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  Newcomer Ferdia Shaw beat out 1,200 other actors for the title role. [credit: Disney ]

Artemis Fowl fans loudly trumpeted their displeasure online when the second trailer for the film adaption of the beloved YA books dropped in March, in advance of its debut on Disney+. Their objection: It looked like a significant departure from the evil boy genius of the novels in favor of a more Disney-friendly heroic figure. At the time, I adopted a "wait and see" attitude, since it's generally a good idea to see the actual film before passing judgement. Alas, that optimism was ill-founded. Artemis Fowl, the movie, is a spectacle-filled pointless slog that will be a crushing disappointment for book fans. The young criminal mastermind has been watered down and "Disney-fied" beyond recognition, just as fans feared.

(Spoilers below.)

There are eight books in the Artemis Fowl series, detailing the extensive exploits of the titular character. The debut novel received generally positive reviews and a few comparisons to J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, although Eoin Colfer's books have never achieved the same stratospheric commercial success. The comparison irritates Colfer, who describes his novels as being more like "Die Hard with fairies." As I wrote when the first teaser dropped way back in November 2018, "That's a fairly accurate description. Artemis is the anti-Harry Potter. He's a thief and a kidnapper, among other misdeeds, and he is largely untroubled by remorse. That's part of his charm."

Enlarge / The Andes along the border of Bolivia and Chile, as seen from the International Space Station. (credit: NASA EO)

If you think about mountain ranges like the Andes or the Himalayas, you can come up with multiple factors that must affect their size and shape. There’s the collision of tectonic plates that squeezes them up into the air, of course. At a subduction zone where oceanic crust sinks downward beneath the continent, you can also sprout volcanos that grow skyward. On the other side of the ledger, various weathering and erosional processes sculpt the peaks. Streams cut sharp V-shaped valleys, while glaciers scrape out broad U-shaped ones instead. Either way, the end result is that the high places are gradually worn down, their rock scattered into the lowlands.

So what, exactly, is the primary control on the range’s height? Is it just a function of the plate tectonic forces? Or does climate dictate things by setting the rate at which the peaks are consumed?

This is an actual topic of considerable debate in geology, with arguments going both ways. A team led by Armin Dielforder at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences wanted to test these hypotheses in a new way. The researchers set out to calculate the theoretical height of mountain ranges based purely on the tectonic forces. If erosion is dominant, you would see big mismatches between theoretical and actual heights—hopefully varying along with factors that influence erosion, like the climate.

Let's not mince words: 2020 has been an extremely tough hang. It sucks, frankly. We're three months into a viral pandemic that continues to kill thousands of individuals both in the US and abroad, and now numerous instances of police violence against Black Americans have urged protesters to take to the streets despite the underlying health risk (and the potential for more violent interactions with law enforcement). To make matters worse, no one still has any idea what a post-pandemic society will look like.

Our lives have inevitably changed forever, and we haven't even hit July. So, occasionally, we all need whatever bit of temporary respite we can find. COVID-19 has, naturally, also halted some of the most basic kinds of past hobbies—playing sports, eating out or having guests over, traveling, etc. But it hasn't drained every ounce of relaxation from the world yet, judging at least by some of the weekend hobbies still being clutched tightly around the Orbital HQ.

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  At top, St. Louis ribs, dry rubbed. At bottom, a tri-tip that got a quick sear and then about 40 minutes of smoking with oak, à la Cold Spring Tavern outside of Santa Barbara, Calif. [credit: Eric Bangeman ]

Hickory, oak, or mesquite tonight?

I'm a serial hobbyist, taking up new pastimes and then giving them up when I get tired of them. Hence my coin collection that has been untouched for most of the past decade and the empty fishtanks in my garage. But one hobby I've held on to, and have invested more time into, since the pandemic reared its ugly head in the United States: smoking meat.