For the last couple of months my favourite podcast has Penn Jillette’s US radio show. He’s the vocal half of Penn and Teller, and a raving atheist skeptic, so you can see the appeal
He’s on a station that allows him to fully express his opinions - even if he can’t say the name of his TV show - and he always takes advantage of this. I enjoy listening to his rants, and have had my mind changed on a few issues by listening to his normally well-constructed arguments (for some weird reason I was against 63-year-old mothers at first. I repented.)

The show I listened to today had a wonderful radio moment, which I’ve extracted. He’s in the middle of a justified rant at the Guardian over this article, when there’s a caller…I think it’s better when you don’t know what’s coming. Here’s the clip.

Continue reading ‘Surprise Call’

GCalSync synchronizes your mobile phone calendar with your Google Calendar, allowing both uploads and downloads. It’s a small java app download direct to the phone, and only takes a few seconds to set up. Unfortunately it doesn’t work on my 7610 - no apps are allowed access to my calendar data, it seems - but the idea’s great nevertheless.

I updated Google’s Firefox toolbar at the weekend, and Firefox promptly fell over with CPU usage at 23% and memory allocation continually increasing. Disabling the extension seems to have fixed it. Can’t guarantee it’s not my computer being weird, but if you’re a google toolbar user it might be worth waiting on the update. The problems I see are with toolbar version 2.0.20060515W.

I’d just like to state my full approval of Tesco’s self-service checkouts. I scan the items, send them down the rolly thing and a staff member appears to pack the bags! By the time I’ve paid, it’s all ready to load into the trolley. I feel like I should tip them.

I know Tesco have some morally dubious business practices behind the scenes, but they do make themselves hard to dislike.

Phenomenon of the day is the Fata Morgana mirage, which I heard about this afternoon. Named after Arthurian antagonist Morgana Le Fay, whose home was a floating castle, the mirage creates the appearance of large structures floating in the air. This photo of a phantom city, floating above the ocean, was taken in China earlier this month:

It could be a hoax, but multiple sources have the same kind of image, and the illusion has recognisable characteristics.

Hot air on top of cold ocean water refracts light back downwards and around the Earth, resulting in the appearance of objects that are actually located over the horizon. This has apparently resulted in sailors witnessing actually distant ships floating in the sky towards them. The effect is rarely smooth and commonly results in objects becoming stretched both horizontally and vertically, resulting in what look like spires and towers, hence the Morgana Le Fay link.

The non-smooth refraction can also cause the image to repeat in places, and this can be seen in the above photo. The buildings aren’t really as tall as they seem - if you look closely you can see that there’s a repeating section in their middle.

It’s an example of a superior mirage - superior meaning that the false image is above the actual image - an effect which can be seen at sunrise/sunset, when the sun is visible for a couple of minutes when really below the horizon.

I heard about this from the rather excellent Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast, which I only discovered yesterday.

This evening somebody asked me for details on the wongaMonkey in the blog banner. I realised I had no clue, which was shameful. I turned to Lil, who immediately identified it as some kind of gibbon. Two minutes later she came back with the type - it’s a Moloch Gibbon. This is the original shot of the wongaGibbon, taken at Twycross Zoo suring summer 2001:

A seriously cool gibbon, I think you’ll agree. More exciting, though, is this:

S/he was still going strong as of last August! However, wongaGibbon looks sad, and this makes me feel bad. I think a return visit is called for, to check up on him/her.

Speaking of wanky critics, here’s a piece from yesterday’s Guardian on Snakes on a Plane:

The most keenly anticipated film of 2006 is almost certainly going to be one of its worst. No possible cinematic good can come of a plot which revolves around an attempt to assassinate a mafia suspect, travelling under FBI protection, by smuggling several hundred deadly vipers, adders and constrictors aboard the aircraft transporting the miscreant to trial. This film - and nobody is pretending otherwise - will suck.

Excuse me while I gag. No possible cinematic good? Is there some magic scale of goodness of which I’m unaware? What is it about cinema that inspires people to take it so goddamn seriously?

The Snakes On A Plane hype, originated entirely by people with no financial stake in the film, and who know it will be atrocious, may well mark the point at which the internet age’s demented love of irony has mutated into active collaboration in the cretinisation of our culture.

I just can’t stand this kind of elitist preaching. The cretinisation of our culture? In the past I’d have lapped this up. It made me feel superior, that I understood things beyond the reach of the average person. I was full of crap, and so is this.

The point of any film is to entertain, and that’s it. Some may aim to inform, but this has to be done by entertainment. I personally like it when movies make me think, or create clever allegories to real-world problems, or have dialogue that sends shivers down my spine, but plenty of people aren’t interested in these things. I also like to be able to relax for a couple of hours and watch people saving the world. I’m damn well not going to be ashamed of this, but there are plenty of critics who appear to think I should be. The only reason to claim that one kind of film is objectively better than another is to make yourself feel superior. Cinema has the power to educate and to inspire, but no obligation to do so. It’s meant to be fun, for crying out loud!

