I have a lot more personal stress than usual lately, combined with the daily terrible global news (suddenly I care much more about how crappy the world is), makes for a depressing outlook and a general feeling of misery.
So I'm going to talk about things I like today.
Recently I've seen some very good shows, so here are a few I recommend:
Upload: This is a light-hearted, techy, sort-of sci-fi dramedy (mostly comedy) and it's just been fun. It takes place in the near future (maybe 20-50 years), and I will say some of the predicted tech/gadgets are so dystopian, pessimistic and reflective of some of the worst innovations of today that they feel like certainties.
Worth a watch if only for those, but the show has a ton of fun with the concept of uploading your consciousness into a digital "heaven" upon death that even when the story is lacking, everything else makes up for it. But don't worry, the story is mostly fine and so is the acting. Available on the evil Amazon Prime.
The Expanse: Probably the best sci-fi show in the last 10 years. Possibly the best sci-fi show ever.
Season one took me a while to get used to. I remember watching it years ago, and gave up after 3 or 4 episodes. But I re-watched them and started to like it. Once you get it, and get comfortable with it, everything clicks and the show is freaking amazing. I think maybe season 5 is the best, but 6 is pretty damn good too. But if you haven't watched it, and if you like serious sci-fi, and if you can take in 4-5 episodes of season 1, you will be immensely rewarded. Honestly, season 1 isn't even that bad, I don't know what my problem was. I think it was just getting used to the belter accents.
Anyway, I don't want to spoil anything nor spend all day writing about it, so I will say this: the effects are as good or better than big-budget films, with realistic space physics, while using mostly realistic scale (space is huge), which is refreshing not to have your intelligence insulted for the sake of storytelling. The drama, politics, conflicts, and the people are compelling. A few questions remain unanswered at the end of the show, but most were answered and I cannot remember seeing such a great show with a worthy ending. Extremely recommended. Also available on Prime.
Reacher: I watched this recently and just felt compelled to binge watch it. It's like a book you can't put down. Almost non-stop action, not big-dumb-Michael-Bay action, but the kind that you can follow, makes sense, leads from one point to another, and provides the occasional twist.
The show is a little surprising. Jack Reacher, the hero, turns out to be more than the one dimensional stereotypical action figure. I'll just say things aren't so black and white and it's very well done. Great acting, great action, great characters, good story, and it all works incredibly well together. Highly recommended. Also on Prime.
The Witcher: This show is almost great. But there are some questionable set designs and actors that prevent me from completely gushing over it. But I will gush a little because many things about it are well-done.
Henry Cavill is perfect as Geralt and crushes the performance as well as Geralt slays monsters. Most of the CGI stuff is really good, I really can't complain. A lot of it feels like a lived-in fantasy world with real characters, but then other moments feel like they cheaped out and the sets are sterile, some of the dialogue is lazy (old-world style fantasy characters using colloquialisms straight out of 2022 America is sloppy), and the acting feels forced at times (typically from the secondary characters). Overall though, it's nice to have a mostly competent fantasy show. Available on Netflix.
As a Trekkie, my anticipation for a new Star Trek television series began with excited wonderment. News of a new Trek series is always good news. Until it's not.
I don't want to be one of the bandwagonistas kicking a fetus before it's born, but I also don't want it to suck. Let's just say ST:D (wow, what a terrible acronym) has had its share of production problems--according to rumors and I think some other, more reliable sources.
The first trailer didn't inspire much confidence either. I guess it could've been worse:
Something just seems off. I think part of it is that it's meant to be different. Part of it is that I think it has to be different, given the Star Trek copyright mess of Paramount and CBS, and that it has to be modern while sticking to 1960s ST canon. No doubt they are squaring a circle here, and not everyone will be pleased.
Be that as it may, things could have gone better. The Youtuber Midnight's Edge seems to have the down-low on all things ST:D:
He's got a few more informative videos on the topic. Worth a watch if you're interested. By the way, if you haven't seen Prelude to Axanar, give it a watch. It's the best Trek fan film I've seen.
But after thinking about it a bit, especially given how so many relatively recent tv dramas have been very good if not excellent, I thought maybe this could be great too. Probably not, but you know, it could be. So I'm still pessimistic, but not quite as much now. I hated the new Klingons at first, but now, who cares? ST has a history of changing the appearance of alien races. As long as they don't depart too much from canon, Klingons will be Klingons. Besides, they look more alien than they used to, which I think is good.
