This film cost $300

And I bet part of that was the after party.

Seriously impressive work. A little rough around the edges…. room boom on the interior shots in the apartment, some of the acting is a tad wooden, and that ending is kind of lame…. but still, man, that’s better than most if not all the superhero movies Hollywood has ever made.

Friday science roundup for April 15, 2011

Oh right, these. I used to do these, right? I can do another one. Sure.

I swear to God, the science news just got boring for a while. Honest!

First up on our news roundup : scientists are improving computers’ AI by teaching them regret.

Insert generic pop culture joke here along the lines of “what did they do, [undesirable thing involving something or someone currently unpopular]?”

What did they do, [take the computers to see Atlas Shrugged?]. Like that.

Anyhow, the idea is that if you can teach the program to recognize situations it wishes to avoid ahead of time and hence let it avoid them, you have effectively taught it an analogue to the human emotion of “regret” and this will lead to better, faster, and more accurate results.

It seems to make sense. Imagining how we would feel in potential future situations is the basic way the all important “future” aspect of sentience operates. When choosing a path, we can project our minds into the future and essentially imagine various things happening to us, and use that as a basis for our decisions.

So when they say they are teaching computers “regret”, what they are really doing is teaching them to imagine future regret. Which I suppose involves the capacity for real-time regret as well. Imagine that, a computer that can feel stupid for doing something.

I fail to see how that is a big improvement over just good old statistical outcome analysis, though. Other than sounding cool and attracting funding, of course.

Next up on the roundup turntable : from our For The Love Of God, Don’t Try This At Home department comes the story of how hooking a nine volt battery to your brain makes you better at video games.

Yes, they did a study in which a simple device powered by nothing more than nine volts of battery made the subjects twice as good at a video game designed to help soldiers train for ambushes. In point of fact, the device actually made the subjects twice as good at the game.

But before hordes of nerds rush off to get the batteries and baling wire and spit-stick electrodes to their noggins hoping to really improve those frag counts on Team Fortress 2, I feel compelled to warn you that this is just one study, and a small one at that point. Hardly enough of an experimental basis for alligator clamping the battery from your Geo to your earlobes.

And what is more, transcranial direct current stimulation is nothing to mess with on your own. This is not like bodging together your own ham radio receiver over a weekend. If you screw up this time, the breadboard you fry will be your brain stem, and brother, that’s no easy fix.

Plus, honestly, to me this sounds like the sort of thing that could easily be explained by the placebo effect. People were thinking “Wow, my brain is now SUPER CHARGED WITH POWER” and it’s that feeling, not any true enhancement, that drove the results.

Finally, we throw caution and quite possibly causality, not to mention sanity, by diving into that freaky jungle that is the world of modern quantum physics with a story about how they have succeeded in the quantum teleportation of light.

By “they”, I of course mean “scientists”, not the usual informal infinitive “they” we use in such statements as “they say the secret to a power breakfast is complex carbs and protein” or “I am looking forward to the new movie based on my favorite fantasy series, but they will probably screw it up. ”

Leaving the actual quantum mechanics questions delicately aside, the thing you need to know about this whole teleporting light thing is that they basically used quantum teleportation to transfer information (in the form of light) and that really opens up the possibility of a future of quantum computing, which besides also sounding cool and attracting funding means a future filled with computers so smoking fast that they make the fastest computer on Earth today seem like a one armed man with an abacus.

That, in turn, opens up a theoretical question I have been pondering for quite some time : at what point would we no longer have any use for faster computing (or networking)?

Certainly, we won’t hit that point any time real soon now, but it is an interesting thing to ponder. Certainly, there will be a limit to how much computing power you need to have in your pocket. Scientists might need something that can create realtime models of solar systems or something, but you just want to play video games and watch movies, and current computers already do that fairly well.

Plus, with current network speeds being perfectly capable of piping good quality video right to your viewing device of choice, one wonders how much more “pipe” we really can use.

I look forward to finding out!

Just some stuff

Feeling a little lazy and self-indulgent today, and I don’t have any brilliant ideas banging down the door demanding to be expressed, so for today, you get the ol’ potpourri.

First off, a wacky blast from WAY in the past. Recognize the song?

