Dr. Michio Kaku – The World in 2030 [best documentery] 2015
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All posts by Mike Zonta
Why are we [The Prosperos] still here? (from Suzanne Deakins, H.W., M.)
Sorry, this a bit long…
Thank you to all who have answered [this email]. There are of course no right or wrong answers nor am I looking for anything specific. However, I feel we need to think about these questions. The legacy of Truth and what we are capable of doing needs to be understood as we begin to pass.
To me, friendship is indeed why we stick together to a degree. We share a common language. When I was in China I often longed to hear English spoken with American accents. I could understand Cantonese to an extent, and many people spoke passable English. But it was something about being able to converse more freely that brought me back to the USA. We share a common language and accent from our study and connections. But that, I believe is not why we remain.
I believe that there is a hidden agenda waiting for us. I say hidden because as consciousness we have not recognized it as yet. This agenda (and I have ideas but no answers) does not keep us from teaching and writing but awaits us.
There is one thing we do better as a group than anybody else, that is brainstorming. I believe we could solve some real problems for our country and world if we put our heads to it.
While in NYC, I sat on two brain trusts. One was under Bloomberg, We discussed and came up with ideas for the business world.
The other was with the IBM fellows program where we discussed their inventions and came up with ways to use the emerging technology and how to communicate the ideas.
The common denominator in each group was speaking the same language. The Bloomberg had in its’ group people like Jarvik (who invented the first artificial heart) and Marilyn Von Savant etc. There was a wide disparity of occupations and of course languages.
In both cases, we came up with some pretty innovative ideas that were passed on to people who could use them. To me, they appeared to benefit quite a few people in a positive manner.
I believe that this kind of brain trust may be why we are still in contact with each other putting friendship aside.
The present atmosphere in America is dire and is affecting the entire world to a degree. A large conflict of values has permeated our politics and government. The value confusion has left us feeling as if there are no values at all. Moral and ethical considerations seem to have been thrown out the window. All resolution between the material and spiritual laws seem to have been lost.
As Translators, we hold a wholistic and eclectic view of the world. Our ability to Translate is a simple concept of resolution that brings focus and clarity. In essence, Translation denotes a broader, more comprehensive, multi-disciplinary approach to human problems. Most problem solvers tend to fit their problems to their way of thinking about the problem. Hence, you cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that produced it.
Straight thinking is a science; it is a search (of values) truth, insight, and understanding. This type of thinking cannot be, should not be limited to professionals in their chosen fields.
Orthodox scientific thinking has tended to put too much emphasis on instruments, techniques, procedures, and methods rather than the problems, questions, functions, and goals. If the end goal is a resolution of conflict and confusion, then only deductive reasoning is going to work (as we use in the syllogistic process).
As early as 1928 Abraham Maslow wrote in an undergraduate paper: “At the moment of the mystic experience we see wonderful possibilities and inscrutable depths in mankind.”
I don’t know if any of this resonates with you, but I feel brainstorming could bring about a new idea or or or… If we solve a world problem hurrah, if we simply find a way to make sure that in the future Translation and RHS are not forgotten great! Time is growing short for all of us. To me, we have the ability to help bring the world into a new dimension we just have to think about it as a group.
Our study has been like Joseph…preparing us to know that Truth has sent us before so we might preserve consciousness.
Much love,
Suzanne
Aries Full Moon, October 15, at 09:23 pm PDT
This is a challenging Full Moon cycle and there are several factors at play. First, Uranus is conjunct this Aries Full Moon, causing quick and sudden shifts in feelings and moods, which is challenging enough, but the Moon and Uranus in Aries are also in opposition to Mercury in Librawhich portends dramatic shifts in communication and how we feel and respond to what we see and hear.
If that isn’t enough, Pluto in Capricorn is conjunct Mars in Capricorn, creating a dynamic T-Square to the other difficult energies. These aspects are known to expose secrets, hidden agendas and deceptions within global political and financial structures, governments, organized religions, and large corporate interests. This is a powerful time when the dark underbelly can be more visible bringing public awareness that will eventually liberate us from outdated structures and old ineffective and harmful patterns of living and being. We must see the mire and corruption before we can effectively change it.
