Things to Come

We all get asked about what is our favourite film. My answer is always, that I don’t have one, movies are like books or chocolates, depending on the time and taste we come across on or two every-so- often which makes us stop and think. I was fortunate enough as a kid/young adult to come across three movies, in some ways similar, in others quite different. Those movies; Casablanca (Curtiz,1942)  Roma, Città Aperta  (Rossellini, 1945) and  “Things to Come” (Cameron Menzies, 1936) all left me wanting to know more. I can remember at different times watching, as a kid, both Things to Come and Roma, I did not know about them before hand, but once I had seen them, they left a mark. As an adult, our paths crossed again and I got to know and appreciate them. These are the movies which first found me and gave me an appreciation of cinematography as an art and medium for an author’s vision.

I was affected by the brutality and shear dystopia of the vision set out by wells, Korda and Cameron Menzies, it was dark and as a kid, the stuff of nightmares, the bombing of the city initially and then with the sleeping gas by Wings over the World, left me with a chill I can still remember the best part of 30 years later. The poignancy of the air raids stuck with me, perhaps because I was (still am) a child of the cold war, and we grew up with the sword of nuclear conflict hanging over us.

The film opens in an English town/city, at one time it has the magnificent architecture of a capital but also the feel of a small English town, the name of the town is: “Everytown”. This unromantic view, naming sets the tone for what we have ahead. It is the Christmas period and our hero John Cabal (Raymond Massey, How the West Was Won, 1962) is talking with two guests, they turn to the subject of possible war. The discussion shows that opinion is divided between the friends . The conversation  looks to the future history which may come given the on-going situation, it is even felt by some there that war might be good for society generally, spurring-on technological development. Our host Cabal is a pacifist and does not accept the benefits of war. The theoretical discussion is thrown in to sharp relief when later on Everytown  is subjected to what can only be described as a Blitzkrieg attack using planes and tanks reducing the town to rubble. 

Looking at these scenes of destruction we might be tempted to guffaw at the special effects and models, but we need to remember this was a ground-breaking vision in 1936, get past the limitations of the period and watch the movie, you will be rewarded for it.  We might also not appreciate the forward looking nature of the story itself. We need to remember that the movie is from 1936, the vision from the book even earlier. This movie looks at the world around it and guesses to the future in store, unfortunately it was not too far wrong. The movie is as visual as it is vocal, it is probably the first film, the cinematography of which, left a mark on me. At the time there would have been no other movie which pulled the fears of the time in to such a neat package, giving us a glimpse of what the fears of the time were like. We can contrast it with movies like 2The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” (1943) which although filmed in war time, sought to show how an individual’s respect for another can overcome the evils of war, society was never allowed to descend to total self-destruction, it is a romanticised comedy of sorts. Things to Come  makes no attempt to lighten the message, continuously bringing home  the horror of the situation.

The war is not a short affair,  dragging on for decades through the 50’s and 60’s, it is total war bringing in everybody including pacifist Cabal in uniform as a pilot.  Even here we see the struggle of humanity over the destruction. Massey shoots down an enemy bomber pilot, but then lands to offer him help. The pilot is dying and as they talk  a young girl comes across them, the gas and poison of the attacks is also falling around them, the pilot gives the girl his mask, Cabal rescues the girl and takes her back in his aircraft, leaving the pilot his gun, who after reflecting on saving the girl and in all probability  killing her family, shoots himself.

As the war progresses into the 1960’s the cause of the conflict has long since been lost to the fug of war and history. Just as we thought things could not get any worse a new evil is visited upon Everytown , biological warfare in the form  of a plague which causes the Wandering sickness), we are never told who the enemy was that unleashed this. Over half the surviving population of the world is wiped out. Any semblance of national government is also gone. The war has reversed and destroyed the technological advances made up until the war started.