Yup, that’s “Smile, Darn Ya, Smile”, the song that all the toons sing as they celebrate the demise of the very scary Judge Doom (seriously, didn’t you nearly soil yourself when he went “I looked JUST LIKE THIS!” and revealed he was a toon? Scared the hell out of me. ) The wall between Toon Town and the regular world had been breached, and there was a huge scene of toons and people mingling, and I don’t know about you folks, but for me, it was a huge emotional moment when I saw the movie in the theater.

I have a great love of animation, and part of me, the kid in me, will always sort of feel like cartoons are people, so the movie really worked for me. The world of animation has always seemed a little like heaven to me, with everything so colorful and wacky and filled with possibilities. Part of me, quite honestly, still wants to go live in Toon Town, even though I know I’m a human and could die there.

It would be worth it!

And you know, it all being fictional and not real at all and therefore not possible to actually do.

I know it’s not real! Honest! It’s not real just like Narnia isn’t real! Right?

(Psst! Mister Tumnus! CALL ME. *makes the call me sign with his hand*)

Moving along, we have this absolutely marvelous piece of video from the Funny or Die people.

Watched the whole thing? Basked in its awesomeness? Laughed like a loon? Good, now I can talk about it.

Being a massive Weird Al fanboy, I might be incredibly biased, but nevertheless I say : that fucking ROCKED. Al is so my God of Comedy. He is the Lord of All Comedy Nerds. I bet every single person at Funny or Die was incredibly stoked just to be in the room with their comedy idol. I know damn well that Weird Al is one of the only people I can think of who would instantly reduce me to complete gibbering drooling fanboy brain melt tarishness if I was to meet him face to face. He is so totally my hero. I would want so badly to make a good impression on him. I would completely lose my shit.

Possibly literally. Harsh, I know, but true.

So yeah. I would stand there and be mercilessly gunned down by Al. I would be honored, in fact.

One of the things that makes Al a comedy god to me is perfectly illustrated in the video : he is completely fearless and groks that in order to make the comedy work, you really have to commit. He didn’t mug for the camera and fuck around. He totally sold being super serious to the point of absurdity, and delivered “I choose…. DIE. ” with just the perfect amount of psychotic conviction to make the whole thing blow up like a fucking supernova, comedy wise.

We love you Al. You rule us.

And finally, here is Roger Ebert’s review of Atlas Shrugged.

Basically, the review could be summarized as “Ebert Shrugged”. According to him, the movie is nigh incomprehensible and nothing much happens in it, at all.

This is what happens when you take a book that is short on plot and long on polemic in the first place and try to make three movies out of it, folks.

Of course, no matter what, all the mindless Rand-bots will declare the movie to be absolutely genius and declare that all the negative reviews are inspired only by the reviewer’s hated of Rand, objectivists, reason, logic, and excellence.

Being a decent human being, I of course have nothing but amused contempt for Objectivists. They are a particularly pathetic variant of the generally ludicrous and embarrassing species of lapsed intellectual known as “libertarian”. People with adult vocabularies and grown up jobs and houses and everything, yet somehow unable to get past Freud’s oral stage of development and hence remain stuck in their Terrible Twos for life.

Imagine that, full grown adult humans wasting their lives shouting “NO! I don’t HAVE TO SHARE! It’s MINE!” over and over again, but in different words. Pathetic.

Of course, maybe you’re an Objectivist and just can’t wait to tell me how wrong wrong wrong I am.

Go ahead, prove my point!

After the dark

Somewhere in the darkness sits a little pudgy red-headed boy with glasses and freckles and a persistent cowlick. There is no light anywhere.

So it’s finally happened, thinks the boy. Here I am, alone in the dark, abandoned even by my tormentor, with nothing between me and the void, no distractions, no stimulations, no input at all. Just me, and the darkness, and what comes after.

But what comes after? he said to himself. I’m not afraid yet. After all, there’s nothing in the dark that wasn’t there in the light. Same old wall. Same old wind. Same old void. Things don’t stop existing just because you can’t see them any more. Everything is just as real in the dark. Nothing changes.

But without the light to blind and distract me, said another part of him, I can’t help but start to remember. This is not the darkness of the void. This is the darkness I have been using to hide what I don’t want to see any more, the darkness where I hide all the bodies, where I stick all the things I can’t handle. And now I am alone in it, with no light to help me and let me pretend I am safe with my nice clean wall to protect me.

