grenideer – Page 15 – why i hate everything

The End Times

Today is the end of the world.

That sounds like a good first line of a novel, but unfortunately there are those out there who don’t see this idea as fiction. Harold Camping is a batty old man who runs the Family Radio network and he is convinced that today, May 21st 2011, is the day of the Rapture. “Recent events, such as earthquakes in Japan, New Zealand and Haiti, are harbingers of impending doom” he says, and he is spreading that word across his worldwide radio network and very likely messing up a lot of people’s lives.

So what is the deal with Apocalypse predictions anyway?

One of the most common responses you will hear to this question, as Harold states above, is that it is clear that the end times are nigh because of all the death and tragedy that is happening around the world today. The clear and obvious counter to this fallacy is that bad shit has been going down for thousands and thousands of years. Was the Japanese tsunami proof that the world is ending? What about 9/11? Hmm, what about little events you may have heard of called WW1 and WW2? How about the fall of the Roman Empire? Or, say, what about the planetary disaster that wiped out the fucking dinosaurs? There have been many tragedies in history and the only difference between now and then is that we happen to be alive now. This line of thinking is extremely self centered, as if nothing that happened before we were alive is important.

But man do some people take stock in it. And when people believe in something, there’s money to be made. The internet has spawned hilarious real world companies that service the end times.

Youvebeenleftbehind.com is a “Rapture Notification System”. Several good Christians spread around the world collect email messages from people who plan on ascending to Heaven but have loved ones who will inevitably be ‘left behind.’ When a majority of the Christians fail to log in to the servers 3 days in a row, they will assume the Rapture occurred and a mass emailing will go out. I wonder what their website says about today’s prediction?

777 Error: Rapture Not Found!

Oops. Well if this website can’t handle a FAKE rapture, what makes them think they can handle a REAL one?

Then there’s the budding industry of “Post-Rapture Pet Care”. Are you worried about your dog being fed after you go to Heaven? Well, just your luck, there is a network of pet-loving Atheists who will take your yearly insurance premium and make sure to care for your pet in the eventuality of an Apocalypse.

And apparently there is a non-significant amount of religious people spending money on these services.

But let’s get this out of the way. This isn’t about religion versus science. I’ve long advocated that the two are not polar opposites. I myself am Catholic but you don’t find me immersing myself in propaganda and scare tactics. Does that mean that I believe one day there will be an Apocalypse and the world will end? Let me put it this way.

It is a scientific fact that the Earth will one day be dead. I will go one step futher and say, whether or not humans populate other planets, that it is a scientific fact that we will one day be extinct from this universe. Everything dies. Nothing lasts forever. It is the one single thing I can guarantee. Call it the WIHE Imperative : All humans will one day be dead. And whether you are a crazed nutjob or a cynical man of pure science, this is one topic where a consensus can be reached.

The crux, of course, is the little matter of *when*. But to that I say, who cares? Every single one of us can have our own private Apocalpse at any moment and unexpectedly die, and worrying about it is not going to do us a whole lot of good. Furthermore, and make no mistake about it, it is outright arrogant to predict the Apocalypse and expect anyone to listen.

Which leads us back to Mr. Camping, the man who started this latest freak out.

How does anybody seriously follow this man? I am sorry, but if you predict the end of the world in the absence of overwhelming evidence, you are crazy. And not just a bit crazy, but balls-out batshit crazy. As to how people like this ever get followers, well, as evidenced by the fact that Celine Dion fans will go to their graves believing that she is the greatest person to ever live, crazy sticks to crazy.

“The 2012ers are weird”- I’m with him so far- “The world will end sooner than that.” Ok, he lost me. Where does he get off dismissing someone else’s unfounded pseudo-science for his own? Why is his proof so much more compelling?

Let’s see. He believes the date of the Crucifixion to be April 1, 0033 (<-- Y2k compliant). Today is 722,500 days after that date. What was his mathematic formula garnered from 70 years of studying the bible that gave him that figure? He multiplied the 3 holy numbers (5, 10, and 17) together, twice.

(Technically a Theorem)

WTF? Where did the 2 come from? 3, if anything, being the number of the Holy Trinity, makes more sense. So why doesn’t Mr. Camping believe that we maybe have another 722 thousand days to live? Because that date doesn’t happen in his lifetime.

The hilarious thing is, he’s done this before. He’s literally predicted the Rapture with a mathematical formula before and (wait for it) was wrong. On September 6, 1994, when nothing happened, he said his math must have been off.

What do you think he’s going to say tomorrow?

So there you go. I’ll see you all tomorrow, whether you believe it or not. I will probably have a hangover at the time, though. If there’s one thing end times predictions are good for, it’s a reason to go out drinking.