The scene next brings us to about 1970, Everytown is in the hands of “The Boss” (Ralph Richardson, Doctor Zhivago, 1965), he is every bit the medieval warlord. Firm and vicious, he has controlled the plague by shooting anybody suffering from it.  We see he has designs on a nearby group, the Hill People, he want to take their coal  and shale to make fuel for his surviving planes and grow his little empire. He is a despot in the classical sense.

Into this new Everytown flies a modern aircraft far beyond the biplanes of The Boss, piloted by Cabal himself. He tells us of a new civilisation growing in Basra, Iraq. It is made up of surviving “Engineers and Mechanics” who have come together to form a new society, a new world order, based on science, technology and learning. Cabal is taken captive and forced to work on the Boss’s biplanes to service and repair them. He is assigned another to work with him, Gordon (Derrick De Marney), who escapes using the repaired aircraft. He flies to the new society, calling itself “Wings over The World”.

Our next view of Everytown is it being attacked by this new society, this time the gas used is a sleeping gas, when the population reawakens The Boss is dead. As the decades pass we move in to the middle 21^st century around 2036. Society has advanced quickly, learning and growing through science and exploration. This has not all been perfect, this quick advancement puts strain on society. 

The strains rise to a popular uprising against a planned rocket launch to the Moon. Faced with the danger to the mission the chairman of the ruling council, Oswald Cabal, John’s grandson and also played by Massey) pulls forward the launch. These people are seen almost as luddites. Addressing the crowds towards the end of the movie he asks “All the universe – or nothingness, which shall it be?”

It is probably hard to underplay the part this movie should play in cinema history, The vision is clear and shocking, no more shocking for the vision itself, even before Poland in 1939 or even the Spanish Civil War which was only gathering pace in 1936 we are shown the destructive nature of Blitzkrieg. We are shown the destruction of society and humanities descent to a new Dark Age.  Much has been made of the technological advances made by society as a result of WWII. Wells, Cameron Menzies and Korda gave us a new vision which was scarily accurate. We see how eventually a new society is born based on the advances of science, however all is not perfect, order and control seem perfect, but are they?

There are few movies which despite being  nearly 70 years old can still pack the same punch as they did when first out. The message of Things to Come is as valid now as it was in 1936.

Standing an egg on its head – only on the spring equinox?

Standing an egg on its head – only on the spring equinox?

This is the kind of logic question, which needs to be asked carefully: can you stand an egg on its head on the vernal equinox? Yes, given the proper practice. Can you stand the egg on its head on any other day of the year? Yes, given the proper practice.

There are some urban myths  and stories that can stand a little digging, but this is not one of them in my not very humble opinion. The equinox and by extension the seasons all depend on the tilt of the earth, relative to the sun, twice a year, (spring and autumn equinoxes) the tilt of the Earth on its axis is perpendicular to the sun and so equal distribution of day and night.

Of course historically the vernal equinox has had a great cultural significance for many people’s, being of equal length day and night , the days following would be longer, it is a time of rebirth, of new light , of new beginnings. It is likely that eggs have played an important part in these celebrations over different cultures and generations. We only have to look at the Easter Egg traditions which now accompany the Easter festival. It is thought that the traditions regarding eggs predate the Christian festival, there are of course Christian traditions which have grown up associated with eggs, such as the analogue between Christ’s  birth out of the Sacred Womb and the painting of the eggs symbolises using  a food to celebrate to celebrate which was banned during the Lenten period.

It is not beyond logic that the standing at the spring equinox story would gain momentum, after all it is the time of year most associated with eggs.  There is a suggestion that the Chinese first started the association of egg standing and Spring equinox (note;  there is some discussion around this as the Chinese festival upon which the observation occurs is actually a few weeks away from the vernal equinox, Also by-and-large, Chinese festivals  follow the lunar calendar). This period is seen as a time of balance, equal day and night dark and light. The egg with its life giving associations was in balance when stood, this is a good omen for the year ahead.

What are the factors which could influence the standing of an egg?