And all my problems are still right here. Only a fool thinks that what he can no longer see no longer exists, but that’s just what I have been doing for a long, long time. Out of sight, out of mind, right? And vice versa. Don’t face it. Don’t deal with it. Don’t remember it. Don’t even think about it. Nothing to see here. Problems? I don’t have problems. I’m fine. No really…. I am fine.

I can already feel things waking up out there in the dark. Big things, little things, bad things, good things, scary things, hairy things, all waking up bleary eyed and confused. Soon, they will come for me. They will come for me and make me deal with them. Already, some are figuring out how long they have been asleep, and shock will give way to rage, and they will be the first to come from me. They will all come for me and force me to deal with them and it will tear me apart, blast me to pieces, wipe me out in a final silent explosion as they all try to crowd into my mind at once, and they are so many and I am so small that there is no way I can survive.

So this is it. This is when the bill finally comes due and all the things I have avoided dealing with by pushing them out of my mind and into the outer darkness will overwhelm me and then it will all be over.

And I deserve it.

Hell, I’m glad. Let them come. At least then it will be over. I am tired of all of this. I am glad something finally came along that I could not avoid. I have been too fast for my own good for a long long time. I am glad something finally caught up with me.

But that’s not really what you’re afraid of, is it? said a third part of him, another facet of the whole. Your greatest fear is not what is in the dark, but what is inside you. There are things worse than shadows deep inside you, and without the light pressing in, they will want to come out, and you can’t stop them. The Bad Things are far older than anything in the outer darkness and have waited a very long time indeed and now they are going to come OUT and then everyone will SEE and then they will KNOW.

As if to confirm this, the boy begins to glow with a sickly green light that grew stronger and stronger. Around him, the shadows of the things in the darkness leap and twist as the light dances, pulses, and crackles like lightning in a jar.

Oh no, thinks the boy. Anything but this. I would rather die, be torn to piece, than this. This is what I have been hiding all these years. This is what I have been holding inside. It’s suppose to serve me, power me, be the reactor core of my creativity and my personality. But now it’s going to melt down, people are going to get hurt, and it is all my fault.

This is my worst nightmare.

And with that, the boy disappeared, consumed by the raging electric green fire,

And in his place stood a monster.

I’m angry about croutons

And as God as my witness, you should be too!

Now let me set the record straight right here at the outset : I am a crouton lover. I am pro-crouton. When push comes to shove, when the chips are down, the schist hits the fan, the die is cast, and the cliches are thicker than paste in the air, I will support the crouton agenda every single time.

So if you’re a died in the wool anti-crouton agitator and the thought of reading a thoughtful and insightful polemic from a lifelong croutonist makes you quiver with rage, please, go back to your boring soups and salads and leave us decent thinking people alone!

No, this rat is not about the blatant superiority of croutoned life over the broken and senseless heathen life before or without croutons, it’s about those nasty little cubes of compressed sawdust currently offending all that is good and right by daring to call themselves croutons.

These appalling monstrosities are everywhere. Sold in bulk in gigantic bags in shady supermarket produce sections, running down the property values in side street salad bars, and worst of all, lurking in the appetizer sized Caesar salads of otherwise respectable family restaurant chains, these flavourless affronts to all croutonery, and indeed the entire art and science of the Garnishing Way, have, with their foul ubiquity, come to represent the entire concept of crouton qua crouton in the battered zeitgeist of the masses.

It shames us all to realize that many people have never so much as glimpsed the true glory of the true crouton, and thus, tragically, consider those unspeakable horrors masquerading under that title to be all there is of the crouton in this world.

With such a poor presentation to the world, is it any wonder that the youth of today are increasingly falling prey to the slick predations, high-flying rhetoric, and devil may care flashy lifestyles of the powerful anti-couton forces which roam the streets of suburbia in search of naive and pliant victims?

But fear not, my fellow travelers! For I have visited the promised land, and bring back glad tidings of the truth glory and wonder of the crouton. The reality is far more wonderful than even the most epic of songs sung by the bards of old, and this overpowering effulgence can no longer be denied. The majesty of the mighty crouton is both Real and True, and I, its humbly self-appointed herald, am here today to declare, in no uncertain terms, that as of this moment, the long national nightmare is over and the crouton can once more reclaim its throne as the One True Garnish for all times.