(As if I needed one).

Charity Stand

Stand to Walk!

Ok, this is an old one. I just think ‘Stand for Hope!’ is an *awful* name for a Charity Walk/ Run. I would perhaps have a different opinion if this were a Charity Stand.

UFOs

A few weeks ago a video montage of mainstream media coverage of UFO sightings did the rounds on the internets. Cut, chop, add in some intense music, and this is what you get.

I really don’t understand these videos. Or rather, I don’t understand the masses that get swept away by videos like this. Decades ago, a blurry photograph or video was enough to cause a stir but in today’s age of Photoshop and Hollywood I don’t see how either hold any credence. Decades ago, a claim of something large and not immediately identified in the sky was perhaps cause for alarm but in today’s age of Predator drones and satellites do these objects really cause the mind to wander?

Upon first seeing this video I knew at least a couple of the featured events were already explained but that scoff was the extent of my lazy protest. However, a coworker of mine took the time to debunk much of it and I felt he did such a great job that I wanted to repost it here.

Firstly, try not to let the spooky music impair your judgement! I’ll examine the first seven “sightings” in the video (I gave up after that because it then launches into a frenzied montage with few specifics), and augment them with my findings and those of other people. I’ll deal with them out-of-order because some are debunked with almost no effort.

2. China, Jul 15th 2010

There’s video footage of this:

It certainly had the two newscasters bamboozled (unsurprisingly, seeing as it was Fox news), but anybody who has lived in the Los Angeles area for a few years should be able to identify immediately it as a satellite launch or a missile launch. As the launch vehicle moves into the upper atmosphere, the tenuous air presents little resistance and the exhaust plume spreads out to enormous size. With the time of day just right, it can be night on the ground but the plume is high enough to catch sunlight and appear very bright. It’s hardly surprising that paranoia was running high at that time, as the sighting occurred only about a week after another high-profile one in China, examined further below. For me, this one set the tone for the rest of the video – the person who put it together is either extremely naive, or being intentionally deceitful.

5. Moscow, Oct 8th 2009

We see video footage of this beautiful object:

Though spectacular, it’s just an uncommon type of cloud formation. Try an image search ‘fallstreak holes’ or ‘hole punch clouds’.

Perhaps revealingly, the immediately preceding footage of a news presenter describing it has been edited so that it sounds a lot like she says “and scientists / left baffled by…”, where ‘/’ represents the moment of the edit, as can be clearly seen by watching the news ticker jump to a completely different sentence.

3. Norway, Dec 9th 2009

We’re shown images of this bizarre display, which appears at first sight to be completely ‘shopped:

But this effect was really observed, and the cause was quite quickly discovered to be a failed Russian Bulava missile. The third stage of the rocket malfunctioned and began to spin, spewing its exhaust plume like a Catherine wheel. As with the China sighting, the upper atmosphere presents almost no drag and allows the plume to expand to a gigantic size, and the plume catches sunlight at high altitudes while it’s nighttime on the ground.

New Scientist

4. Australia, Jun 5th 2010

A sighting similar to (though less spectacular than) the Norway one:

I think you are already equipped now to guess at the nature of this object. The rocket causing it is thought to have been the maiden flight of SpaceX’s Falcon-9:

Space.com

7. New York, October 13th 2010

No especially revealing footage is shown, but people in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York spent the afternoon gazing up at some brightly-colored distant objects which appeared to hang in the sky:

There is no mystery to this one, once it is known that earlier the same day several large bunches of bright yellow balloons were released from Times Square, in celebration of the Centennial of Madrid’s Gran Via:

1. China, Jul 7th 2010

China’s Xiaoshan airport was temporarily closed because of something seen visually by a flight crew but not on radar. In the video, we are presented with the following extraordinary images from an ABC News report:

The first thing which struck me was that the pictures didn’t appear to match the description. Why weren’t we told something like “residents captured stunning close-up photos of airborne craft flying near Xiaoshan airport”? The pictures also appeared to me to have been taken in very different locations from one another, which at least hints that something might be awry. A bit of investigation reveals the answer.

A search for a sharper version of image 3 finds this one:

The consensus seems to be that this photo quite possibly was taken in or near Xiaoshan on the given night. However, close examination suggests that it’s just a plane photographed with a long exposure. The plane is moving from right to left, with landing lights on, leaving a bright white streak while the camera shutter stays open. The beam of the landing lights is visible to the left. The port wing-tip has a red light which leaves the upper red streak. Visible in that streak are bright spots which are the strobing lights on the wing-tip – you can see matching points on a fainter streak at the bottom, which is presumably the right wing-tip.

