Intimate But Not Personal

Conditions: Warm, Stuffy

Fly The Too-Friendly Skies

Who would have thought that we'd get to the point where in order to travel on a plane you would either have to get a full naked picture of yourself taken, or get an extremely intimate frisking from security personnel? At least we're still allowed to choose which type of humiliation we will be subjected to.

So the focus naturally turns to: are these scanners safe to use? The answer from a medical website may surprise you.

It shouldn't, though.

Being scanned at an airport by a body scanner emits such a tiny amount of radiation, that there is no threat to health, as long as the machine is working properly, Peter Rez, Professor of Physics, Arizona State University says.

The chances of receiving a life-threatening cancer are approximately 1 in 30 million, Rez added. Compare that to a 1 in 5 million risk of being struck by lightning. Manufacturers say the radiation dose is one-thousandth of what one would receive during a dental x-ray.

These figures only refer to devices that are working properly and do not jam. Jamming is possible, during which a radiation dose can shoot up, Prof. Rez explained.

Even though body scanners have a safety mechanism that should shut off the machine if anything goes wrong, there is no guarantee that mechanism won't fail.

- medicalnewstoday.com/

Okay, 1 in 30 million chance of getting cancer from Dr Rez there. Sounds like fairly low odds, thanks Doctor. Assuming the machines don't malfunction (and we all know how safe and reliable mass-transit mechanical devices are, right?) then it would seem fairly safe. But wait there's more:

CONTROVERSIAL full-body airport scanners are just as likely to kill you as a terrorist's bomb exploding on your plane, a leading scientist says.

Peter Rez, a physics professor at Arizona State University, US, said the probability of dying from cancer caused by radiation from a body scanner and that of being killed in a terror attack are both approximately one in 30 million.

The risk is less than that of being killed by a lightning strike.

Dr Rez argues that it doesn’t make sense to deploy the scanners based on such low odds.

“The probability is about the same as the thing you are trying to prevent," Dr Rez said.

"So my view is there is not a case to be made for deploying them to prevent such a low probability event."

Dr Rez said that what most concerns him about the machines is that a potential malfunction could increase the radiation dose.

- news.com.au/

Oho, so the good doctor had more to say on the subject. Since the odds of a terrorist attack are roughly the same as the odds of getting cancer, then exactly why are we going to all this expense and trouble?

I'm glad you asked. People are sheep, and sheep panic easily. Therefore anything that can be done that will be seen to be making things safer, will therefore be done. And to hell with logic. Happy flying.




Film Review: Gamer

In the genre I like to call The Twisted Mirror, there are many contenders to the throne. The king of them all is of course The Running Man, a brilliant piece of entertaining satire starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. But every few years a new knock-off comes along, trotting out the old setup and invariably including a new twist of some kind. Gamer is the latest contestant, starring Gerard Butler it portrays a world in which video games as we know them have changed to the point where people sit on their couches and control other people. Michael C Hall, playing a brilliant fruit-loop of a tycoon, has created a technology that allows the brain of a person to be taken over by a controller. You know, for fun. At first he creates a game where people just run around maniacally, sort of like Facebook but with a lot more groping. Eventually however the Government is persuaded to allow the technology to be used on convicted killers on death row, and Slayers is born. A game where real people are piloted around like drones, shooting the crap out of each other. If you survive 30 games you get a pardon.

Gerard Butler plays Kable, the toughest, meanest one of 'em all. Because he's up to game 28 he's also become very famous around the world, and something of a problem for Hall, who does not want to let him go free. Because once Kable had a life, and a family, and was setup in order to get Slayers working in the first place, and the last thing Hall wants is for Kable to get out and tell his story. So it's up to a rag tag bunch of hackers, and the kid who 'controls' him, to try and get him out of the game. The setup of the film is a bit weak, focusing just on the fighters and the one actual gamer we see, and lacking any social perspective crucial for this kind of film. The real problem with this though is in the execution. A lot of it looks like it was shot with hand held cameras, and the picture shakes around something terrible. This is annoying enough, but when the action that is going on behind the shaking seems totally random, not to mention disconnected from society (we never really know if anyone not in the games even cares about all this), the film has not really exploited the idea far enough.

Of course there's a lot of violence and death, and a maniacal plan to take over the world, and even a happy ending. But it all seems too easy, too simple, too restricted. Gerard is trying his best, but when you're cast as a monosyllabic killing machine who's controlled by some 15 year old from a couch, what can you really do except variations on anger, rage, frustration, more anger. It's not a smart film - perhaps because Gaming isn't really all that interesting as a spectator sport, or intellectual as a subject. Perhaps it'd work if we were controlling the characters ourselves, but we're not, so we need them to be more than puppets. The subtle yet glaring differences between stories and games. One Gib out of Five.


- Peace out

The Horror, The Horror

Conditions: Frantically Calm

Because Google Told Me To.

Fun story popped up in the news this week regarding two warring nations, the disputed border between them, and a plucky little computer company both sides decided to put too much trust in. And what happens when we rely too much on our technology? It starts taking over.

A Google Maps line in the wrong place has inflamed a 160-year-old border dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica and sent the head of the Organization of American States into a flurry of shuttle diplomacy.

Over the last several days:

• President Laura Chinchilla has appeared on national television urging Costa Ricans to remain calm.