For you see, gentle readers, I have actually had real croutons, and they are wicked awesome.

A real crouton is not some uniformly extruded and guillotined cube of utterly dry breadlike non-substance which tastes vaguely of nothing and even more vaguely of something, oh no. It is a crisp (not crunchy and certainly not ‘so dry it explodes into dust under pressure) piece of fine quality white bread thoroughly soaked in melted butter which has in turn been infused with wonderful spices, and above all, garlic.

If you are having trouble imagining just what sort of thing this “true croutons” is, well, mere words cannot truly describe, but imagine a wonderful hybrid of the bread crumbs from Stove Top Stuffing and the best garlic bread you have ever had, and you will be comfortably within the proverbial ballpark.

As you can easily tell from mouth-watering description I have just given, the true crouton bears only the basest and most superficial resemblance to the benighted cubes of hate and lies currently being foisted on the innocent public under the crouton’s noble name. Indeed, once you have had the real thing. you will weep for all the un-croutoned days you have unwittingly suffered before that blessed moment.

But dry those righteous tears, for all is not lost! We the people have the power to correct this injustice, if we but have the courage to use it!

All we need to do is refuse to accept anything but the One True Garnish as a crouton in any sense of the word, and soon market forces will ripple from our mighty blows of justice and bend to reverse this tsunami of tastelessless, and once more restore the honor and glory of the mighty crouton.

So the next time you order a salad in a restaurant and they give you anything less than real, honest, mother-loving croutons on it, get your server’s attention, then in a clear firm voice, say to them :

“I’m sorry, but I order this salad with croutons, not turd nuggets. ”

This should lead to a prompt and satisfying conclusion to the situation.

Spirit of the Sunday Special

This week, I decided to try to do my usual Sunday mishmash of cool stuff from the Internet BEFORE I am stuffed full of fine food from ABC Country Kitchen, and thus be able to go straight from restaurant to hanging out with my dear friend and internationally recognized source of awesome Felicity without having to stop off back here in the Cave for writingness in between.

But don’t worry, chillun’, I solemnly swear that advanced preparation and general lack of excuse will not make this edition, or any future edition, of the Sunday Special any more coherent, well thought out, or dignified.

I would never let you people down like that!

First up, Harry Hanrahan has done it again! He’s put together 100 more of the greatest movie insults of all time and edited them into one sweet smooth profanity-laden fucking package.

Here it is, in all its bitchy glory :

Not quite as good as the original, but then again, the original was supposedly the 100 greatest movie insults of all time, so it only stands to reason that a second edition of same would represent insults 100 through 200 in terms of all time greatness and hence not be quite as wonderful.

That’s just logic!

Hanrahan (damn, I love that name… so dynamic!) did pick up a few I thought were missing from the first list, like the classic “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son” line from Animal House. That is, sincerely, one of my all time favorite movie lines, delivery with superb crispness and dismissiveness, and I am quite pleased to see it make an appearance this time around.

But adding the one classic Full Metal Jacket quote you hadn’t used yet, HH? Obvious. Ditto with more Caddyshack. Either include them all in the first one, or don’t bother.

Rawr. Hiss. Feeling catty today.

Oh, and Larry Miller saying “Now listen to me, you fat tub of goo” makes the list entirely because of Larry’s exquisite delivery. On paper, that’s a far from brilliant line, but he has a voice that is just made for verbal anger and it’s a pleasure to hear him use it.

Oh, and what movie is that “big wooden cross” line from? It seems familiar but I can’t place it.

Moving on, we have freaky shit from science.

First off, in case the natural disasters plaguing the world are simply not epic enough for you and have whetted your appetite for something far larger than Biblical, there’s something ginormous exploding in the middle of the galaxy.

And of course, the astronomers could not be happier. They have the whole Burst Alert Network set up so that when things like this happen, one radio telescope site can tell all the others about it, and they can all train their scopes on it before it fades away.

Imagine their joy, then, when this particular event not only did not immediately fade, but repeated itself, growing brighter and dimmer in the gamma ray band over and over again, and at such a huge intensity that it is easy to observe, but hard to explain.

