Crimes of the mouth

Conditions: Chocolatey. Mmmmmm...

If you question gravity you are labeled an idiot, and pitied. If you question the theory of evolution you are labeled a creationist, and insulted. If you question the theory of relativity you are labeled a scientist, and given research funding. And if you question the Holocaust, you are prosecuted.

The U.N, and various European nations have criminalised the questioning of the Holocaust, effectively drawing a big curtain over one of the greatest tragedies in Human history. A curtain that people are free to examine, but under no circumstances are allowed to lift. I find this insulting. I believe that a massive genocidal crime against humanity, including Jewish people, was put in motion by the Nazis during WW II, but prosecuting people for questioning things that we accept to be true is the path to tyranny and dictatorship. The fundamental nature of human beings is to question, in search of answers. These rulings feel like the actions of a society that has something to hide. And when you're trying to hide something, you make people become even more inquisitive, because they sense there's something to hide.

Is there a reason to prosecute people for questioning the holocaust? Are the questioners breaking the law by checking the established facts and recollections? Are they damaging our civilisation by their inquiries? Of course not. At the worst all they'll do is make themselves look foolish, and there's always the possibility their research may lead to new discoveries about the events that took place.

The precedent is chilling. If it is a crime to question the holocaust, how long will it be until it is a crime to question what happened on 9/11? You think some of the buildings were knocked down with explosives? Well then you're under arrest. You think the American/Iraq war was illegal? You're on the side of the terrorists. In fact, many things that Men of Power would like shifted away behind a curtain could be shoved into this clause. Which is why this ruling should not be allowed. We're all adults. We all have our own brains, for the time being. We should be trusted to be able to think for ourselves, even when we demonstrate that we don't want to.

More opinion here


Engage the Sun Shield!

"Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best thing...block it out!" - Mr Burns

It sounds like the stupidest idea ever thought of. Well - second stupidest. No one will ever beat American Idol. In a bold bid to arrest Global Warming while still allowing industry to pollute like a mofo, the U.S is proposing the idea of launching a shield into space that will block out a small percentage of it's rays, effectively (they say) eliminating global warming at a stroke.

[The U.S] says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be "important insurance" against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a UN report on climate change, the first part of which is due out on Friday).

The US has also attempted to steer the UN report, prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), away from conclusions that would support a new worldwide climate treaty based on binding targets to reduce emissions. It has demanded a draft of the report be changed to emphasise the benefits of voluntary agreements and to include criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol, which the US opposes.

The final report, written by experts from across the world, will underpin international negotiations to devise an emissions treaty to succeed Kyoto, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft of the report last year and invited to comment.

The US response says the idea of interfering with sunlight should be included in the summary for policymakers, the prominent chapter at the front of each panel report. It says: "Modifying solar radiance may be an important strategy if mitigation of emissions fails. Doing the R&D to estimate the consequences of applying such a strategy is important insurance that should be taken out. This is a very important possibility that should be considered."

Scientists have previously estimated that reflecting less than 1 per cent of sunlight back into space could compensate for the warming generated by all greenhouse gases emitted since the industrial revolution. Possible techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit, thousands of tiny, shiny balloons, or microscopic sulfate droplets pumped into the high atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption. The IPCC draft said such ideas were "speculative, uncosted and with potential unknown side-effects".

The US submission complains the draft report is "Kyoto-centric" and it wants to include the work of economists who have reported "the degree to which the Kyoto framework is found wanting".

It also complains that overall "the report tends to overstate or focus on the negative effects of climate change". It also wants more emphasis on responsibilities of the developing world.

Link.

This is classic American thinking, finding the cheapest, easiest, fastest way to fix a major problem so that they don't have to actually do anything. Bravo.



Film review: Epic Movie

The most popular type of comedy that has become prevalent over the last few years is the 'spoof' movie, where a bunch of successful films are stitched together and parodied. Sometimes it works quite well, and serves as an enjoyable diversion. This is not one of those times. Taking on such films as Narnia, Pirates of the Carribean and Willie Wonka, this film is essentially devoid of any jokes whatsoever. Perhaps the parody of a film that is almost a parody itself causes it to fall flat, or perhaps it was just badly made, but I never laughed. Avoid at all costs. Zero jokes out of five.



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State of the what?

Conditions: Muggy. Again. Some more.

I have no interest whatsoever in watching Bush's state of the union speech, or analysing it, or even reading what others are analysing about it. Apparently, I'm not alone on that one. Frankly, the man is so transparent I was surprised I couldn't actually see right through him to the evil Cheney-Bot that squatted in the background. The man makes me sick. Cheney, too.

So instead, let's talk about sharks.