I felt I've rambled enough about a show that hasn't even aired yet. So here's the latest trailer:
Ugh, some things in it just bother me. I hope it's not a train wreck.
Oops: Forgot to mention that it's set to debut Sunday, September 24, 2017 on CBS.
I thoroughly enjoyed the last Star Trek movie. It felt like a good TOS episode, keeping the spirit of Trek true to itself. It didn't have to blow up the planet Vulcan, didn't have to threaten Earth. Didn't have Spock become a violent psycho. It wasn't perfect (warning: link contains spoilers). But it was nice. I strongly recommend it.
That being said, after recently re-watching Star Trek Beyond, it got me curious about the planned tv series. I know next to nothing about the
planned show; nobody knows much about it, there just isn't much information out
at the moment. But it is coming.
From the little I've read, I am both
cautiously optimistic and worried. They are taking risks, which is
good. But risks are risks--the direction they're taking things might not
pay off. And Trekkie fandom could suffer.
Here's what I know: The show is called Star Trek: Discovery and is due to be released in May 2017.
It's a CBS show of course, but at this point is not planned to be on
television. Rather, it will be released online, on CBS All Access (the
premiere will air on television, but after that it's all online). If I
may be cynical for a moment, it could mean the suits at CBS aren't very
confident in it. But I could be wrong: exclusive online media is the new
hotness, so maybe Star Trek will be their flagship online draw. Like
Netflix's House of Cards. Maybe.
The
setting will take place 10 years before the original series, so they
are limiting themselves. It's a Star Trek show so it has to be
futuristic and fancy, but it takes place before a show made in the 60s.
They'll have to cram a new square peg in that round hole. But that's not
too worrying, since the new movies got few complaints there. Which
means this exclusively online show will have to look something like
those big-budget movies. People are tired of reboots, so I doubt they'll
be inventing a new ST universe--which means they can't mess up existing
canon (or should painstakingly try to avoid it). Fifty years worth of canon. I hope they pull it off.
And
there will be diversity. Diversity in Star Trek is a given, but this
time we're talking what will probably be the SJW dream team of
diversity. Which is fine. It's the 23rd century. Crewmates can be having
gay, transgender, alien, android orgies and marriage ceremonies in
their quarters for all I care, but it shouldn't be a focus where we get
didactic stories about tolerance, especially arising from conflict among
the crew. We don't want or need a Zootopia in space.
Also, apparently the captain of the U.S.S. Discovery will not be the leading character. Like I said, risks.
I
want so much to vicariously go to space with the new Star Trek, but I
damn sure don't want to be hit over the head with the politics of the
last 10 years. Give me the politics of 2250 and Orion slave girls. Give
me Vulcans and Klingons and new aliens. Give me violence and give me
high-concept sci-fi. Give me Star Trek. Please.
Note: This is a long post and it is not about gardening.
I could probably start anywhere: The Baltimore riots, #Gamergate, the Sad Puppies and the Hugo-versy, human nature, ingroups and outgroups, social media activists, etcetera, and on and on, and so forth.
I suppose I'll start with Through the Worhmhole, season 6, episode 1: Are We All Bigots? This episode is suspiciously and fantastically salient right now.
It was particularly cringe-inducing for me at first, because I remembered a conversation cut short that I initiated with an African-American.
Having been a poli-sci major I tend to have politics and topics of national debate not far from the front of my mind. It's all too easy to reach into that well of poison in an attempt to be topical and raconteur. Years ago, during this conversation I said, "you know, on some level, I think we are all a little bit racist or prejudiced." I was thinking about human history and its tribalist nature, but I see how it could be interpreted very differently. My undiplomatic mouth and the resulting angry stare I got ended what was an otherwise interesting and cordial dialogue. Every time I think about that moment I cringe.
Then this show, hosted by Morgan Freeman no less, comes on and asks (and answers) the same damn thing. Short answer: yes, we are all racist scumbags.
Longer answer: A lot of it is subconscious, and is both learned through cultural exposure and a part of human, even mammalian, nature. This seems obvious to me. But we're not talking about the KKK or making a minority sit in the back of the bus, we're talking about non-overt stuff in modern civilization from millions of people adding up over time where we end up with huge disparities. And it's not just race, it's religion, nationality, sports teams; it's all tribalism. Ingroup vs. outgroup stuff. It's how humans behave. It's how monkeys behave. It's how rats behave!
