December 11, 2021

4.6: Committing Thousands of Sins

1 hour 52 minutes

Show Notes

This week, Nina and Thom are joined by new guest Tatiana - a filmmaker, professional editor, and sometime animator to discuss technical aspects of filmmaking in Char's Counterattack, how the movie holds up today, what the movie tells us about it's intended audience (and how audiences unfamiliar with Gundam might react to it) and what Tomino and company might have done differently.

Plus Thom's research reveals one way in which Char's Counterattack turned out to be unrealistically optimistic, and Nina digs into the real science and technology that might have inspired the movie's psycoframe.

The Bamiyan Statues:

A survey of giant Buddha statues with brief descriptions and photos - the Leshan Buddha is number 11 and the Buddhas of Bamiyan are number 4.

"Bamiyan Buddhas" by Dr. Melody Rod-ari for Khan Academy, covering the history and design of the sculptures.

"Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley" by UNESCO.

"Destroyed Buddhas Reveal Their True Colors" by Andrew Lawler for Science.org, an article about archeological reconstruction of the Buddha's pre-modern appearance.

"Bamiyan: Ten Years On," a brief video by UNESCO about the Bamiyan Buddha ruins.

"Commemorating 20 years since the destruction of two Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan" by Ernesto Ottone R., UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Culture. Available at https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/2253.

"Why the Buddhas of Bamian were destroyed" by Michael Semple, who was personally involved in negotiations to try to save the Buddhas.

An 1833 sketch of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by Alexander Burnes.

"From Ruins of Afghan Buddhas, a History Grows" by Carlotta Gall for the New York Times, Dec. 6, 2006. NYT article from 2006 about international archeologists examining the ruins of the Buddhas and speculating about possible reconstruction plans.

A collection of other drawings and photos showing the Buddhas.

A timeline of the US invasion, occupation, and departure from Afghanistan including mentions of fighting in and around Bamiyan.

An article from late July 2021 about fighting between Taliban and government forces in and near Bamiyan.

Miniaturization of Technology:

Chemistry-specific definition of "particle."

Wikipedia pages for miniaturization, transistor counts (great chart), integrated circuits, surface-mount technology, and Moore's Law.

How Stuff Works page for the transistor.

Wikipedia page for the transistor radio.

For more on Sony, transistor radios, the Walkman, and the sales of small, Japanese, consumer electronics in the US, check out this book chapter:

Alt, Matt. “5 - Plugging In and Dropping Out.” Pure Invention: How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World, Penguin Random House, New York, NY, 2020, pp. 131–160.

US Government report about the contemporary state of miniaturization technologies: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Miniaturization Technologies, OTA-TCT-514 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, November 1991). Accessible at: https://ota.fas.org/reports/9129.pdf

Semiconductor History Museum of Japan website. Very detailed and often very technical, with different topics broken down into timelines. Of particular interest, Japanese improvements to photolithography in the early 1980s (the Wikipedia page on photolithography has some helpful and easy to follow diagrams of the simplified process).

"Molecular computers - tomorrow's technology?" by Leroy Cronin, and Hamera Abbas, 31 December 2006, for the Royal Society of Chemistry - Education in Chemistry website.

Pages from IBM, Wikipedia, and the University of Waterloo, Canada, about quantum computing.

"What Makes Quantum Computing So Hard to Explain?" by Scott Aaronson, June 8, 2021, for Quanta Magazine.

Article about the latest, record-breakingly tiny chip from IBM: Brown, Dalvin. “IBM Says New Ultradense Microchip Might One Day Quadruple Your Cellphone’s Battery Life.” The Washington Post, 12 May 2021.

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By Nina & Thom

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