On Wednesday, a rare and prehistoric deep-water shark surfaced near Japan in order to die. Actually, the shark was doing okay until intrigued Japanese scientists decided the best thing to do was to transport this rare find out of the sea and into a tank, where it then promptly died. One sympathises. It's one thing to be rare and isolated, quite another to be seized and permanently locked up, because you're rare and isolated.

At least the scientists don't have to fumble around for a reason to cut it into pieces, now.



Chinese Space Attack!

By now, millions of bits of metal, plastic, cardboard, uranium and some rice have drifted around in earth orbit many times, having once been united together as a communications satellite and then being blown up recently by a Chinese Earth-based missile. Naturally, this provoked a storm of controversy, mainly from the Americans who feel that if anyone is going to be shooting off explosives, it's going to be them first and foremost, by thunder. The Chinese have both 'declined to confirm' that they had anything to do with it, and told everyone to relax and get over it. Apparently, the satellite was obsolete.

This either brings us one step closer to Armageddon (my pick), or it brings us one step closer to being held prisoner on this orbiting rock by a sky full of metal fragments travelling at supersonic speed. Or possibly both. Contemplate this as you stare up at the stars tonight.


Peace out.

Al Gore for president!

Conditions: Overcast, muggy.

There's been a lot of speculation about Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama over the last few days. Both of them are exploring the run for the White House, and the punters are thick with opinion. When Hillary's medicare program crashed, she got a lot of criticism for trying to do too much as the First Lady. That criticism has now been reborn, in a shapeless, difficult-to-identify form, with people just generally not being too favourable about having her as a president. Frankly, I'm a little concerned about her cosying up to the right, but she seems like a smart person. There's a good article about the perception of Hillary here.

Barak Obama is essentially a kid. His detractors says he hasn't had enough experience for the job, and they're basically right. Was amusing though is the amount of critical press is name gets. Obama is one letter away from Osama, and his middle name is Hussein. Unfortunately to the normal American voter, that probably matters. What should matter is the slander *someone* has put out about where Obama went to school. Fox News kept repeating that he had gone to a school that taught fundamentalist Islam. We learn now that that was not the case. But the story has already been out there for a news cycle, and all the potential voters have taken it on board. You can never completely put the rabbit back in the hat. And it seems the muckraking is off to an early start.

I'd say something about John McCain, but after seeing him totally roll over and play nice with the Bush administration, the guys who called him crazy and signed a torture bill, well screw him.

Of course the man who should be President, is the one guy who isn't interested. Come on, George Clooney, we need you! No, I mean Al Gore, of course, who's political career died for Clinton's sins, and has been reborn as an environmental campaigner. A role he's happy in, and most effective. Shame that we only get to appreciate the guy once he's out of the running.

Film Review: Apocolypto.

It's refreshing to see a film that's exactly what the previews said it was. Man gets captured, escapes, and runs for his life. The trailer predicted it, and so it was. Mel Gibson has again made a very good film, this time immersing us in central American jungle, in the before time. The greens saturate the film, and the authenitc dialog (with subtitles), along with the very graphic and bloody violence, make this film feel very real. There's not much of a moral, it's more a graphic documentary, with very real characters and danger, and a journey to the height of their civilisation. It's grimacingly violent, but still in the satisfying Hollywood template of action films.

There's not much to say, really. I was struck with how far humans have come, as far as valuing human life was concerned. Human Sacrifice seemed to be as much about keeping the people entertained as it was about appeasing the Gods. We now use sports for the same effect. Ultimately, the film is as good and as bad as you think it is. I'll give it 3 and a half out of 5 still-beating hearts.

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Quick Link

For the weekend musings:





Even I, an evolutionary skeptic, couldn't deny the humour in this one. Let's hope some college kids break in over the weekend and leave a puddle of non-denominational goo on the floor.

Link here.

Has it only been a week?

Conditions: Warm and Sunny, some more.

The Oil is falling!

from the NYTimes:

A slide in oil prices has been gaining speed since the beginning of the year, as supplies remain ample and producing countries show little inclination to agree on production cuts.

The Energy Information Administration reported this morning that inventories rose by almost 6.8 million barrels last week, with more imports reaching American ports and refinery utilization falling slightly. Analysts said today’s slide was precipitated by the report.

The benchmark contract for light low-sulfur crude to be delivered next month fell by more than $1.80 a barrel to settle at $50.42 after regular trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. According to figures from Reuters, the price briefly reached $49.90 at one point in the afternoon.
[...]

Mild weather in December and early January have helped depress demand for distilled products like crude oil and gasoline, stocks of which are running high for this time of year. Refiners produced less last week, but not by enough to keep inventories from rising yet again, by 3.5 million barrels of gasoline and 900,000 barrels of other distillates.

