Consternation. A state of paralyzing dismay.

Conditions. Dark, indeed.


This Week In 'You've Got To Be Kidding Me.'

Unbelievably, the former armed forces chiefs from the U.S., Britain, Germany, France and The Netherlands have publicly called for a new and more aggressive manifesto for NATO, one where they stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons by, yes you guessed it, using nuclear weapons.

"The risk of further (nuclear) proliferation is imminent and, with it, the danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might become possible," the authors wrote. "The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

Are you fracking kidding me?

The five also proposed the use of force without U.N. Security Council authorization when "immediate action is needed to protect large numbers of human beings".
- Foxnews.com

Yeah, because the U.N is totally able to prevent attacks on sovereign nations at the momen... oh wait that's right, THEY CAN'T! Yes, this is just what the world needs right now.



Comparing The Keys On My Piano.

It looks like the front runners for the Democratic nomination are indeed Clinton and Obama. But how do these two politicians compare with each other, and could they eventually combine on the same ticket?

The alternatives facing Democratic voters have been characterized variously as a choice between experience and change, between an insider and an outsider, and between two firsts-a woman and a black man. But perhaps the most important difference between these two politicians-whose policy views, after all, are almost indistinguishable-lies in their rival conceptions of the Presidency. Obama offers himself as a catalyst by which disenchanted Americans can overcome two decades of vicious partisanship, energize our democracy, and restore faith in government. Clinton presents politics as the art of the possible, with change coming incrementally through good governance, a skill that she has honed in her career as advocate, First Lady, and senator.
[...]

Peter Wehner served in the Bush White House until August, 2007, working for Karl Rove, the Administration's chief strategist. Wehner, who is now a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, in Washington, said that, as a candidate, Hillary Clinton would provide a "much more target-rich environment" than Obama. Republicans wouldn't need to uncover new scandals; they would simply remind voters of the not so distant Clinton wars. "Certain regions of your brain are latent," Wehner said. "But if there's a word or a sound or a memory that you hear, that region of your brain lights up again. And I have a feeling that, with Bill and Hillary Clinton, there are latent regions of the brain that will light up, and, if the Democrats don't light it up, the Republicans will. And that is going to be Clinton fatigue." As for Obama, Wehner's only complaint is that he's a liberal: "I find him to be very impressive. He would be much more difficult for Republicans to handle. He has much more breakout potential."

- Truthout.org

So essentially Obama is kind of the idea man and Hillary the numbers-person who knows all the ins and outs of the play. Such a team could work quite well, in my opinion, but the danger may lie in them having to fight it out for so many months beforehand. Tough to ally with someone who is the competition.



Giving Up The Keys.

In reaction to the near-constant barrage of rockets Israel has had to put up with from neighboring Palestinian areas, the military commanders have begun planning for an entirely automated defense system that while overseen by humans could conceivably take over completely. You know, just if it needed to.

Israeli military leaders have begun early planning for a new, robotic defense system, armed with enough artificial intelligence that it "could take over completely" from flesh-and-blood operators. "It will be designed for... autonomous operations,' Brig. Gen. Daniel Milo, commander of Israel's air defense forces, tells Defense News' Barbara Opall-Rome. And in the event of a "doomsday" strike, Opall-Rome notes, the system could handle "attacks that exceed physiological limits of human command."
- wired.com

It seems that the more desperate a situation becomes, the less likely people are to trust each other. And hence we have this gradual push towards automation as being some kind of ultimate solution. Which is depressing since it's obviously a flawed approach to anything, and yet makes sense on paper. Well a lot of things make sense on paper, it's never any real indication of success.



Lies Dragged Out Again.

'Bush lied, they died' goes the popular saying, and of course it's entirely true, and entirely galling. But what's great about hindsight in the 21st century is that everything can be quantified, which leads us to a study recently done about Bush and his cronies in the run up to war with Iraq. Guess what they found?

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."
- Truthout.org

Take that, posterity!



Film Review: Cloverfield

A number of years ago a couple of young and broke filmmakers gave a couple of young and unknown actors some cameras and sent them out into the woods. The resulting film, The Blair Witch Project, became not only a surprise hit and a worldwide phenomenon, it also was a genuinely scary film. It used the handheld camera effect to really put us in the situation along with the characters. And since then various filmmakers have tried to tap into that 'reality film' idea. And so now, after a clever marketing campaign, we have Cloverfield, which is Blair Witch meets Godzilla. But there's a problem.