Aries energy can be headstrong, impulsive, impatient and reactive, moving forward with dynamic and often aggressive force. As a result we may see public and private controversy heat up and people taking action more on impulse than reason.
The Sun in Libra is a good balance for the aggravation of this T-Square. Libra energy always wants to consider all sides and take action that is considerate of everyone and everything involved, striving for balance and harmony. The down side is sacrificing too much to keep the peace.
Issues about freedom and independence may take center stage and shake things up personally and publicly. We may feel off balance or out-of-harmony. This is a good time to ask yourself what must be done to restore harmony. What bold, well thought out steps can you take to start a new, more balanced approach to rectify discord in your personal life and in your world. Spend time in quiet contemplation and listen for guidance.
Written by Wendy Cicchetti
A Full Moon symbolizes the fulfillment of the seeds planted at a previous New Moon or some earlier cycle. Each Full Moon reminds us of the seeds that may be coming to maturity, to their fullness, to fruition, to the place where the fruits or gifts are received. It may seem that fulfillment of our goals takes a long time. Some intentions may manifest within the two week phase prior to the next New or Full Moon. Some however, depending on their complexity, may take a much longer time. Just remember that our thoughts and emotions set Universal Action in motion and much work takes place behind the scenes as everything is orchestrated for fulfillment. Keep visualizing your goals as though you have already attained them and they will eventually manifest. Do not concern yourself with current conditions or worry about controlling it. The universe takes care of those details. Just keep seeing what you want, and move in that direction with your actions, and give no energy to what you don’t want. Patience is required.
She became Christine and the Queens so she could be herself
By Ryan Kost (sfgate.com)
October 7, 2016
There’s a difference between the person Héloïse Letissier is as she walks down the street and the person she becomes onstage. The person who stands quietly at the periphery of a party, the person who describes herself as “loner,” that’s Héloïse.
But the person who has become one of France’s biggest pop musicians, the smooth-moving weirdo with the funny faces performing Sunday, Oct. 16, at Treasure Island Music Festival, that’s Christine — or, to be very precise, Christine and the Queens.
The story of how Letissier found Christine is almost a legend at this point. It happened six years ago, back when she was a 22-year-old French theater student with a broken heart, alone in London.
“I was kind of lost in every way,” she says over the phone from Paris. Letissier pauses for a moment. “Trapped as well.”
She felt “lost” in the sense that she didn’t know “how to go on in life and what to do” with herself. She felt trapped in the sense that she had always been surrounded by images of women to which she couldn’t relate. “I didn’t feel like a proper young lady,” she says. “Or I was made to feel improper.”
After some wandering, she made her way to Madame JoJos, a queer nightclub in the city’s West End. There she met three drag queens who didn’t have much time for her self-pity.
“I don’t understand what you’re whining about,” she remembers one of them saying. “Just try to do something out of your love for the stage.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” she replied.
“Well, search. Search for something. Create a character for yourself.”
It was simple advice, the right sort at the right time, and something clicked.
“Meeting those drag queens, those performers, was incredible for me as a young girl,” Letissier says. “I was like, ‘Let’s not play by the rules, then — let’s play with the rules. Let’s try to subvert them.’”
Letissier, who identifies as pansexual, thought about her own childhood, about the role models she’d searched for but rarely found. “We don’t have lots of different ways of existing as women,” she says. Occasionally she’d come across somebody like Patti Smith or Laurie Anderson, artists “who drifted slightly away from what we expect a woman to be. … But they are quite few.”
So she began to get to know Christine, to create her, really, out of her own desire as “this kind of weird cousin and weird sister that could just portray a different way of existing.”
“If we’re really honest, I think I’m even more myself when I’m Christine,” she says. “It’s just a full expression of myself.”
While all of this was going on, Letissier also began, for the first time in her life, making music. What she wound up with was an understated synth-pop that mixes minimalist beats with elements of R&B and funk. She sings over all of this with the sort of expressive voice that creates audible characters; sometimes she whispers, sometimes she shouts.
