Kick 'Em When They're Down

Conditions: Ominous

Sedition
News has arrived that a gathering of scientists and sports fans has occurred in order to organise a competition dedicated to improving robots such that they may one day defeat humans... at soccer!

More than a thousand football-playing robots and RoboCup fans from forty countries have descended on the Dutch technology Mecca of Eindhoven this week with one goal in mind, to beat the humans at their own game.

The tournament's mission is to defeat the human World Cup winners by 2050, creating technology along the way that will have applications far beyond the realm of sport.

To achieve the goal, organisers have created multiple competition classes, including small robots, large robots, humanoid robots and even virtual robots, with plans to merge their techniques into a single squad of all-star androids capable of one day winning a man vs. machine matchup.

- telegraph.co.uk/science/

Oh, this is such a bad idea! If this had been a gathering of people to define how best to defeat robots either on a sporting field or otherwise I’d be all for it. But when the stated goal is to improve the robots, with a view to helping them defeat humans in the future I have to wail and gnash my teeth at the stupidity of it all. Who would have thought it would be soccer that would be our downfall? I had 50 bucks on the Kardashians.



Film Review: Man of Steel

So, how do you actually make an action movie work around a character who is completely invulnerable? Why you bring in a bunch of other invulnerable characters who will line up to kick the stuffing out if him! Man of Steel is the Superman movie that was needed like two Superman movies ago. A movie that deals with the innate stupidity of a character like Superman by just ramping up the fantastical origins, and then delivering huge-scale action sequences. So we start in Krypton, where a peerless Russell Crowe is busy preparing for the implosion of the planet by putting his newborn son into a spaceship for Earth, defying General Zod in the process. Russell totally makes this whole thing work, lending such a sense of committed gravitas to the role that you even buy him flying around on the back of a giant dragon. Then: Earth, and some tangled flashbacks of Kal El’s childhood and drifter-years. Just as Kal finds out who he is from Russell’s old recordings, Zod arrives and demands Earth hands over the last son of Krypton. Most of Earth is like “what in the who, now?”, but eventually Kal takes his father’s’ plan to heart, suits up, and goes off to battle for Earth.

I’ve never liked Superman. I’ve always thought it was this awkward interpretation of American invulnerability, power and innocence. And it is. But thankfully under the combination of Christopher Nolan producing and Zach Snyder directing, this film is focused very firmly on the action and spectacle, and just getting on with the whole good v evil thing. Our characters have been painted in very broad strokes, and are then fired at each other like a broadside from a galleon. The military get dragged in, as ever, but are given a secondary role, and essentially told to stay out of it. Is the film deep? No. It is noble, concentrating on how far the two men will go to defend who they have defined themselves to be. But ultimately, with the battle lost, it ends up being a superhero-brawl, with a little monologing and some civilians-in-the-line-of-fire thrown in.

It’s here that a lot of people have had a problem with this Superman, so focused on battling the bad guys he’s not really doing much to prevent people getting killed and buildings getting knocked over. Apparently this is a betrayal in the mind of many Superman fans. But here’s the thing, Superman is not a god. He’s powerful, strong, fast, fights for good, all that jazz. But he’s not a god. He may have been seen that way over the many years, movies, comic books, tv shows, and computer games, but here, in this movie that is a rebooting of the Superman franchise, he is a guy from Krypton who’s grown up on Earth and only now has decided to become a public protector of it’s people. So it makes total sense that he would focus more on battling the bad guys than ensuring all the civilians are safely out of the way.

It’s big, it’s grand, it’s got a suitably majestic soundtrack, not to mention the loudest explosions I’ve ever heard, and perhaps am still hearing. In places it appears to batter you into submission. Occasionally the actors pause to talk grandly about grand things, and it serves as a fairly robust reboot of the ultimate man in tights. Three fallen buildings out of five.



- Peace out