As the government report noted, the member states of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are further out of compliance with the group’s production quotas than many analysts expected. Earlier this week, Ali al-Naimi, the oil minister of Saudi Arabia, the cartel’s dominant member, dismissed calls for quick action to reduce quotas further and prop up prices. So it appears that there will be plenty of oil available in the market for some time to come.

"The market is selling off on the shocking headline showing huge builds in crude stocks," Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading, told Reuters. "The market may test the $50 support level, and see if it holds there."

Peter Beutel, the president of Cameron Hanover, said that some of the surge in imports seen last week in the statistical report represented shipments that could not be delivered the week before because fog blanketed the Houston Ship Channel, site of a number of refineries.

I think we've finally found a good use for Global Warming - messing with oil investors! The thinking is that the oil price was driven up over speculation about a cold Northern Hemisphere winter, speculation that has proven to be false. So instead we've seen a pretty major fall in oil prices. Short term, very short term, this is good news, and I am happy.


Escalation.

There's a lot of anger in the reaction to Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq. The opinion is that Bush is doing the wrong thing, making things worse. In my opinion this opinion is likely more to do with his track record, rather than the actual merits of his latest decision. Indeed, if Bush had announced a gradual withdrawal, most of America would be cheering about it, safe in the knowledge that the sadly constant reporting of American soldiers dying in Iraq every night on TV would be eventually coming to an end. - Not that Iraq would be any better off, or safer, just that the Americans would be better off for leaving it. And over time, the blame for the gradual destruction of a sovereign nation would pile up on the former president's tarnished legacy. Little surprise, then, that he is still trying to find a way out that doesn't condemn his future.

Iraq was invaded for all the wrong reasons, by all the wrong people. The bullshit about Iraq or Hussein being a danger has long been shown for the criminal lies they were (not that any American leader will ever be punished for it and the subsequent the illegal invasion...), and the fact that it's an American invasion, as opposed to one backed by all the nations, hamstrings every single thing Bush's people try to do over there. But. The problem with Iraq (as opposed to Afghanistan - which was another botched invasion) is that it sits above an enormous quantity of oil. Oil that every single infrastructure on the face of the planet needs in order to keep going. From our cities to our seas, oil makes the world go around, and even though Iraq shouldn't have to suffer for that, it is the hard-edged Realpolitik we’re faced with.

In order to keep our civilisation ticking, we need to maintain our way of life, while also planning for the future. The future planning part is out of my scope, hopefully nuclear power can spread fast enough to take up the slack of rising oil costs. But the maintaining part essentially means that Iraq needs to be a stable, prosperous country that provides oil to the world at market rates. We all need that. Including Iraq. And since Iraq at the moment is a mess, collapsing into a civil war, and with the potential to become a new Afghanistan – which other powers in the region simply would not tolerate – what would Iran or Saudi Arabia do if Iraq collapses into a lawless state? Or Turkey, for that matter, who are very nervous about the Kurds creating their own nation right on the border. Withdrawing troops from the country is simply not going to help stabilise it. More troops are needed, and not just American ones - though I suspect other nations will only become involved when the Americans a) apologise to the U.N and b) actually start to make some progress. Neither of which is going to happen anytime soon.

So it's up to America, the brave, to shoulder this responsibility for now and keep going. It sucks for America, I guess, but that’s just tough.

Cartoon: This Modern World

Tom Tomorrow is a very funny political cartoonist. Enjoy his latest here:




Film Review: The Prestige.

Christopher Nolan once made a film that told a story back to front. It was received very well by the audiences, who found the challenge of putting it together gave a reward once they'd figured it out. To me, his latest film, The Prestige, has been constructed in a similar way, in that the audience is to enjoy itself stitching together the pieces he has made, in the hopes of liking the final picture they create. The difference is that Memento was actually a simple movie about a man deceiving himself in order to live. The Prestige is a complex tale of a rivalry evolving between two competing magicians, each of which has a different approach to their craft. Cutting the story up into flashbacks wasn't needed for this story to work. Using a lot of unnecessarily-confusing flashbacks and cuts, the Prestige eventually unfolds into an escalating series of revenges concerning a particular trick called the Transported Man, the different methods each has to it, with something of a 'surprise' ending.

It's a good movie, well made and well acted by all. And each lead actor well portrays the differences between the two competing characters, but the 'finale' of the Prestige (...) relies on an idea that, frankly, is pure science fiction. David Bowie, as famed scientist Nikolai Tesla, does his absolute best to sell it, but I just couldn't buy it. It's a gutsy move, though, because the nature of magic is that once you know the trick, all the magic is gone. Which (I think intentionally) is exactly what happens to us, the audience, in the final act of the film, the prestige.

