Didn’t you people read any of the books?

A host of people taped themselves watching the bloody violent climax of the most recent episode of Game of Thrones. It’s bizarre. First, who tapes themselves watching TV? Second, if they’ve read the first couple of books, they’d know exactly what horrible event is coming up.

Third, if they’d either read any of the books or watched the show to this point, they’d know that George R.R. Martin is a real psychopath to his characters, and just about anyone in the cast is liable to be thrown into a meatgrinder at a whim.

And most importantly, all this vicious chaos will not advance the plot one bloody bit, but will instead stymie all possible resolutions. These are books in which the actions of the characters are totally meaningless — I expect Martin’s plan for wrapping up the series is to have a giant asteroid smash into the planet in the final chapter, turning it into a cinder of ash and magma, spiraling into its sun for a final “pfffft.”

(Oh, sorry…”Spoiler!”)

Bad evolution

Here’s a list of 10 execrable versions of evolution from the popular media. I’m not too impressed with the list: it cheats. There are two examples from the Star Trek franchise (if you’re going to open it up to individual episodes rather than the whole schmeer, the whole list would get devoured by ST), two examples from Dr Who (ditto), two very obscure examples from the Disney channel and pulp fiction, one comic book example — and it’s not the X-Men, which is dismissed as being just genetics, not evolution — Planet of the Apes, The Creature from the Black Lagoon (???), and Greg Bear’s Darwin’s Radio. What, that’s it?

Where’s Prometheus? Avatar? All those stories that predict humans evolve into frail little people with bulging domed heads? Any SyFy channel schlock that uses the word?

I’m afraid if we were to trash any genre that abuses the concept of evolution, just about all of them would go.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

I was off in the big city (Alexandria, Mn) to run some errands, and I figured as long as I was there, I’d catch the latest summer blockbuster. I went in with low expectations: I’d heard it was just a fun action movie, mere mindless entertainment. The reviews underestimated the movie; it wasn’t just mindless, it was in a vegetative state. This movie was so stupid it was stillborn with acephaly. This movie sucked so bad it was a miracle that the Hawking radiation didn’t kill the audience.

I will tell you a few of the annoying inanities that made it impossible to enjoy the movie. Spoiler warning? Maybe. I’d be doing you a favor if I spoiled this movie for you.

[Read more…]

Rise again!

I’m tired, my sense of time is all screwed up, and some evil virus is making my mucosa do disgusting things, so I needed this to feel alive again. This is Nathan Rogers, son of the Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers (who died far too young) setting the stage on fire with one of his father’s songs.

And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

Rise again, rise again—though your heart it be broken
Or life about to end.
No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend,
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

Always good to make one feel optimistic again. Although I’m not feeling any great loss right now, just a case of the sniffles, so it’s a little bit of an overkill.

(via Peter Sagal.)

Curse you, John Wilkins!

I’m all bleary-eyed this morning because late last night, Wilkins linked to this article on Pink Floyd and incidentally sent me off on a late night music jag. He is truly a horrible person.

Pink Floyd was the soundtrack of my youth, from adolescence through grad school and starting a family. I have all their albums, and have listened to every one multiple times — I know (or at least, used to know) the lyrics to “The Gnome”, even, that’s how bad it was. So it was very triggering of Wilkins to remind me, and I had to play a bunch of them very loudly on the home stereo and wallow in the sound.

Don’t worry, Mary was away, so it was just me, alone in a big empty house with most of the lights out, listening to “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” after midnight. I felt like a lonely anomie-laden teenager again. It was great! I’m just paying the price this morning…this morning when I have to bunker down in my office and grade papers.

So now I have to inflict some of it on you. Here’s one of my favorites, “One of These Days”, from Meddle.

Oh, man, there were good memories in there. When my kids were little, we had a tradition of sleeping in on Sunday and then making pancakes (if they’d been very good, chocolate chip pancakes), and sometimes I’d put on Atom Heart Mother while I was puttering in the kitchen, just because “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” was the perfect accompaniment. Now I can’t hear it without an overlay of maudlin sentimentality and memories of happy kids.