Both the person she presents onstage — in the ways she moves and dresses — and the lyrics she’s crafted subvert gender and the sorts of social expectations that led Letissier to create Christine in the first place. In “iT,” one of her most striking songs, she addresses her own queerness head on.
“She wants to be a man/ But she lies/ She wants to be born again/ But she’ll lose/ She draws her own crotch by herself/ But she’ll lose because it’s fake/ It’s a fake, it’s a fake, it’s a fake.” The last bit fades just slightly, until she’s back with force: “No! I’ve got it/ I’m a man now/ And there’s nothing you can do to make me change my mind/ I’m a man now.”
Letissier released her first studio album, “Chaleur Humaine” (Human Warmth), in France in 2014, and less than a year later she was named best female artist at the Victoires de la Musique, the French equivalent of the Grammy Awards. Earlier this year, that same album was rereleased in English (though Letissier still dips in and out of French as she sings) to even further acclaim.
That’s all secondary, though, Letissier says, to the real prize that came with having created Christine.
“I don’t feel I come onstage to be admired,” she says. “I do come onstage to be contagious. To really relate. I kind of really feel like sometimes I dissolve, and people really share something with me.
“Onstage I do have this feeling of belonging. … I don’t find it anywhere else.”
Ryan Kost is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rkost@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @RyanKost
Arundhati Roy on history
“History is really a study of the future, not the past.”
–Arundhati Roy
Suzanna Arundhati Roy (born November 24, 1961) is an Indian author. She is best known for her novel The God of Small Things, which won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997. This novel became the biggest-selling book by a nonexpatriate Indian author. Wikipedia
A LOT Of Straight Men Watch Gay Porn
A new survey suggests a lot more heterosexual men watch gay porn than you’d think. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below. http://tytnetwork.com/join
“Great news for dudes and society’s potential of accepting the idea their sexuality may also exist on a spectrum! A new study from Dr. Martin J. Downing dives the into porn-watching habits of 821 gay, straight, and bisexual men reveals some unexpected behavior. Namely, despite the annoying perpetuation of homophobic rhetoric — like “bromance,” why — surrounding the culture, 21 percent of the heterosexual men surveyed say they’ve watched same-sex male porn in the past six months.
This is progress! This is (hopefully) the death of beer-fueled, bro-on-bro hugs cut abrupt by a “no homo” disclaimer! Conventional wisdom and acceptance of women’s sexual fluidity has only gained steam sinceAngelina Jolie started being open about her sexuality eons ago — perhaps making Miley Cryus coming out as pansexual pretty anticlimactic (and, frankly, not super surprising). It only seems fair that hetero men should enjoy the same freedom to dig whomever they dig.
Because self-identifying gay dudes do. The same study found 55 percent of gay male participants have watched heterosexual pornrecently. Researchers call this “identity discrepant porn-viewing,” according to Vocativ. I call this “cool. Watch whatever porn you want without letting that inform your sense of sexuality or self unless that’s what you want.””*
Read more here: http://www.thefrisky.com/2016-10-12/w…
Hosts: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian
Cast: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian
***
The Largest Online News Show in the World. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE STREAMING weekdays 6-8pm ET. http://www.tytnetwork.com/live
Young Turk (n), 1. Young progressive or insurgent member of an institution, movement, or political party. 2. Young person who rebels against authority or societal expectations. (American Heritage Dictionary)
“Spacecraft ‘Nuclear Batteries’ Could Get a Boost from New Materials” from NASA JPL (and Hanz Bolen, H.W., M.)
No extension cord is long enough to reach another planet, and there’s no spacecraft charging station along the way. That’s why researchers are hard at work on ways to make spacecraft power systems more efficient, resilient and long-lasting.
“NASA needs reliable long-term power systems to advance exploration of the solar system,” said Jean-Pierre Fleurial, supervisor for the thermal energy conversion research and advancement group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. “This is particularly important for the outer planets, where the intensity of sunlight is only a few percent as strong as it is in Earth orbit.”
A cutting-edge development in spacecraft power systems is a class of materials with an unfamiliar name: skutterudites (skut-ta-RU-dites). Researchers are studying the use of these advanced materials in a proposed next-generation power system called an eMMRTG, which stands for Enhanced Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator.
What is an RTG?