See, the reason Blair Witch worked so well was it's simplicity. Student filmmakers shooting a documentary get lost and hunted in a forest. It's plausible that such a thing could happen, and that when it did, the filmmakers would keep filming. One would have thought Cloverfield was about a giant monster attacking New York city, but it actually is not. What it is about is a bunch of anonymous N.Y. teenagers, whose unbelievably-tedious party is thankfully interrupted by an enormous monster attacking the city. Naturally, they then begin running around trying to find a girl called 'Beth'. The monster itself is really just background noise for this much smaller story about a bunch of kids trying to go from point A to point B. It's Saving Private Teenager, but done without Spielberg (or Hanks), and using a single handy cam. The complexity of the situation, the panic, the military getting thrown into the fight, the rampage, all this crowds into the background of what we can see, which ends up meaning that you're more interested in what's happening in the background, than these annoying kids.

Therefore, there's no actual story. No explanation or analysis or even a real portrayal of what's going on, just a rush of shaky camera images as we go from street to street, through the subway tunnels, and into the park. Various questions are asked, but none are answered. It's not tough to spot the obvious moves by the director to try and keep us interested: there's a trip to an electronic store where the camera is pointed at a bank of televisions so CNN can give us a timely update. We run into the military so they can give a quick rundown of how the battle is going, and the human toll. There's obviously issues about characters making stupid decisions so that the movie will keep going. The 'we're coming with you' and 'why am I wearing a cocktail dress to Armageddon?' problems with disaster movies, both kinda glaring here. There's also a distinct impression of the monster following the camera - despite the size of Manhattan, it seems to keep rampaging around about where the kids are. Again, problems with limiting the scope of a film with this subject matter.

In the end, Cloverfield both suffers and profits from it's approach. It does at least feel very realistic, having gone to such pains to do so, and the subway sequence in particular is a very effective scare. But again that sequence, much like the later helicopter ride, is totally incompatible with the character holding the camera. The realism of the film is constantly set against the lack of any actual characters, plot, or common sense. Not to mention the coincidences and unlikelihoods. I can understand why they'd want to create a different kind of monster movie, but focusing so totally on one group of unmemorable kids in the middle of such a huge story shows the limitations of the approach. A better idea would have been to combine footage from five or six different cameras being carried out of New York in five or six different directions, thereby keeping the documentary feel while making the film have a more wider, and more appropriate appeal. As it is, it's shallow, it's a downer ending (with no conclusion!), and it jars. And I hate shaky cameras. Two batteries out of Five.


End transmission.

Roll up, roll up!

Conditions: Varied, to say the least.


Riding The Crazy Train.

A lot of people start the new year with resolutions. Stop smoking, start recycling, wear more socks, whatever. President Bush seems to be starting the new year with a brand new identity - a peacemaker. Now I've heard some bald-faced lies in my time, but this one makes me look to the sky with a raised eyebrow. This guy is kicking off the last year of his presidency, one notable for it's stupid wars and rhetoric against the middle east, with a middle eastern peace tour? The hell you say. Unsurprisingly, it seems no one else was fooled either.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates - President Bush wraps up a weeklong tour of the Middle East Wednesday, leaving many Mideast political observers mystified as to the purpose of the visit and doubtful that the president made inroads on his twin campaigns for Arab-Israeli peace and isolation for Iran.

Bush is heading back to Washington mostly empty-handed, said several analysts and politicians throughout the region. Arab critics deemed Bush's peace efforts unrealistic, his anti-Iran tirades dangerous, his praise of authoritarian governments disappointing and his defense of civil liberties ironic.

"There is no credibility to his words after what the region saw during his presidency," said Mohamed Fayek, the Cairo, Egypt-based director of the nonprofit Arab Organization for Human Rights. He cited the war in Iraq, the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse scandal. "American policy threw the region off-balance and destabilized it. The visit caused deep disappointment. I don't see any results."

- Truthout.org

Is this just simple chutzpah, or does this guy really think he can make big speeches about peace and harmony without having me throw things at the television?


Letting him have it: The End of the Road for George W. Bush





It's A Bird. It's A Plane. No, It's An Idiot.