• Google has apologized for its map and blamed the U.S. State Department, then released a statement saying: “By no means should they be used as a reference to decide military actions between two countries.”

• An adviser to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Miguel D’Escoto, has warned via the English-language Nica Times: “I have no doubt the U.S.’s hand is in this.”


- thestar.com/news/

Wherever Skynet is right now, I bet it’s grinning into its pint of bitter.



Film Review: Resident Evil: Afterlife

I must say, all those many years ago as I sat and watched the credits roll up at the end of the first Resident Evil film, I never could of imagined that we'd be here, at number four in the R.E franchise. A franchise built out of nothing but the building blocks of Zombies and the delectable Milla Jovovich. Even the Zombie apocalypse wasn't enough to knock the fight out of this monster, and so here we are, with yet another bunch of desperate survivors surrounded by yet another army of undead, who are yet again joined by Alice, this time flying in on an ancient airplane.

You may care, or likely not care, that the previous film had established an army of Alices, and the Queen Alice herself had become some kind of Neo of the Zombie-trix. Well anyway, those details are cleared away in the opening ten minutes, allowing us to revert to a simpler time, when a Resident Evil movie was about people cowering behind walls, surrounded by zombies. And really, that's that. Alice and, for some reason, Sarah from the last film, team up to try and help the rag tag group escape their fortress to a ship spotted in the harbour. Will they all get to safety, or will they be horribly killed off one by one? Are you kidding me?

The film, directed by the original's Paul W.S Anderson, has benefited mightily from two things: The Matrix movies, from which much has been borrowed, if not outright stolen, and 3D technology. Now I did not see this in the third dimension, because 3D is for suckers, but I must say this is one of the most stylish films I've seen in a long time. If nothing else, 3D technology has forced directors to properly shoot movies again, and this one looks gorgeous. It is such a triumph of style over substance that the many, many plot holes, logic gaps, and sheer stupidity on display kind of merges into the background, and you just find yourself marveling at a scene where water cascades down over our heroes like rain in gorgeous slow motion while they fight some giant monster-zombie who wields an axe the approximate size of a telephone pole. It's beautiful. Stupid, but beautiful. Three coins out of Five.


- Peace out

Here We Go Again

Conditions: Very nice

Revenge

Now that the American voting public, in all their wisdom, have voted the Republicans back into control of the House of Representatives, the Republicans are quickly looking to re-establish themselves on the scene. Target number one: Obama's health-care package that was (just) put together thanks to the slim majority the Democrats had at the time.

Washington - In a symbolic show of opposition, resurgent House Republicans are eyeing an early up-or-down vote to repeal the Obama administration's health care overhaul, though a successful overturn of the controversial measure is well beyond their reach.

Even if a proposal passes the soon-to-be GOP-controlled House of Representatives, it's unlikely to go any further, considering the Democrats' control of the Senate and President Barack Obama's power to veto legislation.

But with many of the law's provisions years away from implementation, the GOP can use its new House majority to slow the measure's funding and progress through a gantlet of congressional hearings, investigations, aggressive oversight and legislative delays. A conservative commentator called the guerrilla warfare-like tactic "defund, delay and debunk."

The real value of the House vote is to show disgruntled voters that GOP lawmakers haven't conceded defeat on the president's signature domestic-policy triumph, said James Capretta, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

But of course with a democratic president still in place the Republicans cannot kill the bill, yet. But 2012 is just around the corner, and you know the Republicans love playing the long game.

Tevi Troy, a Republican health strategist and visiting senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, cautioned eager Republicans against changing many unpopular portions of the law. He said the revisions would make the measure more palatable to the public and consequently dampen desire to see the law overturned in 2012.

Capretta said Republicans should resist the temptation to go it alone on opposing the health law. He urged them to court centrist and conservative Democrats who could be vulnerable in the 2012 elections.

- truth-out.org/

So here we go again, the Republicans are using a big controversial and complicated thing to position themselves as the father of the nation, who will take care of everything once they're back in power again. Almost has a sad sense of inevitability about it.



Film Review: RED

Which stands for Retired and Extremely Dangerous. RED is an old fashioned kind of comedy action film about old retired CIA agents who have to come out of retirement because the CIA is trying to kill them. It's headed by Bruce Willis, and also stars Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren. I was a little concerned this was going to be another sad-Willis film like, you know, all his recent movies. And to a certain extent it is. I mean, this one is a lot more fun than most of Willis's movies of the past decade, but it still features him as the straight man of the movie, one that everyone else gets to riff off of. I miss that zany Willis who laughed at his own jokes.

But despite that it does turn into a very fun ride, breathlessly racing from location to location. The heart of the film is the burgeoning romance between Willis and Mary Louise Parker, a phone operator for the pension plan Willis was signed up to. Naturally she is dragged into all the chaos. An interesting twist the the Karl Urban character, the CIA operative charged with killing the retired ones. He actually comes across as more of a human being as the film goes along, and the fight sequence he has with Willis in the middle of the film is just awesome. And there is a plot to uncover, lest you think it's all just shootouts and one liners.

So what is this film. It's funny, it's fairly brutal, it's sweet and interesting. It also features Helen Mirren firing a gigantic field gun at a squad of secret service men, and a cameo from Ernest Borgnine. It's actually directed pretty well too, with no throwaway shaky cam garbage at all, and characters you can actually care about. All in all a fun time at the movies. Four pigs out of Five.


- Peace out