We have a lot of groups in Western civilization. Western civilization itself is a group. I am a member of that group. I am also a member of the U.S. group, the white group, the male group, the dogs-lover group, the right-handed group, the sci-fi geeky fan group, etc. I am a member of a lot of different groups mostly with parallel, complimentary, and/or non-conflicting interests. Rarely do those interests conflict; more often, obviously, groups with demographically distinct memberships and different interests conflict. I guess you could try to stay out of it, but typically people get at least emotionally invested in a conflict their group is engaged in. Because human mammalian nature.
A relatively harmless example can be the airing of eSports on ESPN. Traditionally, ESPN has aired mostly athletic sports competitions. Although they have on occasion aired poker championships. There's nothing athletic about poker, but it is a sport that a lot of people are interested in. It's a good bet that many fans of athletic competitions (ACF for short) are also poker game enthusiasts (PGE). For ESPN to air a poker game is like Michael Jordan going golfing. No big thing.
But times, they are a changin'. The other day ESPN aired teams competing against each other in the video game, Heroes of the Storm, on one of its channels and I'd venture to guess that the older ACFs and PGEs are generally not fans of this new video game, nor any competitions in it. Which prompted such people to say, "It’s not a sport — it’s a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers
is a competition…. Mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports." That was ESPN president John Skipper. And one of ESPN's hosts, Colin Cowherd had more colorful things to say about covering eSports. Ingroup vs. outgroup.
While I don't care much about Heroes of the Storm or MOBA competitions personally, I do like games and the idea of watching intense video game competitions by pro-gamers. So, not only am I in agreement with TotalBiscuit's sentiment in his video below, but with his specific point--that it doesn't matter whether or not it's called a sport. What matters is that eSports/gamers already has a lot of people in its group, and that group pays the bills by watching.
So yeah, I'm a member of the eSports/gamers group. I was a member of the more traditional ACF group in my youth, paying close attention to my favorite NBA teams, as well as playing Mario and Zelda as often as I could. While I still can identify with the ACF group, I felt the urge to take a side in this little conflict. Go eSports coverage! Yay more-relevant-to-me ingroup!
We tend to think of tribalism as inherently bad, but I don't think it is. I think tribalism is more like gravity. It's amoral. It just is. What we do with tribalism can be either good or bad. Lately it seems, as some of us intend to promote a kind of civility with the tools and weapons of tribalism, we're becoming demonstrably uncivil.
Enter the Prussian, speaking on the recent Hugo awards controversy, who is simultaneously upset and dismissive of SJWs:
Author Larry Correia (not read
him, yet) attended one of their cons when he was starting out, and what
he found was what he described as a whispering campaign against one of
his books. Not because of the book, mind you, but because of his
politics. Hence he was smeared as racist, misogynist, homophobe and all
the rest of I – to the point that his wife started getting concerned
phone calls from people worried that she was living with a wife beater.
All of this is drearily familiar to anyone who has experienced the
tolerance and fairness of the western left, above all the American
left. The bad faith, the vicious insults, the attitude of throw
anything at all and hope some of it sticks – it’s boring and routine at
this point. Forget those of us who are loud and proud rightists, we’ve
seen this guff dished out against such bona fide lefties as Sam Harris,
Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens…
In effect, anyone who didn’t toe the extremely thin and boring line
of the US center-left was being ostracized and kept out of the awards –
there were apparently organized cliques getting together to work out
what books to nominate and put forward, and that decision was strongly
driven by politics . . .
. . . Despite all their viciousness, SJWs are paper tigers. . . . if you are relying on SJWs to defend issues that actually matter –
anti-racialism, women’s emancipation, free speech, the defense of
civilization – you are relying on people who cannot even rig an award
competently.
I sort of both agree and disagree with him. They're not very good people for using the blunt tools of tribalism like shaming, name-calling, harassment, and general thuggish outgrouping just because they disagree with their victims' ideas. And to some extent, they are paper tigers. But in the internet age, even a small group of paper tigers can make a loud voice and cause a lot of problems.