Gravity, we know that the lower the centre of gravity, the more stable an item is (usually), so using the flatter end can help this.  There is nothing in the spring equinox to alter the gravitational pull on the egg. The egg is one of two bodies and as Newton wrote (translated):  Every point mass attracts every single other point mass by a force pointing along the line intersecting both points. The force is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square  of the distance between them[1]. so all you need to do is have the intersection line at the right angle relative to the egg and planet. The actual angle of the planet is not of any consequence because the centre of gravity in the same (give or take, but not enough to influence the egg). Slight aside: again using logic, if the Earth’s angle had an influence, then surely the geo-location used to attempt the egg standing would be crucial. If the Earths angle is so important, then surely the only place to do it would be at the appropriate north pole (true north as against the other 5 or so north poles)[2], after all if done anywhere else is that angle off set? If there is an offsetting, can that be built in to the equation  (so to speak) for when the earth is not located at the vernal equinox.

This of course brings me to the one of the basic objections to the theory: why is it only on the vernal equinox, there is nothing gravitationally different between the two. Not only that but are we saying that the premise does not hold in the opposite hemisphere? Again I can see no difference between either hemisphere. Given that the Earth is more-or-less a sphere – we will ignore the slight flattening effect between the poles – should there be a influence on where we are East or West, left or right. We need to remember markers such as the Greenwich meridian are human constructs, the meridian could very easily have been Paris, save for political influence.

The difficulty of standing an egg is, as we know, balance. Let’s have a look at that. The oval egg is made up of the thick white of the egg, in which sits the dense yoke. This raises the centre of gravity. Also the yoke is often non-symmetrical in its location or resting in the egg. The steady hand is needed to “feel-for” where the actual centre of gravity is for a specific egg. One of the areas that have been looked at, is the nature of the shell. An egg with a rougher texture to its shell will grip a surface better than a smooth egg and so will be more likely to remain in position. Which end you try to stand also influences. As mentioned above, balancing on the narrow end (pole) of the egg is what takes the greatest skill given the limit surface area with which to work.

Given the relatively small surface areas involved (the end tip) and the corresponding points on the object the egg is standing on, it is easy to see how an outside influence like a vibration, air current or other factor could prevent standing, but a stable environment with no drafts will quickly overcome this.

Oh and by-the-way, for any of you wise-asses, we are talking about a raw egg. To show the complexity of egg balancing, take two eggs one hard boiled, the other raw. Spin both and then hold to stop, take your hand away and the boiled on will fall over while the raw egg will likely restart spinning (if you did it right) because the inside of the egg did not stop and the inertia of its spin starts the process again for the whole egg.  Even better, take the hard-boiled egg, lay it on its side and start it spinning as quickly as you can, once the egg is rotating quickly enough it will rise up and rotate like a spinning top. This seems counter intuitive but  Keith Muffatt and Yutake Shimomura have studied this area and explain that it’s because of friction. Friction destabalises the spinning of the egg and causes a shift in position. Essentially an amount of the kinetic energy generated by the spinis converted to potential energy, this is the energy that is stored in an object that has a distance to fall. For a few seconds the egg when standing on end has more potential energy and less kinetic energy, at least for a few seconds.[3]

So after all of that, the big question is, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Stay tuned to fine the definitive answer…

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[1] ·  - Proposition 75, Theorem 35: p.956 - I.Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman, translators: Isaac Newton, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Preceded by A Guide to Newton's Principia, by I.Bernard Cohen. University of California Press 1999 ISBN 0-520-08816-6 ISBN 0-520-08817-4

[2] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-earth-has-more-than-one-north-pole/

[3]http://cel.webofknowledge.com/InboundService.do?product=CEL&SID=Z1ElMR2LEuwatdYo3Q6&UT=000174607800032&SrcApp=Nature&action=retrieve&Init=Yes&Func=Frame&SrcAuth=Nature&customersID=Nature&IsProductCode=Yes&mode=FullRecord