Radioactive substances naturally generate heat as they spontaneously transform into other elements. Radioisotope power systems make use of this heat as fuel to produce useful electricity for use in a spacecraft. The radioisotope power systems on NASA spacecraft today harness heat from the natural radioactive decay of plutonium-238 oxide.
The United States first launched a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) into space on a satellite in 1961. RTGs have powered NASA’s twin Voyager probes since their launch in 1977; more than 10 billion miles (16 billion kilometers) away, the Voyagers are the most distant spacecraft from Earth and are still going. RTGs have enabled many other missions that have sent back a wealth of science results, including NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover and the New Horizons mission, which flew by Pluto in 2015.
The new eMMRTG would provide 25 percent more power than Curiosity’s generator at the start of a mission, according to current analyses. Additionally, since skutterudites naturally degrade more slowly that the current materials in the MMRTG, a spacecraft outfitted with an eMMRTG would have at least 50 percent more power at the end of a 17-year design life than it does today.
“Having a more efficient thermoelectric system means we’d need to use less plutonium. We could go farther, for longer and do more,” Bux said.
What are skutterudites?
The defining new ingredients in the proposed eMMRTG are materials called skutterudites, which have unique properties that make them especially useful for power systems. These materials conduct electricity like metal, but heat up like glass, and can generate sizable electrical voltages.
Materials with all of these characteristics are hard to come by. A copper pot, for example, is an excellent conductor of electricity, but gets very hot quickly. Glass, on the other hand, insulates against heat well, but it can’t conduct electricity. Neither of these properties are appropriate in a thermoelectric material, which converts heat into electricity.
“We needed to design high temperature compounds with the best mix of electrical and heat transfer properties,” said Sabah Bux, a technologist at JPL who works on thermoelectric materials. “Skutterudites, with their complex structures composed of heavy atoms like antimony, allow us to do that.”
RTGs in space
A team at JPL is working on turning skutterudites into thermocouples. A thermocouple is a device that generates an electrical voltage from the temperature difference in its components. Compared to other materials, thermocouples made of skutterudites need a smaller temperature difference to produce the same amount of useful power, making them more efficient.
THERMOCOUPLES
What is a thermoelectric material?
What is a thermoelectric material?
Thermoelectric materials are materials that can convert a temperature difference into electricity, or vice versa.
What is a thermocouple?
A conventional thermocouple is made of two different thermoelectric materials joined together at one “shoe,” or end, where its temperature is measured. When you heat up a thermocouple, the difference in the conductivity of the materials results in one metal becoming hotter than the other, and causes the temperature of the joined end to change. This temperature difference creates a voltage (the force with which electrons flow through the material), and converts a portion of the transferred heat into electricity.
How do thermocouples work?
Thermocouples are in every home: They measure the temperature in your oven and control your water heater. Most household thermocouples are inefficient: they produce a voltage so small, it produces almost no electrical current. By contrast skutterudites are a lot more efficient: They require a smaller temperature difference to produce useful electricity.
NASA is studying thermocouples made out of skutterudites that have a flat top and two “legs,” somewhat like the iconic Stonehenge stone monuments. Heat transfers across the thermocouple from a high-temperature heat source to a suitable heat ‘sink’ (such as cold water). An electrical current is produced between the hot end (the flat top) and the cold end (the legs) of the thermocouple.
“It’s as though there are a lot of people in a room where one side is hot and one side is cold,” said JPL’s Sabah Bux. “The people, which represent the electrical charges, will move from the hot side to the cold side. That movement is electricity.”
The thermocouples are joined end-to-end in one long circuit – the electrical current goes up, over and down each thermocouple, producing useful power. Devices outfitted in this way can take advantage of a variety of heat sources, ranging in temperature from 392 to more than 1832 degrees Fahrenheit (200 to more than 1000 degrees Celsius).
In Curiosity’s power system, the Multi Mission RTG (MMRTG), 768 thermocouples encircle a central can-like structure, all facing the same direction towards the heat source, at the center of the generator. The enhanced MMRTG (eMMRTG) would have the same number of thermocouples, but all would be made from skutterudite material instead of the alloys of telluride currently used.