The Hugo thing was about leftists vs. the at-least-not-overtly-left-enough. Or from the perspective of the SJWs: Decent human beings who happen to be good authors vs. racist/sexist/bigoted people who may or may not be good authors. In the world of tribalism and ingroups vs. outgroups, the sci-fi/fantasy fan group was beset and torn by other warring groups who happened to have members in the sci-fi/fantasy fan group (much like #gamergate). The Worldcon and Hugo award group, for good or ill, deliberately or not, was commandeered for other sociopolitical interests. Rightist and non-leftist members of the group took notice and responded in kind with the Puppies. Whether or not the Sad and Rabid Puppies were justified (I tend to think they were), the Hugo awards will never be the same and will always have that stink of corruption.
Suffice it to say that the leftists occupying other groups use the tools of tribalism to prod those other groups in a direction they want it to go. Don't get me wrong, everybody engages in tribalism. The problem is that the relatively recent prodding isn't so gentle, or civil; it might be even be quiet and secret. It's not always a rightist group that reacts and fights the prodding, it can be any group content with the way their group is/was. Sometimes rightist groups will take notice and join forces with the prodded group. Other times the prodded will surrender.
And the prodding is Oh-my-God-freaking everywhere. It's the outrage of the day, it's the national shame campaign. But why is it a bad thing? It's taking peoples reputations and ruining them, it's destroying careers. You can't have an old-fashioned opinion and say it out loud anymore. You can't think outside the sociopolitical box without the shame campaign threatening your job. And these are over little more than social faux pas! The ingroups and outgroups will clash, the rhetoric and tactics get sharper with every use. What's next?
Whatever it is, it can't be good. Indeed, the logical leap to the next level has already been mentally considered and accepted by at least one of the prodding leftists.
That post [the one debunking false rape statistics]
is exactly my problem with Scott. He seems to honestly think that it’s a
worthwhile use of his time, energy and mental effort to download evil
people’s evil worldviews into his mind and try to analytically debate
them with statistics and cost-benefit analyses.
He gets *mad* at people whom he detachedly intellectually agrees with
but who are willing to back up their beliefs with war and fire rather
than pussyfooting around with debate-team nonsense.
It honestly makes me kind of sick. It is exactly the kind
of thing that “social justice” activists like me *intend* to attack and
“trigger” when we use “triggery” catchphrases about the mewling
pusillanimity of privileged white allies.
In other words, if a fight is important to you, fight nasty. If that
means lying, lie. If that means insults, insult. If that means silencing
people, silence. . . .
Compare to the following two critiques: “The Catholic Church wastes so much energy getting upset about heretics who believe mostly the same things as they do, when there are literally millions of Hindus over in India who don’t believe in Catholicism at all! What dumb priorities!”
Or “How could Joseph McCarthy get angry about a couple of people who might have been Communists in the US movie industry, when over in Moscow there were thousands of people who were openly super Communist all the time?”
There might be foot-long giant centipedes in the Amazon, but I am a lot more worried about boll weevils in my walled garden.
Creationists lie. Homeopaths lie. Anti-vaxxers lie. This is part of
the Great Circle of Life. It is not necessary to call out every lie by a
creationist, because the sort of person who is still listening to
creationists is not the sort of person who is likely to be moved by
call-outs. There is a role for organized action against
creationists, like preventing them from getting their opinions taught in
schools, but the marginal blog post “debunking” a creationist something
something is a waste of time. Everybody who wants to discuss things
rationally has already formed a walled garden and locked the
creationists outside of it.
Anti-Semites fight nasty. The Ku Klux Klan fights nasty. Neo-Nazis
fight nasty. We dismiss them with equanamity, in accordance with the
ancient proverb: “Haters gonna hate”. There is a role for organized
opposition to these groups, like making sure they can’t actually
terrorize anyone, but the marginal blog post condemning Nazism is a
waste of time. Everybody who wants to discuss things charitably and
compassionately has already formed a walled garden and locked the Nazis
outside of it.
People who want to discuss things rationally and charitably have not yet locked Charles Clymer out of their walled garden.
He is not a heathen, he is a heretic. He is not a foreigner, he is a
traitor. He comes in talking all liberalism and statistics, and then he
betrays the signals he has just sent. He is not just some guy who
defects in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. He is the guy who defects while
wearing the “I COOPERATE IN PRISONERS DILEMMAS” t-shirt.