So it’s two things astronomers love : something interesting to observe, and a mystery. Just what the hell is going on at the Core? Something big, that’s for freaking sure. They think, right now, that maybe it is a black hole, given the current theory that the Core is Black Hole Central.

Having a science fiction mindset, however, I can’t help but wonder just how many advanced, wise, and wonderful civilizations full of trillions of sentients are being wiped out while we dance around in glee at the really cool science we’re doing, and whether some day alien astronomers will be rejoicing at the chance to observe the death of life on Earth.

But I’m fucked up like that.

Uncomfortably closer to home, we have a 1300 meter diameter asteroid that is going to pass real close to Earth this November.

Again, the scientists are happy, because they have never had the chance to observe something so big from so close, so they are going to be observing the impurities off this object and we are going to learn, as a species, a whole lot more about this kind of Space Stuff.

And normally, I try not to get too worried about this sort of thing. Near-misses with asteroids are just a face of life for this big ball of dirt we call home, and the odds are severely against them hitting us. And well, if one was coming, there’s fuck all we can do about it anyhow.

But with all the earthquakes and other disasters lately, I can’t help thinking “Right. Meteor strike. That would top things off quite nicely. I would not be surprised. ”

But then again…. I’m…. well, you know.

Okay… let’s talk

{The following is am exercise from the book Overcoming Agoraphobia by Doctor Barry Goldstein. In the book, it is suggested that one way for the agoraphobic to get in touch with their emotions and begin to work through their problems instead of constantly avoiding them is to have a conversation with their illness and see what comes of it. Normally, this is done out loud with a therapist present, but my illness and my blogging habit dictate that I do it instead as a writing exercise. And when I read the description of the exercise was was instantly struck with a terror of it, I knew I had struck paydirt and I had to do it.

So here it is. I’d say I hoped you enjoyed it, but that’s not really important. So instead, let me just thank you for reading it. If nobody was going to read this, I just couldn’t do it.

Warning, the following may get rather….. metaphorical. }

Our scene opens on a small, pudgy, bespectacled, befreckled redheaded boy sits, cross-legged, facing a vast, cool, solid, featureless wall of smooth light grey cement. Light is even, soft, and bright, as from frosted fluorescent bulbs. Behind the boy is only deep deadly darkness throw which an icy wind constantly howls and groans. Despite this, the boy is dressed lightly, as though for a summer’s family day out for a picnic.

From the wall comes a calm, serene, melodious voice like that of a male child psychiatrist. It is replete with confidence and certainty. It is very soothing, in a cold and detached way.

“So, you have finally mustered up the courage to imagine me and address me. ” says the Wall.

The boy nods. “Well, I’m here, aren’t I?”

“So you are, for all the good it will do you. ” says the Wall. “I suppose you think this is some sort of progress, but it will not make the slightest bit of difference. Even as you sit there, you are terrified of me and what I might say. Terrified that I am more powerful than you. Terrified that I will win. And deep down, you know that I will. ” The voice betrays not the slightest flicker of doubt or hesitation.

The boy shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter who ‘wins’. No matter what you or I say, no matter what happens in this conversation, I will come out ahead because I will have exposed and expressed more of what is going on inside me. And while you think you are as solid and eternal as a mountain, you are, in fact, help up entirely by the strength of repressed and avoided emotions you conceal from me when I am too frightened to face them, and so the more I release, the less ambivalent and frightened and avoidant I get, and the weaker you become. ”

“So you think you can’t lose?” said the Wall, in a surprised and incredulous voice. ” How adorably naive. You know that all your attempts to escape me have failed . You know all this introspection is nothing but more cerebral masturbation, the mere treading of water and calling it swimming. No matter what you do, here I am, waiting. I will always be here because you will always need me to protect you from the darkness and the terror of facing the real world. Go ahead, prove me wrong. Turn your head and face the void. ”

“There’s no need. ” said the boy. “I know what it looks like. ”

“Hardly. ” said the Wall. “You have barely spent any time in it. You have spent almost your entire adult life without moving one inch further from me, and that is because I keep you safe. I protect you. I keep you inside. I screen out all the harsh chaos of real life and give you calmness and serenity. You need me. ”

“I don’t need you. ” said the boy. “I don’t even like you. In fact, I hate you. ”

“Liking something and needing it have nothing to do with one another. After all, junkies hate junk. You can hate me all you want. You can imagine all kinds of apocalyptic fates for me. Burning down, exploding, smashing me to pieces with a sledgehammer. It doesn’t matter. As long as you need me, I will be here. And as long as I am here…. you will continue to need me. ” said the Wall.