“Only minimal changes to the existing MMRTG design are needed to get these results,” Fleurial said. A group of about two dozen people at JPL is dedicated to working on these advanced materials and testing the resulting thermocouple prototypes.
The new skutterudite-based thermocouples passed their first major NASA review in late 2015. If they pass further reviews in 2017 and 2018, the first eMMRTG using them could fly aboard NASA’s next New Frontiers-class mission.
Earth-based applications of skutterudite
There are many potential applications for these advanced thermoelectric materials here on Earth.
“In situations where waste heat is emitted, skutterudite materials could be used to improve efficiency and convert that heat into useful electricity,” said Thierry Caillat, project leader for the technology maturation project at JPL.
For example, exhaust heat from a car could be converted into electricity and fed back into the vehicle, which could be used to charge batteries and reduce fuel use. Industrial processes that require high temperatures, such as ceramic and glass processing, could also use skutterudite materials to make use of waste heat. In 2015, JPL licensed patentson these high-temperature thermoelectric materials to a company called Evident Technologies, Troy, New York.
“Over the last 20 years, the field of thermoelectrics has come into being and blossomed, especially at JPL,” said Fleurial. “There’s a lot of great science happening in this area. We’re excited to explore the idea of taking these materials to space, and benefitting U.S. industry along the way.”
JPL’s work to develop higher-efficiency thermoelectric materials is carried out in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Teledyne Energy Systems and Aerojet Rocketdyne, and is funded by NASA’s Radioisotope Power System program, which is managed by NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. The spaceflight hardware is produced by Teledyne Energy Systems and Aerojet Rocketdyne under a contract held by the DOE, which fuels, completes final assembly and owns the end item. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
News Media Contact
Elizabeth Landau
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6425
elizabeth.landau@jpl.nasa.gov
“Teleporting toward a quantum Internet” from NASA JPL (and Hanz Bolen, H.W., M.)
Fast Facts:
› Quantum teleportation, a phenomenon in quantum physics, can be used to encrypt data.
› New study tests quantum teleportation in a city’s fiber network for the first time.
› In the future, quantum teleportation could be developed into infrastructure – creating a “quantum Internet.”
Quantum physics is a field that appears to give scientists superpowers. Those who understand the world of extremely small or cold particles can perform amazing feats with them — including teleportation — that appear to bend reality.
The science behind these feats is complicated, and until recently, didn’t exist outside of lab settings. But that’s changing: researchers have begun to implement quantum teleportation in real-world contexts. Being able to do so just might revolutionize modern phone and Internet communications, leading to highly secure, encrypted messaging.
A paper published in Nature Photonics and co-authored by engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, details the first experiments with quantum teleportation in a metropolitan fiber cable network. For the first time, the phenomenon has been witnessed over long distances in actual city infrastructure. In Canada, University of Calgary researchers teleported the quantum state of a photon more than 3.7 miles (6 kilometers) in “dark” (unused) cables under the city of Calgary. That’s a new record for the longest distance of quantum teleportation in an actual metropolitan network.
While longer distances had been recorded in the past, those were conducted in lab settings, where photons were fired through spools of cable to simulate the loss of signal caused by long distances. This latest series of experiments in Calgary tested quantum teleportation in actual infrastructure, representing a major step forward for the technology.
“Demonstrating quantum effects such as teleportation outside of a lab environment involves a whole new set of challenges. This experiment shows how these challenges can all be overcome and hence it marks an important milestone towards the future quantum Internet,” said Francesco Marsili, one of the JPL co-authors. “Quantum communication unlocks some of the unique properties of quantum mechanics to, for example, exchange information with ultimate security or link together quantum computers.”
Photon sensors for the experiment were developed by Marsili and Matt Shaw of JPL’s Microdevices Laboratory, along with colleagues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, Colorado. Their expertise was critical to the experiments: quantum networking is done with photons, and requires some of the most sensitive sensors in the world in order to know exactly what’s happening to the particle.