What really, really bothered me wasn’t Clymer at all: it was that rationalists
were taking him seriously. Smart people, kind people! I even said so in
my article. Boll weevils in our beautiful walled garden!
Why am I always harping on feminism? I feel like we’ve got a good
thing going, we’ve ratified our Platonic contract to be intellectually
honest and charitable to each other, we are going about
perma-cooperating in the Prisoner’s Dilemma and reaping gains from
trade.
And then someone says “Except that of course regardless of all that I
reserve the right to still use lies and insults and harassment and dark epistemology
to spread feminism”. Sometimes they do this explicitly, like Andrew
did. Other times they use a more nuanced argument like “Surely you
didn’t think the same rules against lies and insults and harassment
should apply to oppressed and privileged people, did you?” And other
times they don’t say anything, but just show their true colors by
reblogging an awful article with false statistics.
. . .
But then someone else says “Well, if they get their exception, I
deserve my exception,” and then someone else says “Well, if those two
get exceptions, I’m out”, and you have no idea how difficult it is to
successfully renegotiate the terms of a timeless Platonic contract that
doesn’t literally exist.
No! I am Exception Nazi! NO EXCEPTION FOR YOU! Civilization didn’t conquer the world by forbidding you to murder your enemies unless
they are actually unrighteous in which case go ahead and kill them all.
Liberals didn’t give their lives in the battle against tyranny to end
discrimination against all religions except Jansenism because seriously fuck Jansenists. Here we have built our Schelling fence and here we are defending it to the bitter end. [Emphasis mine]
Scott uses the apt metaphor of the walled garden (a group/tribe/community), and the uncivil tribalists as boll weevils. As both supporters of a classically liberal society, Scott and I might disagree on the finer points in its execution and the occasional issue here and there, but I feel we're a part of a polite and healthy garden where disagreement on many things are acceptable provided both parties remain civil, which includes intellectual honesty.
(At risk of mixing metaphors I'll continue using "gardens.")
There are many overlapping gardens, but some gardeners don't seem to mind the boll weevils, and even assist them at times.
So far, I've mostly discussed shaming and what basically amounts to ad hominem attacks as the methods of which the uncivil prodding tribalists employ. Mostly to punish mildly sexist, racist, or anti-gay marriage opinions. But there are boll weevils and there are BOLL WEEVILS.
This comes sharply into focus when you look at the two biggest feuding tribes in America, the Republicans and the Democrats, or more broadly the liberal/progressive left and the conservative right.
When a conflict takes on a political characteristic, whether real or imagined, things get out of control and your garden becomes untenable:
Pizzerias and sundry being legislated into the outgroup.
It's getting harder and harder to maintain a civil garden because Everything is Political. Video games are now politicized. Glorified book clubs. Wedding cakes. Commencement speeches. Bad jokes. innocuous-looking T-shirts are politicized.
And where does that leave real, dyed-in-the-wool, actual politics? Are the loyal opposition members safe? You might think so, given our robust constitutional political protections. But I wouldn't be so sure:
Don’t call your lawyer.
Don’t tell anyone about this raid. Not even your mother, your father, or your closest friends.
The entire neighborhood could see the police around their house, but
they had to remain silent. This was not the “right to remain silent” as
uttered by every cop on every legal drama on television — the right
against self-incrimination. They couldn’t mount a public defense if they
wanted — or even offer an explanation to family and friends. . . .
Most Americans have never heard of these raids, or of the lengthy
criminal investigations of Wisconsin conservatives. For good reason.
Bound by comprehensive secrecy orders, conservatives were left to suffer
in silence as leaks ruined their reputations, as neighbors, looking
through windows and dismayed at the massive police presence, the lights
shining down on targets’ homes, wondered, no doubt, What on earth did
that family do?
This was the on-the-ground reality of the so-called John Doe
investigations, expansive and secret criminal proceedings that directly
targeted Wisconsin residents because of their relationship to Scott
Walker, their support for Act 10, and their advocacy of conservative
reform.
Largely hidden from the public eye, this traumatic process, however,
is now heading toward a legal climax, with two key rulings expected in
the late spring or early summer. The first ruling, from the Wisconsin
supreme court, could halt the investigations for good, in part by
declaring that the “misconduct” being investigated isn’t misconduct at
all but the simple exercise of First Amendment rights.
