Weekly Geekly Newsletter for December 22, 2023
From the Math of Secret Santas to the Magic of a Classic Holiday Film
Christmas is just around the corner and that means that many of our workplaces are hosting annual holiday parties and possibly running Secret Santas, but is the Secret Santa being done in a way that ensures actual anonymity on the part of the gift givers?
That’s a question that Hannah Fry addresses in this entertaining Numberphile video. Hannah Fry is a wonderful public mathematician and she examines three different ways of determining who buys a gift for whom, but only one guarantees anonymity. As cool as this is, the twist at the end gave me a good laugh.
Around the Substack Community
asks what fantasy means to you. I’m currently working on a post expanding on my thoughts regarding Planetary Romance that will delve into the differences between Planetary Romance and Sword & Sorcery. Defining fantasy can be a difficult task, but it is also one of the joys of fandom.
The
Gazetteer has an end of year update discussing some of the happenings in the RPG-verse and other gaming spaces. wrote an interesting article back in September about memorable characters/defining characters and board games. Video games, and many other media, are filled with memorable characters, but with rare exceptions board games don’t tend to have the same kind of resonance with us. Why is this?
I might have shared this before, but I keep going back to
and his discussion of the Mazes and Monsters film. I’ve got a pretty decent sized Satanic Panic corner in my personal library and it includes two copies of the Mazes and Monsters film and one copy of the hardcover novel. While Mazes and Monsters gets a bunch of stuff wrong, it’s still a way better film than Skullduggery (the Canadian anti-D&D movie).
Weekly Film Article Cavalcade
This week, I’m adding a new regular writer to the Weekly Film Article Cavalcade. Where Luke Y Thompson and Courtney Howard will continue to be the critics of choice here, I’m adding
as our Box Office Guru. Scott is one of the best reporters on film performance out there and now that he’s put up his own shingle with The Outside Scoop, I’ll be sharing his thoughts and predictions on film performance. This week he includes some insights into the outlook for Aquaman. Let’s just say that the legacy DCEU looks like it will go out with a wimper.
Promo Cuts on Pop Culture from Luke “LYT Rules” Y. Thompson
Speaking of Aquaman, Luke Y Thompson reviewed the film for SuperHeroHype and seems to break from the consensus. I’m not sure whether I’ll like the film or not, I found the first one meh and Luke says that this one is more of the same. I will say that I’ve not been impressed with some of the critical reviews.
Earlier today I read one nameless reviewer who mocked the fact that the film used the term orichalcum and compared that to John Rogers’ use of “unobtanium” in The Core (or maybe he thought it originated in Avatar since the author didn’t name the film he mocked for using it), implying that it was “even dumber” than Rogers’ use. This told me three things about that reviewer, all of which are reasons they’ll likely never bless this space. First, that he is unfamiliar with the longstanding use of the term “unobtanium” in engineering, something that trained physicist Rogers would know and is likely why he used it in the film. Second, he told me that he probably isn’t familiar with Plato’s Critias where we get much of our mythology regarding Atlantis. If I’m not mistaken, Aquaman is King of Atlantis so having orichalcum be a part of the story makes sense mythically. Lastly, he hasn’t played Terraria. These kinds of oversights tend to make me trust a critic less. They were forgivable in a pre-Google world, but when it’s as easy as saying “Is this a real thing?” and typing up a query a lack of knowledge here shows laziness rather than expertise. None of which applies to Luke, who not only has a pretty rich knowledge of geek lore but also has the humility to look things up. I’m just annoyed with nameless.
Luke brings some of his knowledge of geek lore to bear in his review of the Diamond Select Invisible Woman action figure for SuperHeroHype. The review was a fun read, but I also think he captured some very cool shots in this article that demonstrate the high points of the figure.
Regular readers know that Luke also reviewed the new 4K disc release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem for me earlier this week.
Commentary from Courtney Howard
When it comes to critiques of the new Ferrari film, I’m most looking forward to seeing what Dale Launer has to say. Dale, who wrote My Cousin Vinny, has a tremendously deep knowledge of motorsport and manufacturing. You can see glimpses of it in Vinny, and if you’ve seen the movie you can guess how humorous any breakdown he writes might be. Howard doesn’t have Launer’s deep knowledge of motorsport, but that doesn’t stop her from writing a riveting review of Ferrari. Unlike the unnamed author above, she knows what she does and doesn’t know about the subject and her review sticks to her strengths, which are a keen ability to discuss both aesthetic and technical aspects of production and how and why they work (when they work). She gives the film high marks and I’m eager to see the film, even before I find out what Dale Launer thinks about it.
While Scott Mendelson points out that the majority of critics haven’t been kind to the new film Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, it looks like Courtney Howard’s positive review aligns with LYT’s above. Courtney highlights the film’s weaknesses, but also shares why fans might just have a good time with this final DCEU film.
Book Recommendation
I mentioned above that Hannah Fry is one of my favorite public mathematicians. I love the way she, and to be honest everyone else at Numberphile, make complex mathematical concepts more accessible to the public. She helps break down the mental resistance we often have to mathematics. You know what I’m talking about. It’s when we say “but when are we ever going to use this?” barrier. In the video earlier, she showed us how we can use combinatorial analysis to make completely anonymous Secret Santa games, but more importantly she wrote a book that let us extend Santa Claus into perpetuity in our household.
Fry’s book The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus: The Mathematics of Christmas is a delight. Fry and Thomas Oléron Evans cover a broad range of Christmas related topics to show that math is everywhere. They also do a nice job of showing how people can use mathematics to obscure the truth. It’s a book that I’ll incorporate into any statistics class I run because it, like How to Lie with Statistics, uses humor and common sense to show us the magic and importance of mathematics.
Music Recommendation
There are many reasons that I love it when my local radio station shifts from its regular playlist to Christmas songs, but very high on the list is that it means that I’ll be able to hear Nat King Cole’s absolutely beautiful rendition of The Christmas Song. It captures so much of what I love about the season
Movie Recommendation
Those who read the first Weekly Geekly post of the month know whether or not I think that Die Hard is a Christmas movie, and why. In that discussion, I compared some of its narrative to one of the stalwarts of the genre and that film is this week’s recommendation. Like Die Hard and White Christmas, It Happened on 5th Avenue has some real tragedy lurking in the background. Where those films have terrorism, murder, war, and deaths in the family lurking in the background It Happened on 5th Avenue has homelessness and the displacement of military veterans as narrative touchstones. Also like Die Hard and White Christmas it’s a romantic film. It has a remarriage, as does Die Hard, as well as new love. It’s a heartwarming tale that is much more satisfying seasonal fare, even as it has similar themes about economic class, than the snide absurdist comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner.
Fun newsletter issue, Christian! Hannah Fry's stuff looks really cool - I'm looking forward to exploring more.