Armed with this new perspective on one of the photos, more information emerges on the others. They are long exposure photos of helicopters which somebody presumably dug up from the internet, and they have nothing to do with the Xiaoshan incident. If you look at one of the posts some way down the following page: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread558335/pg1, you’ll see that it contains images 2(a/b) and 4, with the description “pictures of helicopter as an example (all I had in my MATS folder)”. But, crucially, the posting was made on April 4th 2010, 3 months before the Xiaoshan incident. The red lights on the top of the object in 2(a/b) are again strobing lights captured by the long exposure.

Still don’t believe they’re helicopters? Look what I found using tineye:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Lille_helicopter_Img004510.ppm.jpg
This is the original source of image 4. Note that it was taken in a different continent, 3 years before the alleged sighting.

But in image 2a, for example, how does the beam get focused like that? The helicopter is circling something. As the beam points towards it, the long exposure creates a cone of directions. We’ve all seen this happening with police helicopters in California. (Indeed I can’t help thinking that the pine tree in 2a might be in California.) Shame on ABC News for jumping on the sensationalist bandwagon. Unfortunately I think this type of thing is typical of much of today’s mainstream news.

6. Jerusalem, Jan 28th 2011

We see parts of 4 videos which allegedly show, from 4 different view points, an object hovering above the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’s old city, which then appears to swoop down to a spot just above the dome. It remains there for a while, after which there are some flashes and the object shoots skyward, leaving a pattern of dancing red lights in the sky.

Given the obvious religious significance of the site, we should be on high alert that a hoax might be in effect here. And hoax is precisely what this is. Luckily the debunking has already been done for me, showing that the videos are the result of special effects trickery. (Not particularly good trickery, even.)

The first video has been shown to have been played with digitally. Post-added camera shake has introduced gaps at the edges of the image, which were filled by mirroring the image contents:

Here’s an analysis of the second video in which camera shake is removed, revealing severe registration errors between the object and the background:

The third video used this stock image in place of the real scene, as you can verify yourself:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Jerusalem_night_7088.JPG

The fourth video has been debunked by audio analysis:

The 4 videos also make, to varying degrees, a classic error in their synthesis of the motion blur of the rapidly moving object. (It’s an error we’ve made in many of our games, too. I can elaborate on this for anyone interested.)

So am I actually interested in ‘flying saucers’? Yes, I find them fascinating – but as a purely social phenomenon. There has never been a single piece of scientifically substantiated evidence in support of the notion that we’re being or have ever been visited by aliens. Give me any piece of video footage, and before I even look at it, I’ll bet you a thousand dollars that it’s not a video of an alien spacecraft. If you really are interested in the possibility of extraterrestrial life, you’d be much better off investing your time in keeping abreast of the real scientific work behind missions to other bodies in our solar system, the SETI program, and the recent technological advancements in the hunt for exoplanets which have led to a genuinely exciting explosion of discoveries. I’m very passionate about that science. But I’m even more passionate about the alarmingly dumbed-down state of the population at large. I’m not singling out the US here – the same criticism can be leveled against many technologically advanced nations where society ought to be better equipped. ‘UFOs’ represent just the tip of the iceberg – astrology, ESP, telepathy and other psychic abilities, the paranormal, ghosts, reincarnation, out-of-body experiences, fortune telling, homeopathy, Holocaust denial, alien abduction, crop circles, a young Earth, the list goes on. Widespread credulity, lack of scientific literacy, and lack of critical thinking and analytic capabilities seem to be the norm today, leading to the ease with which we buy into unfounded beliefs, with total disregard for presence or lack of evidence, and ultimately leading to untold damage and suffering.

As for the Area 51 caller at the end of the video, well, let’s just say I don’t think he’ll be winning any Oscars. And it doesn’t take much background checking on the radio program’s host, Art Bell, to discover that the forum in which this conversation aired is less than credible:

Ø In 1998, Bell was named as recipient of the less-than-prestigious Snuffed Candle Award. The CSICOP Council for Media Integrity cited Bell “for encouraging credulity, presenting pseudoscience as genuine, and contributing to the public’s lack of understanding of the methods of scientific inquiry.”

It turns out that many people would rather jump to conclusions for dramatic effect. Big surprise.

It is ok to be in wonder of these phenomena because we live in an interesting natural world. Making up stories, however, cheapens them. Do people at large not realize that as a population we’ve sent many craft into the sky and space? Why would the first thought upon seeing one be that it was built by a life form other than ours? It is quite overdone to point out that the simplest answer is the most likely, but what is sometimes lost is the true wisdom behind those words.