That, along with the IRS scandal, are extreme examples of what happens when powerful people with different opinions use the weapons of tribalism to punish the outgroup. The prosecutor behind the Wisconsin raids, John Chisholm is just ahead of his time. Maybe. But that's escalation, that is the next logical step.
So it doesn't surprise me that people want to avoid all this nastiness they see in the not-so-distant future and request a divorce. The blogger Ace, tweeted the rationale behind his idea:
there is a pragmatic value to liberalism-- liberalism permits strongly-disagreeing peoples to live among each other peacefully.
if we no longer have this sort of liberalism--if the left is determined
to simply "win"--then we shall no longer live together peacefully
that's not a threat, that's just an obvious observation.
I think it's pretty clear the left no longer wishes to live peacefully among us, and, for my part: The sentiment is shared.
i think we're beyond electoral matters.
...
notice the lack of "that's crazy-talk" responses
I don't see this working, geographically or otherwise.
Even if there were a smooth way to secede, conflicts will still arise, the differences are still there. It's just that now there's a bunch of innocent bystanders who are no longer considered innocent nor bystanders. While that may be good for political participation, it would be bad for civility. The boll weevils, or the prodding tribalists would be in charge, unencumbered by considerations for outgroup feelings, emboldened by their newfound situation and ripe for group polarization.
But we already live in our own ideological gardensanctuaries. We may wish the walls held up better with fewer shame campaigns and less name-calling, we don't want to suffer the externalities nor direct attacks from discordant groups.
And so we often just sort of excommunicate the people who're mucking it all up:
What the video doesn't show is what happens after everyone catches on to the repeat takers. The sharers move to another table eventually becoming a big table full of sharers, and the takers are left to themselves. This is the ideal walled garden where everyone reaps the rewards from cooperation. It's the divine grace Scott references.
Yes, we must be kind and civil, especially in disagreement. And when the boll weevils or the prodding tribalists don't cooperate, well, just ignore them.
But if we can't ignore them, everybody loses and it's time to start creating new countries and breaking up families and watch out for thought police and our gardens go to crap.
A 250-strong meetup of GamerGate supporters, which included game
developers, journalists and think-tank scholars were evacuated from a
bar in Washington D.C on Friday after an anonymous bomb threat was made
against the gathering.
Is it possible the uncivil activists fail to realize that the double-edged sword they insist upon using does, in fact, cut both ways? Do they expect by starting a war, the other side just quietly goes away?
Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine together in a big budget sci-fi, directed by Chris Nolan... What could go wrong?
From the looks of the trailer, it surprisingly seems to be fairly balanced between a character-driven story and one driven by events or the environment.
Although space travel obviously plays a crucial role here, as a sci-fi fan of the Trekkie persuasion--and from what little I can glean out of this--it seems that space, and space travel won't receive the attention it should. Traveling through a wormhole and speeding through space I fear will be an afterthought, compared to the characters and the story (of course the characters and story should come first, but the space aspect should be emphasized, else why bother?). Like space isn't interesting, except as a way to draw in crowds--as if it's a troublesome hurdle to be quickly overcome and forgotten.
Oh yeah, and I'm sure it will be a great thriller movie. Because all space movies have to be psychological thrillers, can't have any awestruck adventure with a focus on sci-fi concepts now. I am sick of that Hollywood rule. Because apparently space isn't the fantastical vast sea of beautiful, mysterious, and mind-bending things it truly is. It's a backdrop. It's the thing between point A and point B--no need to explore. Spend a couple minutes in a spaceship and throw some CGI nebulae in the window. Remember Prometheus? Alien? Hell, even the new Star Trek movies have no sense of adventure. Don't have time for space, must kill bad guys.
Why can't we just have a space adventure film? I know I'm probably in the minority on this (likely because I spent way too much time reading Heinlein and watching classic Trek), but I'm tired of space movies that don't care about space. If you can replace outer space with say, the ground, a cruise ship, or a magic portal without affecting the main story, then it's a horrible "space movie." It's just a story that happens to be in space.
I hope I'm wrong. It's clear this movie isn't about space, and that's fine. It's about saving humanity or something, characters maturing. But the name is Interstellar, there better be a lot of time and emphasis devoted to space/space travel and how freaking awesome that is.