The film is moody, a little depressing, a little fantastical, and left me feeling, well, not exactly elated. I hate to say that films need a well-defined good guy and bad guy in order to work, but I think this one suffers with both characters being dark. Who really cares when one bad guy defeats another? Much like Memento, we're left a little wanting.

Rating: 3 out of 5 dead birds.

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And, we're back.

Conditions: Hot and sunny. Good one, God. Way to stick it in, and break it off.

Well, we're back. The vacation was nice, thank you, but I feel the modern person (i.e, me) can only really stand a week of sitting in the sun reading before they go stark raving mad. So it's good to be back. Beep. The desk is how I left it, the computer sleeping quietly. The lazy cur. Awake, damn your motherboard, we have Things To Do.


Hussein

It seems a bit late to say anything about the execution of the dictator, but I don't care. This is my world, or at least my chunk of it. So. Saddam was scheduled to be executed for his crimes against humanity, but instead he was knocked off in a distasteful display of tribal vengance. Now I'm not a fan of the death penalty, but the very last thing that should have happened to Saddam is what eventually happened to him. Well I suppose the last thing that should have happened is him escaping, but this is a close second. This was supposed to be a unified, democratic Iraq, executing justice upon someone who deserved it. Instead it became, thanks to the internet playback, a mob-justice thing where the Shia got their revenge. And it's not the internet's fault. The transmission of the truth is not to be criticized. It's essentially the fault of the Iraqi rulers, who have struggled to actually be democratic amid a sea of tribal conflict and insurgency, and of course the Americans, who didn't properly bring the democracy in the first place. In this light then, it seems stupid of the Americans to hand Saddam over to a country that wasn't yet an actual peaceful, representative democracy, in order to serve justice to him. Perhaps the Americans were tired of looking after him, or perhaps they're anxious to leave the country altogether.
Whatever the reason, it's yet another bad decision by the idiots in charge.


Global Warming is upon us.

After making fun of the whole idea for many, many years, it seems those annoying people with white coats are actually correct. No, not the shrinks, who wil be first against the wall when the revolution comes, but the climatologists, who said the world weather was going to get screwed up big time if we didn't change our ways. Well here we are. In the northern hemisphere, great cities like London, New York and Lower Uncton are experiencing one of the mildest of winters on record. In fact there was an article in the New York Times, which I can't be bothered finding now, where the Polar Bears club (made of retired-police officers and the like, rather than actual bears, in case you were wondering.) (although a bunch of Zoo bears forming a club is quite an amusing idea.) (in case any of those Pixar guys are reading this, call me.) are deciding whether or not to quit after over 100 years of going swimming in the freezing waters of winter, now they are faced with this winter's balmy temperatures.

Meanwhile, down south, the summer season has been dogged by overcast skies and cold temperatures. Entire summer vacations have been spent watching and cursing the weather. In Australia, the drought has been going on for so long that the experts want to stop calling it a drought. Because the word 'drought' offers hope that at some point it will be over... There's no denying it, the weather patterns are distinctly 'off'. Like every other concerned citizen, I 'tut-tutted' my way through Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' (it needed more car chases). But this shit isn't funny anymore. I find myself looking rather seriously at my mountain bike, wondering about maybe, possibly, riding it to work - just every now and then, you understand. When the weather is warm and the winds are slight. Maybe on Wednesdays. When I feel like it. I'm not committing to anything, but even us most stoic of sceptics has to admit that the weather, she is not right.

Article ref: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011107H.shtml



Film Review: Deja Vu.

This isn't the first time that Ridley Scott has directed Denzel Washington playing a man on the edge, and it's not the first time Scott's made a film revolving around a band of technical people, their computers and one guy on the outside, and it shows in the final product. This is a very assured film, with everyone seeming in their proper place and suitable to what happens. And it needs to be, because the central premise is 'out there' and hard to swallow. Denzel does a good job of conveying that on behalf of the audience, but at the end of the day if you've ever seen the time travelling tv show "Seven Days", then this is essentially The Movie. It's set in the ruins of New Orleans, and is concerned with a boat full of women, children and navy men, so there's a fairly large dose of flag-waving and America the Great. It plays around with time travel, and does it in a pretty neat way so that when it's over you may have some entertaining questions to think about. Fate versus determinalism. Destiny as a manipulative process. The duty of opportunity. The structural integrity of a Humvee. Anyway, ultimately, it's a satisfyingly exciting thriller, with something to scratch your head over if you want to. I'll give it 4 out of 5 ear rings.


Hollywood in crisis.

Good article here at the New Yorker about Hollywood studios struggling with low box office returns, a good analysis of the dropping quality of studio films in the face of stiff competition, and the changing paradigm of movie distribution. Frankly, I don't care how long my flight is, or how cute a PDA looks, I will never be caught watching a movie on a two-inch screen. This is what books are for, people!



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