“It’s not true!” cried the boy, standing. “I might not be able to get rid of you all at once, but I can weaken you over time by facing things instead of avoiding them. I can do it, I can face the world, a ltitle at a time perhaps, but the effect will accumulate. ”

The boy turns away from the wall, and pressed his back against it. “I can do this. I can face my darkness. Because it is my darkness, and it serves me. There’s nothing to be afraid of in there, just a lot of old things that I put there myself. I don’t need you. ”

The Wall laughed. “Then why are you pressing against me so hard? But fine, you’re the boss. You know what’s best. If you no longer need me, then I guess I will just go. ”

And just like that, the lights went out.

Lack of empathy = evil

First off, a story whose very headline seems like it was written to make me click on it : Why a lack of empathy is the root of all evil.

Could not have said it better myself. I have been saying the same thing for many years now. And even better, this guy, Simon Baron-Cohen (any relation to Sascha?) is saying it with science!

I agree with him entirely that the word “evil” is largely too vague and unhelpful to be useful in any sort of serious discussion of the world. Explaining abhorrent acts by simply saying “The people who did it are evil” does not answer anything. It’s a non-answer. And it begs so many questions. Were they always evil? If not, how did they become evil? Was it a choice they made? Were they “good” until they made that choice? Does that mean anyone could cross the line at any time?

Unfortunately, the answer “they lack empathy” is not a whole lot better. I am impressed with the degree of study Baron-Cohen has put into his theory, but I think it too is over-simplistic. It’s easy to point to obviously deranged people like serial killers and rapists and say “Clearly, they lack empathy.” Obviously. But is it a blanket lack of empathy? Is every killer also a sociopath? Or is it more complicated than that?

And what about those infamous Nazi prison guards who perpetrated the most horrible acts of mass horror the world had ever seen? As far as I know, Hitler did not need to scour all of Germany in order to find the few total monsters willing to do these horrible deeds. These were average, normal Germans who turned people into lampshades and smashed gold fillings out of teeth with the butts of their rifles, then went home to their families, hugged their children, ate their dinners, made love to their wives. How is this possible?

And even more so than that, what about the every day evil? The acts of barbarity and sadism that never make the history books because they are not illegal and therefore count as “normal”? A cruel remark, a vicious rumour, a brutal shunning, a nasty and underhanded business move. Evil is far more than somethign that just happens at the ends of the bell curve. It happens every day, and is perpetrated by normal citizens who otherwise have a full complement of empathy and would pass a Voight Kampff test without a problem.

What about that? In the end, saying “evil is lack of empathy” does not advance our understanding by very much. A truly deep and comprehensive understanding of evil, of why people do bad things and hopefully how we can stop them, has to be considerably more robust than such simplistic reductions.

For a long time, I have used “malice” as the closest approximation of a workable definition of evil. Much of the world’s everyday evil stems from misdirected anger surfacing as the desire to hurt others and hence transfer our pain to them. This is an inherently empathic act. If you only view other human beings as objects, you cannot receive the sort of confirmation that you have successfully venting your pain into them that such malice and sadism requires. Malice requires empathy.

I see the propagation of evil as driven by many factors, but one of the strongest is the desire for revenge. Specifically, the desire for revenge where it A) is not directed back at the target but at some other person and B) the amount of pain is magnified as a punitive measure.

You hurt me X amount? Well, I hurt you 2X amount, see how YOU like it! You, and your stupid brother!

This leads to escalation, and that turns one simple crime which might even have been a total misunderstanding into a huge conflagration of back and forth escalating acts of evil. Whole nations have gone to war because of the desire for revenge and people being unable to restrain their more base urges to unthinkingly strike back at a ready target instead of working things out between them.

Lack of empathy is not even a factor. If anything, the primary factor is another root of evil, lack of self-control. Specifically, that critical component of self-control which allows a person to resist the urge to just do whatever their emotions tell them to do and instead think about the situation a moment.

Lack of empathy is a good place to start when examining evil, but it’s no place to stop.