“The superconducting detector platform, which has been pioneered by JPL and NIST researchers, makes it possible to detect single photons at telecommunications wavelengths with nearly perfect efficiency and almost no noise. This was simply not possible with earlier detector types, and so experiments such as ours, using existing fiber-infrastructure, would have been close to impossible without JPL’s detectors,” said Daniel Oblak of the University of Calgary’s Institute for Quantum Science and Technology.
Safer emails using quantum physics
Shrink down to the level of a photon, and physics starts to play by bizarre rules. Scientists who understand those rules can “entangle” two particles so that their properties are linked. Entanglement is a mind-boggling concept in which particles with different characteristics, or states, can be bound together across space. That means whatever affects one particle’s state will affect the other, even if they’re located miles apart from one another.
This is where teleportation comes in. Imagine you have two entangled particles — let’s call them Photon 1 and Photon 2 — and Photon 2 is sent to a distant location. There, it meets with Photon 3, and the two interact with each other. Photon 3’s state can be transferred to Photon 2, and automatically “teleported” to the entangled twin, Photon 1. This disembodied transfer happens despite the fact that Photons 1 and 3 never interact.
This property can be used to securely exchange secret messages. If two people share an entangled pair of photons, quantum information can be transmitted in a disembodied fashion, leaving an eavesdropper with nothing to intercept and so unable to read the secret message.
Teleportation Means Going the Distance
This system of highly secure communications is being tested in a number of fields, Marsili said, including financial industries and agencies like NASA that want to protect their space data signals. The superconducting single photon detectors developed by Marsili, Shaw and their NIST colleagues are a key tool in doing this, because sending photons over long distances will inevitably lead to “loss” of the signal. Even when using a laser in space, light diffuses over distance, weakening the power of the signal being transmitted.
The next step is building repeaters that can further teleport the state of a photon from one location to the next. Just as repeaters are used to carry other telecommunication signals across long distances, they could be used to teleport entangled photons. Super-sensitive photon detectors would allow repeaters to send entangled photons across the country. For space-related communications, repeaters wouldn’t even be necessary; photons could eventually be fired into space using lasers, and photon states could be teleported from Earth.
No repeaters were used in the Calgary experiments, which were mainly meant to establish how quantum teleportation can be performed outside the lab. Researchers used the city’s dark fiber — a single optical cable with no electronics or network equipment flowing through them.
“By using advanced superconducting detectors, we can use individual photons to efficiently communicate both classical and quantum information from space to the ground,” Shaw said. “We are planning to use more advanced versions of these detectors for demonstrations of optical communication from deep space and of quantum teleportation from the International Space Station.”
The study was funded by Alberta Innovates Technology Futures; the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada; and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Part of the detector research was carried out at JPL under a contract with NASA. Caltech in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.
Researchers Advance ‘Quantum Teleportation’
For more information about JPL’s research on quantum teleportation, visit:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4384
News Media Contact
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
Andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
“The Mask You Live In” by The Representation Project
The Mask You Live In follows boys and young men as they struggle to stay true to themselves while negotiating America’s narrow definition of masculinity.
Pressured by the media, their peer group, and even the adults in their lives, our protagonists confront messages encouraging them to disconnect from their emotions, devalue authentic friendships, objectify and degrade women, and resolve conflicts through violence. These gender stereotypes interconnect with race, class, and circumstance, creating a maze of identity issues boys and young men must navigate to become “real” men.
Experts in neuroscience, psychology, sociology, sports, education, and media also weigh in, offering empirical evidence of the “boy crisis” and tactics to combat it. The Mask You Live In ultimately illustrates how we, as a society, can raise a healthier generation of boys and young men.
Book news: “Hag-Seed” by Margaret Atwood
Hag-Seed is the latest offering from Hogarth Shakespeare, a series that takes Ben Jonson’s quote “He was not of an age, but for all time” seriously and publishes novels by acclaimed and best-selling authors retelling Shakespeare’s plays. Hag-Seed is Margaret Atwood’s contribution—a brilliant retelling of The Tempest that is as enjoyable to read as it must have been for Prospero to watch the storm he created.
Hag-Seed starts in the middle of its story with the beginning of a production ofThe Tempest:
The house lights dim. The audience quiets.