So here's the deal. Some semi-famous idiot climbed over the security fence on the observation deck of the empire state building and tried to jump off, while wearing a parachute. He was (just) prevented from doing so by security, who managed to get him back on the safe side of the fence. And now to show his contrition at trying to do something stupid, he's suing them.

He filed a lawsuit claiming that it was his life, not anybody else’s, that was most endangered by his stunt, not because of anything he did but because of the actions of the security guards.

“No one was in any danger of being injured except me,” Mr. Corliss said.

He said that if the parachute had opened while he was shackled to the fence, his body would have been yanked from his limbs.

The fact that it was entirely his fault he was in a position to have his limbs yanked off seemed to have slipped what passes for this guy's mind. But that's not the worse part. The worse part is that a judge apparently agrees with this yo-yo.

His lawsuit was a counterclaim to a $12 million lawsuit filed against him by the Empire State Building Company last year, accusing him of endangering innocent bystanders. A building spokesman said at the time that the lawsuit was intended to discourage others from emulating Mr. Corliss.

A year ago, after Mr. Corliss challenged the prosecution, a state judge in Manhattan threw out reckless endangerment and depraved indifference to life charges against Mr. Corliss, ruling that as a professional, Mr. Corliss was experienced and careful enough to jump off a building without endangering his own life or anyone else’s.

Are you kidding me? Who in the hell in their right mind could make a decision that someone could safely jump from a building in New York without being sent whirling into another building, falling into traffic, or landing on a pedestrian? What kind of crap is this? And here's the last bit that pretty much shows not all his dogs are barking:

He offered to serve as a security consultant to the Empire State Building so that others, including suicidal people, would not be able to jump off.

“Very small tweaks in their security will make it impossible to jump off that building,” Mr. Corliss said.

Hey, asshole: the existing security was enough to stop you from jumping!

- NYTimes.com



Another Step Towards Termination.



In their continuing quest to doom humankind, scientists got a monkey to make a robot walk using it's mind. The monkey, not the robot. ...yet

The robot, called CB for Computational Brain, has the same range of motion as a human. It can dance, squat, point and “feel” the ground with sensors embedded in its feet, and it will not fall over when shoved.

Designed by Gordon Cheng and colleagues at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, the robot was chosen for the experiment because of its extraordinary ability to mimic human locomotion.

As Idoya’s brain signals streamed into CB’s actuators, her job was to make the robot walk steadily via her own brain activity. She could see the back of CB’s legs on an enormous movie screen in front of her treadmill and received treats if she could make the robot’s joints move in synchrony with her own leg movements.

As Idoya walked, CB walked at exactly the same pace. Recordings from Idoya’s brain revealed that her neurons fired each time she took a step and each time the robot took a step.

“It’s walking!” Dr. Nicolelis said. “That’s one small step for a robot and one giant leap for a primate.”

The signals from Idoya’s brain sent to the robot, and the video of the robot sent back to Idoya, were relayed in less than a quarter of a second, he said. That was so fast that the robot’s movements meshed with the monkey’s experience.

An hour into the experiment, the researchers pulled a trick on Idoya. They stopped her treadmill. Everyone held their breath. What would Idoya do?

“Her eyes remained focused like crazy on CB’s legs,” Dr. Nicolelis said.

She got treats galore. The robot kept walking. And the researchers were jubilant.

- NYTimes.com

Yaaay! You know, one day, where I'm cowering in fear beneath a burned-out car and listening to the hunter-killer units walking closer to my hiding place, I hope I think back to this day and how proud we all were when good old CB walked for the first time.



Car Update.

Well, while I spent my vacation recharging, my car spent the break discharging. First, it spent xmas week running down it's battery (thanks to me having the stereo wired up wrong. whoops!). Then it commenced a serious oil leak campaign, which got to the point where children were in danger of getting washed away. After some investigation, I found the sump plug hole had decided to strip its threads. Lovely. So a repair had to be scheduled. Thankfully, the repair went fine, although a large amount of spackle now appears to have been smeared over the side of the sump. Oh well, at least it runs a little better now.



Film Review: National Treasure 2.

A few years ago Jerry Bruckheimer pulled off a real coup: he put together an adventure film about history that was fun, exciting and a box office hit. As is the way of things, a sequel was inevitable, so the whole gang returns for National Treasure 2: Gold Ahoy! Unsurprisingly, nothing has changed. Each of the characters are pretty much where they were left in the last one, and with a whiff of a new adventure concerning the conspirators behind Lincoln's death and Indian gold, we're away!

