far away where I was told NASA had a large generator flung about 50 feet by a launch.

Battleship Amana

My parents had the same Amana Radarange microwave oven that the Bishops had in their kitchen.  The thing weighed about a ton, and had more chrome than a 57 Chevy.

Unanswered Question

Why did Olivia and Peter have no recollection of each other or the events portrayed in this episode when they first met?

Posted in 80's Episoide, Blue Episode, Fringe, Science, Television | Tagged: , | 12 Comments »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 14, Season 3, 6B

Posted by Karl Withakay on February 20, 2011

A Blue Episode

As always, an episode synopsis can be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent.

Building and Small Kitchen Appliance Manager

OK, the blender comes on by itself, and they are going to call the building manager.?  Um, did the blender come with the apartment?  I understand the building had been having other problems, but why would the building manager care about problems with a tenant’s blender?  There’s no reason to think electrical problems in the building would cause a blender to turn itself on, unless you’re in the loop on the whole Fringe thing.  Call GE or Black & Decker for a defective blender, not the building manager.

Fringe Division, Your Tax Dollars Hard at Work

So let me get this straight, when there are no active Fringe cases, the Fringe division can’t find anything for Walter or Peter (but especially Walter) to work on or research?  Is the division in pure reaction mode, doing nothing while waiting for a Fringe event to happen?  I guess they’re done researching the doomsday machine.  What do Olivia, Astrid, and Broyles do when there are no active cases, work part time jobs?  Is this a division of the FBI or a volunteer fire department?

If the Building is  a Rockin’, Don’t Come a Knockin’…

Is putting a portable seismograph in a multi-story building in a busy urban are really going to be very useful?  The normal motion of the building (yes, buildings move in the wind), the vibration cause by people moving about in the building and using the elevator, and the traffic in the streets below, etc are going to create a lot of background noise on that seismograph.

Walter’s Consistent Position

Peter is surprised that after all the Fringe events that Walter has seen, he doesn’t believe in ghosts, but it seems consistent to me.  The Fringe events are weird, but scientifically explainable phenomenon (at least in the show they are) and not really paranormal in nature.   It appears that Walter believes that the mind is a scientifically explainable, emergent property of the brain, and that there is no soul to survive the death of the body and brain; therefore he doesn’t believe in ghosts.

Proof, You Keep Using that Word, I Do Not Think it Means What You think it Does…

Walter:

“If her husband had this apartment, then it stands to reason that her husband’s double may have this apartment on the other side.”

Wlater’s OK, so far…

“Which proves I’m right.”

Um, non sequitur.  At this point, what Walter had was a reasonable speculation, and the basis of a plausible hypothesis, but he doesn’t have proof of anything, yet.

Quantum Plot Point

Quantum entanglement has been a somewhat popular science fiction device recently, having been used in Flash Forward, Mass Effect 2, and now Fringe, and it’s pretty much always used wrongly.  It doesn’t work on the macroscopic level, and the real potential applications aren’t as cool as things like faster than light communication or bridging universes with emotional longing.  Quantum teleporting sounds cool, but is mostly of interest to physicists.  Quantum computing and cryptography are technically cool, but don’t provide any major new plot devices beyond faster computers and unbreakable codes.

Einstein was not a fan of quantum theory, and was never able to fully accept it.  His “spooky action at a distance” and “God does not play dice with the universe” quotes were intended as disparaging remarks about quantum theory.

Premature Comment…

During the climatic scene in the apartment, I wrote down in my notes that it was a lost opportunity that the writers didn’t make this a parallel episode showing how the teams in each universe dealt with the two different sides of the same Fringe event, beginning to end, especially considering the dilemma that Walter was facing in this episode.  At the end of the episode, they did show the Fringe team in the Alterverse investigating the disturbance on that side, but I still think it would have been more interesting to see my version.  It will be interesting to see if the disappearing event in the alterverse ever gets questioned further, but I’m not holding my breath.

Location, Location, Location.

Just a couple of notes here about the vortex events in Fringe.  First, it’s very convenient that none of them have occurred anywhere not on or very close to the surface of the Earth.  If one occurred at the bottom of a deep ocean trench, in the core of the Earth, high in the atmosphere, in or on the Sun, or on the moon, etc, they could be kind of hard to seal in amber.  Also, the writers are portraying a geocentric universe.  Think about it for a minute.  The location of the disturbances and the vortices are fixed positions on the surface of the Earth, but those locations are not fixed in space.  The Earth rotates on its axis, so the rips in space are also rotating about the Earth’s axis as well.  The Earth, and the rips in space also orbit the sun, which orbits the center on the Milky Way, which is also in motion as well.  The rips in space are not fixed points in the fabric of the universe (if such a concept even has any meaning), but they follow the same somewhat chaotic path in the universe that the locations on Earth where they first appeared do.  The vortices appear to be dragged along by gravity.

Posted in Blue Episode, Fringe, Science, Television | Tagged: , , | 5 Comments »

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