ON THE BIG FLATSCREEN: Jagged yellow lettering on black:
THE TEMPEST
By William Shakespeare
With
The Fletcher Correctional Players
The Fletcher Correctional Players? Yes, this is a Tempest performed within a prison, with its own particular language, which we hear right away when the announcer begins:
What you’re gonna see, is a storm at sea:
Winds are howlin’, sailors yowlin’,
Passengers cursin’ ’em, ’cause it gettin’ worse:
Gonna hear screams, just like a ba-a-d dream,
But not all here is what it seem,
Just sayin’ …
Now we gonna start the playin’.
You might think that this is a cheap or easy way to adapt The Tempest but, as the announcer says at the very beginning: not all here is as it seems. There are layers upon layers of The Tempest woven throughout the plot of Hag-Seed, as we see just pages later when we meet Felix Phillips, the director of the Fletcher Correctional Players. We quickly learn that he used to be the artistic director of the prestigious Makeshiweg Festival before being disgraced and deposed by his colleague and rival, Anthony. Felix goes into self-imposed exile, taking a new name, Mr. Duke, and during his 12 years of reclusive living imagines that his daughter, Miranda, who died of meningitis at the age of 3, is living with him. This parallels the plot of Shakespeare’s play, in which Prospero, the duke of Milan, is overthrown by his brother Antonio, and set adrift in a leaky boat with his daughter Miranda until they come to the shore of an enchanted island. (If you need to brush up on yourTempest, Atwood thoughtfully includes a summary chapter at the end of the book.)
Felix has a history of adapting Shakespeare’s plays in highly creative ways—a “freely bleeding Lavinia in Titus,” a Pericles with spaceships and aliens, and, in A Winter’s Tale, a Hermione who returns to life as a vampire. And just before Anthony’s power play forces him out of the Makeshiweg Festival, Felix is planning an elaborate production of The Tempest. He wants it to be magical in more ways than one—he wants to use it to bring some aspect of his dead daughter back to life: “Lavinia, Juliet, Cordelia, Perdita, Marina. All the lost daughters. But some of them had been found again. Why not his Miranda?”
So after 12 years of living alone and following Anthony’s career from a distance, Felix takes a job directing a group of inmates at the Fletcher County Correctional Institute, certain that an opportunity for revenge will come. And when it does, he decides that it is time for him to stage The Tempest, a play about revenge, restoration, and return all at once.
While there are some wild moments in Hag-Seed, Atwood’s writing is so skillful that it is easy to suspend our disbelief. It also helps that so much theater is involved—we become used to articulate and expressive characters and fortuitous plot twists. One of the greatest pleasures of the book comes from one of the rules Felix sets out for his inmate actors: They can only use curse words from the play they are producing. “Whoreson … Malignant thing … Thou earth. Thou tortoise. Thou poisonous slave … Hag-seed … Pied ninny. Scurvy patch.” Which leads to such excellent exclamations as “Scurvy awesome!” and “Way to red plague go!” and “What the pied ninny is this?”
Another pleasure is being uncertain how the book will end—even if you know how The Tempest ends. Will The Fletcher Correctional Players perform the play? Will it help Felix get his revenge? Will it bring some version of Miranda back? The post-play reports that the actors are assigned help to keep the suspense—each one imagines the fate of their assigned character after The Tempest is over. Will Prospero be happy as reinstated Duke? What will Ariel do with his freedom? And what will happen to Caliban? The actors/inmates come up with surprising futures for their characters—some happy and some violent—and these possibilities make us wonder: Will any of these happen to Felix?
Only the title of the book remains a bit of a puzzle. Hag-seed is one of the nasty things that Prospero calls Caliban, an often-violent half-human creature who inhabits the island, and it makes the reader expect the book to be more about him. Caliban does get some good musical numbers in the Fletcher production ofTempest, but Hag-Seed is mostly about Felix-as-Prospero. Still, Caliban’s imagined afterlife sheds some light on Felix and the inmates’ possible futures, so perhaps the title is meant to call attention to that shift, which adds one last layer of The Tempest across Atwood’s brilliant tale, taking it past the last pages of the book and allowing it to linger in our minds even as we close its back cover.
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(Courtesy of avclub.com and Richard Burns, H.W., M.)