Workaholics

Best new comedy show since The League, and similar in the sense that it is a buddy troupe of comedians filled with zany jokes coming from all angles. Workaholics is definitely not as clever because it isn’t going for any subtle humor that works on different levels- it mostly just comes down to dick and drug jokes. But the characters emphasize their emoting and quirky traits and the whole thing works real well. With only 3 characters and a narrow scope, I don’t know how much longevity a series like this could get, but it should be fresh enough to be the hit of the season.

China

Yeah, China. I hate China. But it isn’t what you think.

I don’t hate China- the country. I hate China- the idea. This is in reference to everybody and their mother worried that the United States is in decline and China will be the biggest world superpower for the foreseeable future. This is my response after hearing about GDP growth trends and seeing charts of how much of the world’s cement China uses. This is my reaction to the fact that China is opening their doors of commerce to the world at large.

So what?

Sidestepping the argument of whether or not a country’s success is to the detriment of another, is it really all that bad that China is moving into the modern age? This is an intimate subject for me. I’ve been to China. The video game industry that I am a part of has embraced the cheap labor there. A couple of personal friends of mine moved to Beijing to open up their own company in China. Are any of these things damaging to the U.S.?

Nobody knows the future. We can only speculate on what might happen. I’ve seen articles and TED Talks about the dominance of China. “Everything we predict about China is wrong because we don’t understand them, but take a look at these GDP predictions! Scary!” These kinds of logical acrobatics ensure that we can only be right about doomsday scenarios. But for every case where China sees success we can postulate otherwise. Here’s my take.

China has just started opening up to the international world but they are still a developing country. While a lot of growth can come from that there is also a lot of baggage. An iron fist has driven the Chinese government thus far but how will that tactic fare next to a global council? No matter how large the entity, censoring the internet can only last so long. There are hundreds of millions of poor citizens who will slowly demand more. Will China’s growing pains emerge as a reckoning?

On the other side of the coin, there are plenty of future industries that U.S. dominance is just about guaranteed in for a while- genetics, medicine, military capability. Sure, manufacturing is increasingly moving to China, but are simple consumer goods going to be the metric of the future? English is the language of the air, the sea, the internet. In major Chinese cities all young citizens can speak decent English. Do these facts not offer a modicum of hope? Or is it more likely that China is the new cold war, the alarmist’s dream?

Is China’s future Communism or revolution? Will China emerge as one or fall apart? Or will they see unprecedented growth while everyone else still does ok? In this case perhaps the less exciting answer is the most likely.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP

Besides having the most awful title I can think of, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is a charming iPad game in many ways. It is an anachronistic blend of classic medieval adventure, pixel graphics and modchip music, rock and records. This marriage of strange yet stylistic makes it the current darling of indie iPad games. However, special attention by definition comes with turning a blind eye to certain faults, and who am I if not one to set the record straight?

I am surprised that I have not yet written a post on Video Game “Media” but there is a certain IGN review that blatantly makes my entire case for me. Here’s the formula when reviewing a hit: Find a game that has something interesting or cool about it, talk it up until it can not possibly live up to the written hype, completely disregard its glaring faults, and anoint the title as ‘near-perfect’.

This review in particular emphasizes how Sword & Sworcery is so beautiful and different and points out the clever puzzles and good music. I would agree that the music and art fit well together and serve to create a dreamy atmosphere. The 8 bit pixel art is endearing but it does have its drawbacks – I didn’t know my avatar was a girl until about a third of the way through the game. And as far as the gameplay, there are barely any puzzles at all. If you consider tapping on random places on the screen a challenge then you may be in for a treat but for the rest of us the word puzzle implies some form of mental exercise. If I am required to touch the 3 owls or the four tree trunks onscreen then I would hardly regard this as a puzzle, much less award it the distinction of ‘clever’. Then there were the times when I was left tapping and sliding my finger to no avail, unsure of what to do, until I randomly succeeded, somehow more in the dark than I was before.

Not only does IGN ignore its faults, but it almost finds them quaint, as if they were part of the appeal. Next to complaints of “obtuse puzzles” that required random tapping on the screen to having to annoyingly rotate the iPad is a review score of 9.5. Somehow a few paragraphs of faults still results in an amazing game.