Now that we've got laser guns, spaceships, and lightsabers, should we convene and formally establish the Galactic Empire already and build a Death Star? I mean, we've already got the blueprints for it.
Then again, perhaps we should wait till we have hoveringcars. And it won't be long until you see the closest thing to a living, breathing Darth Vader on planet Earth.
I guess it's movie day here at the Daily (haha, more like Quarterly) Mud.
I am cautiously optimistic that this will be a good movie. I don't think it's technically a remake, in the sense they will sort of follow any of the old Godzilla scripts, but yea it pretty much is one, whatever they do (short of making him a friendly sidekick to a troubled kid in a coming of age film).
In that sense, it is going to be somewhat predictable. Godzilla destroys things, threatens cities, perhaps destroys a city or three. The military gets involved. People eventually win the day. Except that today we can't just have standalone films, we have to have sequels, and trilogies. So maybe Godzilla will win this round. None of that matters too much because that's exactly why we people (not me necessarily) want to see a Godzilla/King Kong/Gigantic Monster movie.
Rampant, colossal destruction, followed by a victorious feeling. And maybe a little nostalgia.
If it's done right, including whatever other story is thrown in is both plausible and meaningful, your inordinately cynical blogger may even give it a favorable review.
Maybe I'm too jaded on perfectly choreographed fight scenes, comically implausible situations, repeated survival of fatal injuries, and performing the physically impossible as if it were a walk through the park. I know, I KNOW these things all happen in the wonderfully fantastic fictional universes of superheroes and stuff, but enough already. I'm suspending my disbelief quite enough by accepting the already implausible existence of super humans, flying and hovering aircraft carriers, a guy without a face but a red skull, extremely intelligent and nefarious aliens, et cetera.
So I watch Captain America dive out of a helicopter at 1000 feet--give or take--straight into the ocean sans parachute, jump on a ship to single-handedly take out dozens of armed men with only his fists and a magic shield. That's all perfectly well, but **SPOILER ALERT** when one of those bad guys has a metal arm, Captain America just can't handle it. "Let's take these terrorists out! Oh wait, never mind, that one has a metal arm. We should probably call Tony Stark."
But they can't call Tony Stark because suddenly they can't trust anyone! Except that one guy Rogers barely knows who he jogs with in the morning. Turns out he has a jet pack that is extremely powerful, highly agile, and has wings... like a bird, which are retractable. And it looks like they rushed the CGI.
Other than that, I guess it was an okay movie. I just didn't like it. I didn't like Ironman 3 either (But I mostly loved Ironman 1, and thought the Avengers was decent).
And not just Episode II. Imagine if George Lucas wasn't a complete idiot, and knew how to not only make good movies, but listen to others' constructive criticism. In that alternate universe, the Star Wars prequels are actually decent movies.
Since reporting on any and all notable (if incremental and highly theoretical) advances in Warp drive is one of the explicit goals of this blog, I am duty bound to chronicle the following:
If, like me, you are pretty well-aware of the warp field theory and negative energy then don't bother reading most of the first two pages--it's all background on that (way to bury the lede PopSci). But PopSci reporter Konstantin Kakaes, took a tour with and interviewed NASA's warp-drive (among other things) scientist, Sonny White.
Here is where the good stuff starts:
Negative energy . . . is gravitationally repulsive. Instead of drawing space-time together, negative energy would push it apart. Roughly speaking, for his model to work, Alcubierre needed negative energy to expand the space-time behind a craft.
Though no one has ever measured negative energy, quantum mechanics predicts that it exists, and scientists should be able to create it in a lab. One way to generate it would be through the Casimir effect: Two parallel conducting plates, placed very closely together, should create small amounts of negative energy. Where Alcubierre’s model broke down is that it required a vast amount of negative energy, orders of magnitude more than most scientists estimate could be produced.
White says he’s found a way around that limitation. In a computer simulation, White varied the strength and geometry of a warp field. He determined that, in theory, he could produce a warp bubble using millions of times less negative energy than Alcubierre predicted and perhaps little enough that a space craft could carry the means of producing it. “The findings,” he says, “change it from impractical to plausible.”