Of course it’s fun to argue about the rights and wrongs of films, but the above goes beyond enjoyable banter into creating a superior clique that truly understands what is good and bad in cinema, and laughs at those who disagree. If the aim were to enhance people’s enjoyment, I wouldn’t have a problem, but it’s not. The idea here is to make people feel ashamed. “You liked Mission: Impossible: 2? What a prole!” And that’s appalling. There is nothing more virtuous in creating The Godfather than there is in creating Snakes on a Plane. The purpose of both is entertainment. It should be obvious that there is no right/wrong when it comes to art, and pretending otherwise serves only to drive wedges where society needs bridges. If you want to set your baseline so that anything made purely to entertain is worthy of your derision then go ahead, but please don’t presume to tell everybody else that they’re wrong.

I feel better now

The release of The Da Vinci Code inspired vast amounts of pretension. Every mention of it was prefaced with a side remark about the book’s “terrible writing style”, followed by sarcasm regarding Ron Howard and mainstream blockbuster hollywood capitalist manipulative blah wanky blah. I had to go see it. Spoilers follow…

Continue reading ‘Watching The Da Vinci Code’

Is it ironic that I have to look up the word ‘esoteric’ every single time I read it, or am I remembering wrongly?

I was invited to see X-Men: The Last Stand this evening. I really enjoyed the first two, but with a new writer/director (Bryan Singer left to direct Superman Returns) picking up the pieces, I was nervous that it might be disappointing.

I wasn’t disappointed.

I think the films make a fine trilogy. Superhero flicks are very difficult to pull off, as there’s a very fine line between being too serious and too silly¹. I think it was managed in this case through thoughtful scripts, good actors and only subtle nods to the (many) inherent allegories of the story. They created superheroes with whom you could identify. Great stuff.

By the way: whether you see it at the cinema or on DVD, you’ll be wanting to stay until the end of the credits.

1. if you’re thinking that superhero films must be silly in the first place, you’re not the intended audience I’d recommend you give them a try, however! [↩]

There were Alpha Course postcards outside yesterday’s Da Vinci Code screening. The course describes itself as “a practical introduction to the Christian faith”, with a main headline saying “The Da Vinci Code. What is the truth?”. I’d so love to be at that meeting.

Speaker: So, you see, Jesus did not have a wife, nor children.
Me: Oh. All right, then.
Speaker: We all live through Jesus, who rose from the dead for our salvation.
Me: Woah. Hang on a moment. Rose from the dead?
Speaker: Yes.
Me: How is that not more ridiculous than saying he had kids?
Speaker: The Bible says it is true.
Me: The Da Vinci Code says he had kids. What’s the difference?
Speaker: The Bible is true.
Me: You can’t just say that and expect me to believe it. Where’s your evidence?
Speaker: The Bible is evidence. The Bible tells us that our lord Jesus was born to a virgin, and…
Me: What?!
Speaker: His mother was a virgin.
Me: That’s just stupid. I’m leaving now.
Speaker: You can’t say that! You must respect my religion!

The whole meeting would be one big irony

Just back from The Da Vinci Code. I tried to write something about it but my sentence structure descended into goop. I’ll tidy it up tomorrow. On the whole I found the film entertaining, with one or two caveats.

Ooh, and I saw the international Superman trailer, which had a surprising amount of new footage - possibly too much, in all honesty - and was very exciting indeed

You Are Bert

Extremely serious and a little eccentric, people find you loveable - even if you don’t love them! You are usually feeling: Logical - you rarely let your emotions rule you You are famous for: Being smart, a total neat freak, and maybe just a little evil How you life your life: With passion, even if your odd passions (like bottle caps and pigeons) are baffling to others

Just a little evil? I think they’re forgetting that Bert and Osama are like that. Via Jo.

BBC News and Scientific American report on intriguing results from a recent biology experiment. Researchers found that mice with white patches could produce offspring with white patches but only non-white-patch genes. Assuming that these white patches had the same cause, this flouts the current theory of genetics. Subsequent investigation is hinting that RNA - the bridge between DNA and proteins that affect the body - can act as an arbiter of heredity¹, which is fascinating. The exact method isn’t yet known, but I imagine that this ‘paramutation’ confirmation will be eagerly investigated. There’s already speculation that this may explain the strangely low number of genes found in the human genome.

1. I love that phrase [↩]

My guitar teacher has long recommended I get a guitar effects pedal, saying that they make a big difference as you can mimic the exact sounds of guitar work you enjoy. I put some birthday money towards a Zoom G2.1u, and it arrived this morning. It’s simultaneously great and extremely frustrating.

I was previously using a basic amplifier with drive, bass and treble controls, plus a couple of distortion setups and a reverb. The distortion was a little over-the-top and I almost always stuck with the clean sound. This meant little variety, and strumming chords sounded the same for every song. The Zoom G2.1u takes me to the other extreme. I can mimic sixteen different amplifiers, changing the tone and gain of each, while applying endless effects with their own variables. At the moment, it’s too much.

I’m not good enough to know what to change when I want to replicate a particular song. I don’t know whether the sound is characteristic of a particular amplifier, or, say, I need to add a chorus with extra depth. I sometimes feel that I’m quite close, and that if I just changed the right setting it would sound perfect, but it’s knowing which one to change. It’s fun to play around, though, and I have discovered the ‘acoustic guitar’ preset, which does a remarkable job. Lots of playing around, plus taking it along to my next lesson, will hopefully help me get my head around everything.