Still a little light on science news this month. Even I am more concerned about economic and war-related news right now.
We’ll start with the COVID-19 news first as it’s still relevant even if we’re at the tail end of the pandemic. Pretty much everybody will have wondered why some people remain uninfected even after being exposed multiple times while others get infected only through casual contact. According to the preprint of a new study, it seems that around 1 in 10 carry a genetic mutation, called HLA B 1501, that led them to mount a more effective immune response against COVID-19 using T cells generated from common colds. They still get infected but they are usually asymptomatic as their immune system fights it off so quickly. Note that this study still needs to be peer reviewed however and no doubt it will receive plenty of attention.
Next is a study that has major implications on our understanding of how air pollution leads to cancer. The conventional view was that many of the carcinogenic substances that constitute the polluting particles in air directly damaged cells, leading to cancer. The team found however that many such substances don’t seem to directly damage cells at all. Instead, their presence activates an alarm signal in the lungs and when already damaged cells receive that signal, they may become cancerous. This raises the potential of taking drugs that block this alarm signal for people who live in particularly polluted areas to prevent damaged lung cells from actually becoming cancerous.
Finally a more speculative paper examining what causes some sub-regions of countries to want to secede. They determine this by applying a large dataset of 173 countries into a model of the political economy, which is always a little subjective but perhaps better than nothing. The upshot is that regions mainly want to secede not because of economic reasons but because the people of the region hold to an identity different from that of the wider country.
Finally here’s the video of NASA’s DART mission to attempt to redirect an asteroid by crashing a spacecraft into it just because it’s so cool. It’s just a test and so far there’s no word yet on how much they have managed to alter the asteroid’s trajectory with such a small spacecraft but it is undoubtedly cool and the stuff of science-fiction turned reality.
Taiwan has, I believe, a cinematic heritage of films about juvenile delinquency and A Sun can be regarded as a continuation of that tradition. It is epic in length as it tracks its young delinquent’s imprisonment, rehabilitation and reintegration into society while the dynamics of his family are also upended. While the film has its moments, especially while playing around with absurdist jokes, I believe its light-and-dark motif to be too facile and the structure and theme too traditionally Asian to be very interesting.
Courtroom dramas don’t seem to be very popular these days and it’s difficult to think of many modern films which portray lawyers in a positive light. This isn’t quite a courtroom drama but it is about a lawyer doing heroic work so it comes close enough in my book. It’s a biography of Kenneth Feinberg who was in charge of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and so had to balance competing interests to decide how much compensation each victim of the attacks should receive. In terms of artistic merit, this isn’t that good a film but it does its job well enough and I really like the idea of having art shine more light on the lesser known bits and pieces that make civilization work
This was distributed for free a while ago on Steam, providing the perfect opportunity to experience what is now hailed as the forerunner of the walking simulator genre. Most people can probably complete this game in about an hour so I was never willing to pay anything like its normal asking price even though I was curious about it. I’ve played enough of the games that came later to already know what to expect and overall this title is pretty much what I thought it would be.
I have almost no interest in any of the Disney animated films these days as my watch list is too crammed to bother with work that might only be marginally interesting. This one made the cut largely because it’s set in Colombia and features heavy use of Spanish, plus its songs were written by Lin-Manuel Miranda. I’d say it counts as a great success as pure spectacle and I do like how Disney seems to be moving towards stories where the conflict is purely internal such that there are no external enemies to defeat. The songs are great too though I can detect they are trying hard to rekindle the magic of Frozen. The plot is rather thin though and it relies on the song and dance sequences to distract audiences from that fact.
This was a frustrating film for me: a German science-fiction romantic film by a director, Maria Schrader, who I feel has no background and no interest in science-fiction. One problem is that the premise has been explored before, such as the Black Mirror episode Be Right Back for example. This might be fine as there is always more to add to the subject but this film demonstrates no awareness of previously existing interpretations and has zero interest in exploring the physical practicalities of such an android and the implications of the technology beyond the socio-cultural sphere. The film is excellent in other respects and even has a worthy argument to advance but it’s just terrible at being science-fiction.
After loving Local Hero so much, adding this equally highly regarded earlier film by director Bill Forsyth to my watch list was a must. This is a really low budget production, so cheaply made that the actors apparently just wore their own clothes. Yet this back to basics production values actually heighten its sense of authenticity and provinciality. I can’t say that I always get the film’s sense of humor but I really loved its charm and especially appreciated how it treats the subject of teenage infatuation and horniness with kindness and sweetness.
