Quincy Ark, an adaptation

After a recent viewing of Alexander Sokurov's 2002 film Russian Ark there was a lively discussion among the house members recognizing the parallels between the two venerable historical institutions, the Hermitage Museum and the Quincy House. This lead to the development of a short film treatment.

Quincy Ark - Screen Treatment

Narrator/Camera view point - Nathan

Vignette 1 - Front of house

Coffee House revelers two men and two women are walking up to the house with narrator following.

Revelers go around the side of the house. Men are lagging behind women jostling for position as one claims a female.

Vignette 2 - Below back porch

Revelers go up the back stairs while narrator bumps into Santi at bottom of stairs, both go below stairs under house walk by window looking through to see Jeremiah Cunningham and Col. Brooks working on his still discussing the founding of the house.

Vignette 3 Back yard

Santi and narrator are interupted by loud noise behind them, turn around to find rugby players loudly reveling in the back yard. Santi and narrator wander through the partying crowd. No one notices them and Santi urges caution, discusses their petty jockishness while being drawn to the reality of their vital debauchery. One jock on the periphery notices santi and chases the pair off.

Vignette 4 In the basement

Enter the basement through the outside door. Come upon period couple and child huddling in corner whispering in fear. Discussing the know nothing riots. Santi recalls the fire to the narrator. They walk past and up the stairs.

Vignette 5 - The hallway/bathroom door.

Reaching the top of the stairs the two walk to the bathroom door. Santi motions as if to enter. Narrator cautions strongly and fearfully against it. Open door see house resident in bath tub scrubbing. Resident remarks about the terror of trying to clean the bathroom. Scares out Santi and Narrator.

Vignette 6 - Fireplace half of Living room - Scotch tasting

Santi and narrator enter the room to a resident (perhaps in some sort of period clothing) giving an introduction to a scotch with much pomp and circumstance. Santi quietly mocks while narrator disagrees. Both mention not knowing the taste of alcohol any more. Move to the dining room.

Vignette 7 - Dining room - contemporary people

Enter the dining room with 3 contemporary people, one staring at the St Bridget poster, one investigating beer on the table, and one looking at the movie shelf. Narrator and stanti move to the person at the movie shelf who is now holding a bergman film. Santi questions the person and ultimately berates them for a lack of taste in film.

Vignette 8 - (optional) Kitchen scene

Narrator tires of santi's conversation and wanders to the Kitchen, enters kitchen sees landlord fixing broken diswasher muttering about students trashing the place. Is approached by "re-founding" members of the house. Discuss their idea for a house of Catholic men.

Vignette 9 - Living room other half

Narrator begins to search for Santi again. Wanders through dining room now full of people talking. Sees performers in the stage area who begin to play music. walks through the area finds Santi hitting on some woman. Tries to talk with him, but Santi ignores/can't hear him. Band finishes song and people applaud, start to get up and make their way out. Narrator sees original couple that was entering now sitting hand in hand on couch. Narrator finds Santi standing there and they converse, Santi says he is staying. narrator makes it out to the front door, and out the window on the door one only sees water.

There's good news... and bad news

The FT recently ran the following headline: "Good news: you are unlikely to be nuked any time soon." This is indeed good news, the sort I like to read over my morning bowl of oatmeal.

As Gideon Rachman points out, nuclear technology, though sixty years old, is still very difficult to master. And the 1999 example of the Kargil War shows that nuclear powers tend to actually be rather restrained with their wares. Good news indeed.

There are, however, several related issues you should be worrying about (not to mention the Chinese threat).

First, Rachman - or at least those he's commenting upon - forget that there are other weapons of mass destruction besides nuclear ones. Chemical and biological weapons are much simpler to build and still terribly dangerous. And Russia has lots of them just sitting around, waiting to be stolen or sold on the black market. Even if the Russian government wants to be a good steward of these weapons and keep them out of the hands of terrorists, the Russian government itself doesn't know where all its weapons are. That's why a new blog on Russian biological and chemical weapons is highlighting the danger of non-state transfers of these things.

Of course there's no reason to assume the Russians have any desire to act responsibly. Just yesterday Vladimir Putin, known to the White House as Pooty-Poot, said Russia must continue to strengthen its military and step up spying on the West. And seeing as how Pooty-Poot tends to get what he wants in Russia, we can look forward to these developments in the coming months and years.

And if you don't yet have sufficient cause for concern, consider that Russia has just launched a submarine expedition to the North Pole on the logic that "The Arctic is ours and we should demonstrate our presence." Nevermind that the area is nowhere close to Russia's internationally recognized territorial waters; they're claiming this now too.