To be fair, the game’s creators refer to the app as more of an experience and an experiment but this leaves them stranded in a sort of visionary limbo. Unsure of what their focus is, they simply strap on the term experimental and all is forgiven. And when you consider that this small indie team didn’t really understand what they were doing their lack of experience becomes all too clear. The movement controls are not refined and sometimes completely unresponsive despite the necessity to run away from an enemy. Your goals are unclear at times and you find yourself trodding back and forth through the same areas hoping for a clue that doesn’t exist. You can survive a long boss fight with a lot of life left only to find that its final surprise attack is a one hit kill that forces you to redo the entire sequence again. Text in the game is often long-winded and irrelevant, and despite you having an in-game tome to record important information you can find yourselves in the same boring conversation again and again if you accidentally tap the same character again looking for new information. Ironically enough, even the tome of important information is mostly filled with dribble. And for a title so concerned with atmosphere and experience, you are often bombarded with “Tweet this” links when you see text tags in the game. I’m not sure why I would want to tweet a line of dialog but the constant marketing pushes are aggravating.

Now for the coup de grace. At one point in Sword & Sworcery you are tasked with collecting 3 pieces of an artifact. After the first one is acquired you may have a difficult time finding the other two. This is because one can only be unlocked during a real life full moon and the other during a new moon. For a game that only takes a few hours to beat, asking a player to wait two weeks is ludicrous, not to mention the hour or so that I walked around the level looking for something, anything to do. Hey, it’s cool that the moon in the game mirrors the moon in real life and if this was an MMO that people played for months and years then this type of thing may be acceptable but in this context I am left bewildered. If changing the date on my iPad didn’t work then I never would have completed this ‘experience’.

After all the negativity I do need to concede that Sword & Sworcery is a novel game and I’d recommend that people try it except the $5 price tag is a bit steep for the iPad indie game market. The music is great and the game doesn’t lack for style at least, but as a professional game developer this team made so many rookie mistakes that it turned my stomach.

Sesame Street

Sometimes I question the value of this particular program. I’m not saying Sesame Street had a negative impact on my childhood or that I wish I never watched it, but I submit this for consideration. I am a 34 year old man who still finds himself singing this tune on occasion.

Splice

Here’s an under the radar movie from 2010 that I had heard some good things about but took a while to get to in my queue. Splice sounds more or less like typical horror movie fare when you look at the bulletpoints- mutant creature, immoral scientists, experiments gone wrong. However the direction the narrative moves in ends up taking unexpected, interesting, and uncomfortable turns.

The key element that sets Splice apart is the relationship the characters have with the ‘monster’. Without spoiling too much, instead of taking the easy route and having this nameless creature killing indiscriminately to show off gore, this story is a slower paced exploration into the ramifications of creating Frankenstein. Not to get too deep here- Splice has its fair share of uninspired moments and pseudo-science gibberish- but the psychology of treating an abomination as a pet and more does leave a lasting impression on the viewer.

Unfortunately, the last ten minutes of the movie carelessly forgets the subtlety that has been built up and takes a dump all over everything. If you haven’t seen this movie, I’d recommend you stop reading now and go watch it. The next paragraph spoils the ending.

Up until the end, the sequence of events was novel and unpredictable- I always had the feeling that I knew what was coming but I kept being surprised. Somehow the creature had been menacing without killing. Then the last ten minutes happened, where EVERYTHING I knew was going to happen happened, where the creature turned into a faceless monster that a hundred other movies did this year, where the internal conflict changed to an action oriented one, and even the yawn-inducing twist ending was obvious. In short, if the movie had simply ended with the creature dying, leaving the viewer to reflect on the experience, it would have been a much better overall experience.

It’s really too bad that Splice gave the audience what they expected at the end, because its strength until then was doing just the opposite.

Tween Pop

By now youtubers everywhere have heard of Rebecca Black. The general consensus is that the video for the song Friday is the worst thing ever. It is pretty bad and of course my initial reaction was the same way. However, getting too upset about this sort of thing is like making fun of the spaghetti and meatballs song. This is a song for kids.

Just because the lyrics of one line are, “Fun, fun, fun, fun,” doesn’t mean that this music is an atrocity. If Rebecca Black is 13 then her fans are probably going to be 7 or 8 and think she’s the coolest thing ever. It’s even hard to criticize the autotuning when the majority of adult pop stars overuse it.

So I’m not saying this song isn’t awful but it’s probably a decent influence on some kids and gives them something to dance to that the parents approve of (like the Jeans song). Granted, if there are jr. high kids listening to this they’d have to be partially braindead. When I was 13 I was listening to Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and The Doors and I would have loudly disapproved of any of my classmates listening to garbage like this. But I tend to believe that the audience of these songs are elementary students who don’t know any better and want to be in with the cool middle school crowd.

Her parents let this thing go out to the public so the backlash is on them- I’m not really defending the girl. And we even get to enjoy funny memes like Death Metal Friday. So in the end it’s not that bad. A terrible song? Yes. An outrage? Not so much. Plus, here’s hoping that this video is the last nail in the coffin for ye olde autotuner.