Anyone else remember when bands would put out music that was more than three minutes long?

OK, now must go grade.

Will Smith must be stopped

He has a new movie coming out this summer, After Earth. It looks awful, but then, that’s what I’ve come to expect from Will Smith’s Sci-Fi outings.

Jebus. Anyone remember that abomination, I, Robot? How about I Am Legend? I steer clear of these movies with a high concept and a big name star, because usually what you find is that the story is a concoction by committee with an agenda solely to recoup the costs and make lots of money…so we get buzzwords and nods to high-minded causes and the usual action-adventure pap. Just looking at the trailer, I’m getting pissed off: it’s supposed to be a pro-environmentalism movie, and what’s it about? A guy running around in the wilderness fighting off the hostile wildlife.

Anyway, I got one of those generic invitations to help reassure the world that it’s a good science movie. Here’s part of what I was sent:

On May 31st, Columbia Pictures is releasing what is perhaps the biggest movie of the summer, After Earth, starring Will Smith, directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

No. Just no. Shyamalan is a hack. Why do people keep handing him big money and big projects?

There are a lot of science parallels to this film, and I write to see if you or a colleague might be interested in interviewing one of After Earth’s top filmmakers and or a scientist associated herein.

Famous futurist Ray Kurzweil

Jesus fuck. Kurzweil is a consultant? Pill-popping techno-geek with an immortality fetish and no understanding of biology at all is the consultant on a movie with a supposed environmental message? WHY?

explored with Will, his son Jaden Smith, and Elon Musk, how science fact meets science fiction in After Earth, and tghis can be seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RocpHuJWolc. As well, XPRIZE has teamed up with Sony to launch an unprecedented robotics challenge (information attached). What’s more, NASA plans to disseminate a lesson plan to teachers based on the scientific implications of After Earth, as seen here http://www.lifeafterearthscience.com/.

OK, I checked out the lesson plan. It’s not bad, but it has nothing to do with the movie — it’s all about biodiversity and cycles and climate change and that sort of thing, by a respectable author of biology textbooks. It’s a merkin to cover the toxic crap that will be in the movie.

In After Earth, earth has devolved, in a sense, to a more primordial state, forcing mankind to leave. One thousand years after this exodus, the planet has built up defense mechanisms so as to prevent the return of its previous human inhabitants. It might be said that nature reacted this way because it perceived humans as a threat to its survival.

“Devolved”? “Primordial state”? Look at the trailer. It’s a lush planet thick with plant and animal life, nothing to force people out. Except, of course, the bizarre hint that there are rapid — really rapid — weather changes (I won’t call it “climate”), in which you can be running through a temperate forest and suddenly a tree will freeze. Yeah, right. As for the teleological rationale, just gag it, goofballs.

Given the backing behind it, the extravagantly expensive Will Smith, the fact that he’s using it as a vehicle to give his son star billing, the horrible director, and the hints of bad science in the trailer, I’m going to call this one right now: it’s going to suck. It will be shiny and glossy and have lots of CGI, but it will suck hard.

I saw Iron Man 3 last night, and let me just say…I am so tired of SF movies that resolve all of their conflicts with a big battle with the baddies, preferably featuring huge explosions and impossible physics. This one is going to up the ante with idiot biology added to the profit-making mix.

They asked if I wanted to interview any of the scientists or writers involved. I don’t think so.

Although a conversation with Ray Kurzweil could be…fun.

IRON MAN 3! WOOHOO!

The Morris movie theater is going all out and having a midnight premier of the new Iron Man 3 movie, and I was mildly disappointed that I was going to have to postpone seeing it because I’ll be at the Orange County Freethought Alliance convention. But now I am greatly disappointed, because I have seen the trailer, and it blows my mind.

Awesome. So awesome. I hope I’m not disappointed when I finally see the whole movie, because this sets expectations phenomenally high.