New Wallpapers

While watching the classic silent film Metropolis online I got the bright idea to take some screenshots and make wallpapers for the computer.

This particular edition of the movie has been remastered and colorized, hence the somewhat unnatural and exaggerated color, but I liked it that way -- it actually fits the concept of German expressionist cinema of the era.  Silent movie acting itself was generally exaggerated anyway -- just look at those faces!

[Mild spoiler ahead] In the above scene an audience of men from the privileged upper class of Metropolis, a great dystopian city of the future -- as envisioned by director Fritz Lang in 1927 --

are getting their first look at Maria, the female protagonist, and are going mad with lust as she dances for them.

Except, it is not the real Maria, who is a champion of the exploited underclass who labor literally underground to keep the city runnning,

but a robot

that's been transformed to look like Maria by Rotwang, the mad scientist/wizard with an artificial hand (could be this visual detail inspired the character of Dr. Strangelove, whose black-gloved hand kept giving the Nazi salute against his will),

for the purpose of leading the workers astray.

I won't spoil the rest of the movie for those who haven't seen it.  It's a masterpiece, though -- I mean, how can a movie be bad that includes amazing visuals like these?

(and of course, This)

A Prediction

If mankind ever establishes a large-scale permanent colony on the Moon (as a vacation resort only, I'm certain, with frequently-rotated personnel -- since the radically weaker gravity would play havoc with the bodies of long-term residents in all kinds of unpleasant ways), I believe indoor flying will become a popular form of recreation.  I picture the arena to be a gigantic hangar-type building, vastly loftier and wider than any that could be built on Earth, and without any internal supports to obstruct flight.  The floor would be perforated with innumerable small apertures through which air under pressure would be pumped out, creating a permanent updraft;  the ceiling would be designed to receive the wind and recycle it.  The players would be taken up to a high platform, where they would be fitted with a "flight suit";  that is, a light skeletal frame shaped somewhat like a glider, in which they would lie prone, with movable wings whose shape and angle they could control with their arms and legs.  Thus prepared, they would step off the ledge, and taking advantage of the Moon's weaker gravity and aided by the updraft -- fly!  Although it would still be impossible to flap the wings like the small birds on Earth that stay close to the ground -- human anatomy just doesn't allow it -- comparison with large, soaring birds like eagles and vultures would be apt;  it would still be genuinely self-powered and controlled flight, just like those birds of prey riding a thermal column, not the hapless "controlled falling" of wingsuits.