Despite the trailer, this isn't an international film at all. There's a quick trip to Paris, a layover in London and then it's back to Washington for the main course. Old legends are mentioned. Monuments are helicoptered past. Riddles are quickly solved. Old walls, cabinets and caves are wrenched open, and viola. It all falls together a little too easily this time, possibly due to the bad guys (headed by good old Ed Harris) not really putting up much of a chase, or maybe it's just tough to put together the kind of special multi-generational treasure hunt the first film featured. Anyway, makes a pleasant distraction, but doesn't improve on the original. Two Lucky Guesses out of Five.



Film Review: I Am Legend.

Will Smith makes any film crackle, so a film that features him alone in New York is going to be a treat. Man alone stories can be jarring, but Smith's easy familiarity smooths out the bumps, aided by his interacting with pet dog Sam, his only companion. That relationship, and the way Smith is so dependent on the dog, and it's dramatic conclusion, provides a solid emotional punch to the gut.

But this is actually a zombie movie, and unfortunately the zombies are not that convincing. Way too much, or possibly too little, C.G.I causes them to look all rubbery and bad. It's surprising considering how good a job they've done to make a convincingly overgrown and deserted New York, that a bunch of fast-running zombies in contrast look quite terrible.

Smith's role is to try and cure the virus that has killed the human race, and he's carved out a solid, if lonely way of life among the narrow streets and green parks. Then, inevitably, disaster. Annoyingly, I'm not sure how it happens, but somehow Smith gets caught up in a trap, is injured, and things rapidly deteriorate. He is seemingly both saved and doomed. Despite the plot holes and the zombies, the film is a worthy one. A look at scientific arrogance and human isolation. Three and a half looters out of Five.



Film Review: Alien vs Predator: Requiem.

I cannot think of any other beloved movie character that has been stepped on as hard as the Aliens have been in the later sequels. From their peak as unknown, shadowy, fluid-like, enormously terrifying creatures they have become now just essentially a pesky nuisance, like cockroaches with bigger teeth. In the interests of giving the various opposition a chance of winning, the Alien has been cruelly downgraded. Declawed to give a fairer fight. How the truly mighty have fallen. AvP is a big marketing move to create synergy between the two franchises, and the first film was disappointingly tame. But while it dismissed the Aliens, at least it had atmosphere. Something the 'sequel' greatly lacks. Instead of space, or a giant industrial complex, or at least an ancient underground temple, the latest film is set in some anonymous town in Colorado. Why? Because it's cheap. Er, I mean, because the Predator ship from the last film crashes there after some idiot shoots a hole in the wall. Yeah, that makes sense.

Remember that scene where Ripley and Newt are being chased by a couple of face-huggers around the med-lab? Remember how intense, creepy and utterly scary that was? "Break the Glass! Break it!" This film opens with a father and son being hunted through the forest by a couple of face huggers, and I could not care less. It's rushed, we can't see the creatures until they jump into the air, and we don't know who the humans are. An apt warm up for the rest of the film. A sadly brief sequence shows us the Predator home world, where a Predator views the crash on his computer,gets into a ship and takes off. One predator. By himself. Single, alone, solitary. I can't help but feel underwhelmed by this, too.

Fans, or just viewers, of the previous films will find a lot that's familiar about Avp2. A lot. A whole lot. A great deal of lot. A freaking cargo ship of Lotness. Every musical cue, every sound, every utterance, plot point, character, or action beat is a clear and obvious reference to the previous films, and films of a similar nature, save for the Predalien who looks a little bit different and seems to be in charge. Not that it really makes a difference. The town residents get in the way, get killed, get some weapons, get screwed over by each other, then the military, and get killed some more. It's all so anonymous, predictable and computer-gamey. Figure out what's happening, get some stuff and then try to go through the place to get to the thing before the time runs out.

It's frustrating to watch a film that you know you could direct better. It's frustrating to try and figure out what's happening when the camera is shaking around in order to obscure how clumsy the actors in the rubber suits are. It's frustrating to watch the mighty alien creatures get treated as if they're no more dangerous than cranky kittens who've been up all night. It's frustrating to sit and be frustrated by a movie that has both Aliens and Predators, but no actual characters in it. All in all, a sad state of affairs. One Shoulder Cannon out of Five.


Peace out.