"Plausible"
It'll be a good day when we discard the "you don't need to be a rocket scientist" idiom and replace it with "you don't need to be a warp scientist." I digress too much. Anyway, that snippet too, is old news. White's had this idea rolling around in his head for some time. But it looks like he finally got a little project going:
White’s warp experiment is tucked into the back corner of the room [What? Back corner?!? Get your priorities straight! -ed). A helium-neon laser is bolted onto a small table pricked with a lattice of holes, along with a beam splitter and a black-and-white commercial CCD camera. This is a White-Juday warp field interferometer, which White named for himself and Richard Juday, a retired JSC employee who is helping White analyze the data from the CCD. Half of the laser light passes through a ring—White’s test device. The other half does not. If the ring has no effect, White would expect one type of signal at the CCD. If it warps space, he says “the interference pattern will be starkly different.”
Before I quote any more, and blatantly abuse fair use, I should get my cynicism out of the way. Maybe it's just my cynical nature, but I'm not sure this White guy (heh) is on the level. I understand NASA is all government funded and deals with some pretty sensitive stuff, as well as mingling with the Pentagon/Air Force; but, it's also about science. Which is about sharing and showing your work. So upon reading the following, it felt like I was watching a bad sci-fi movie:
"People come in and want to talk about some things"
Yet when I ask how it would create the negative energy necessary to warp space-time he becomes evasive. “That gets into . . . I can tell you what I can tell you. I can’t tell
you what I can’t tell you,” he says. He explains that he has signed nondisclosure agreements that prevent him from revealing the particulars. I ask with whom he has the agreements. He says, “People come in and want to talk about some things. I just can’t go into any more detail than that.”
Well, alright then. So, when can we expect to vacation in Alpha Centauri? If you're as optimistic as White sounds, probably in a few decades. I don't know if he's just generating buzz for whatever reason, or if he's that confident, but there it is. He says he's even found a way (at least theoretically--he's not clear on it) to generate a stable warp field. Here's hoping.
I don't typically do movie reviews, primarily because it feels like writing a lit review for college. So let's just call this a movie suggestion instead.
Frank and Robot casing a joint
Robot & Frank is a wonderful movie with a moderate amount of cleverness, good storytelling, and the whole robot-as-friend gimmick works remarkably well. In fact, the robot reminded me of GERTY, the robot from Moon. I would go so far as to say Frank's relationship with the robot parrallels in many ways with Sam Bell's and GERTY's relationship.
It is sort of a refreshing movie; it's a sci-fi without being all sci-fi-y. A fun and sad little dramedy without being too sad, nor too funny. Just enough to leave you wanting more. Maybe that's why it's only 85 minutes or so.
I must say it has been one of the better movies I've seen in a while. Thoroughly enjoyable if you care more about characters and story than explosions and boobs. I mean I like explosions and boobs, but without good story it's basically porn.
So yeah, Robot & Frank. I guess I should give you a reason to see it, rather than just my word. Well, here's a taste: Frank is an old guy living alone with Alzheimer's who used to be a professional cat-burglar. Worried about Frank's health, his son gets him a robot to help take care of him. At first, Frank despises the robot and resents his son for getting him a babysitter. But after spending some time with the robot, Frank learns that it has certain advantages in not-so-legal activities.
I would go further but I don't want to spoil how Frank "persuades" his robot to be a partner in crime. That part is done very well. If you have time, go see it.
Edit: I found the trailer. I watched the movie and wrote this review suggestion before watching the trailer. I feel like the trailer gives too much away, so kinda-sorta semi-spoiler alert:
Out of the 10th Anniversary Firefly Reunion panel came a surprise announcement which will delight Browncoats the world over:
Bleeding Cool was on the scene when Joss Whedon and The Science Channel’s Debbie Myers confirmed to a packed room of journalists that if the planned Firefly reunion movie performs well that we can expect a full Firefly series reboot. And, it seems as if Whedon plans to wipe the slates clean and bring back the entire original cast.
“The opening sequence [of the Firefly reboot] is a conversation between Wash and Book,” said Whedon quite, quite seriously to the amazed Firefly cast and crew on the press panel with him Friday in San Diego. [emphasis added]
I hope it's true... I mean they keep teasing us hardcore sci-fi fans with awesome movies like Promethius and the 2009 Star Trek, with a sequel next year yet nothing on television. What I would give to see more of this on tv:
Speaking of Trek, here's the latest news on the sequel, which might be followed by a new tv series. On the other hand, it might be from the guy who did Heroes, which was horrible.
_poster.jpg)
