Pre-Frontal Lobotomy

What Henry Rollins can teach us about “Character” in documentary editing.

2011-10-16T15:18:00.000-07:00

Henry Rollins is a contradiction, the tough guy with a big heart. Watching this video this morning Henry Rollins - Man Test brought together for me a number of issues I’ve been facing in my recent documentary edits.

For the documentary editor, the way in which you reveal aspects of a subject’s personality is instrumental to their character in terms of storytelling.

I’ve recently been reading “Story” by Robert McKee - yes the writing guru from “Adaptation” who rescues Nicholas Cage’s character from a doomed screenplay.

My reason for reading “Story” was because documentary editing is very similar to screenwriting in many respects. In a documentary it is in the edit where your story structure is built, where your narrative arcs happen and where, as I mentioned, your characters are given shape. You may have a limited range of language (filmed material) at your disposal but the various possible treatments of that material can lead to anything from a shallow unengaging ramble, to a rich and meaningful world of people we love.

Regarding character development, McKee makes an important distinction between True Character and Characterisation. Characterisation is the outward expression of character, as projected by the character in terms of conscious behaviour. True Character on the other hand, is shown implicitly in how the character reacts to extreme circumstances, when push comes to shove, as it were.

Henry Rollins, a picture of masculinity with his comically strong jawline, thick neck and menacing eyebrows, projects a macho attitude towards the world’s issues. He literally shouts down the position of the mainstream viewpoint. And yet, as his “Man Test” reveals Rollins scores a 73% on Femininity as opposed to a 67% Masculinity score. While this is, of course, a subjective test based on self-reflection it does outline the contradictions inherent in real people’s own minds.

Similarly, the documentary I’m editing at present centers around two characters, a brother and a sister. The brother, is ostensibly a cold and objective scientist who is outwardly hostile and resentful of his sister. However, he turns out - when push comes to shove - to have a strong compulsion to care for his sister with her various ailments, which reflects a lifetime spent caring for the sick and founding charitable organisations.

In Rollins, it’s difficult to tell which persona is True Character and which is Characterisation. While his Characterisation is clearly macho, it is clear from his upbringing that the Characterisation comes from his father, a figure that Rollins despises. He says he hates the macho attitude of “knuckle dragging” meatheads, but seems to fall so naturally into this persona in his various creative outlets. This is what makes Rollins an intriguing character, his readiness to confront his internal contradictions is refreshing and makes him an ideal documentary subject.

But all documentary subjects have these contradictions. Why? Because all documentary subjects are human beings.

Human beings all have natural tendencies peculiar to them, some of which are unhealthy or contrary to what they actually want. For Rollins this is his tendency to thuggery and victimhood. He overcompensates for his feeling of victimhood by putting on a strong front physically and verbally, while he compensates for his tendency to thuggery by embracing intellectual subjects. Rather than his contradictory behaviours cancelling each other out into a bland brand of ordinary, Rollins becomes a dynamic balance of pendulum swings between the poles of his personality.

This is the reason building True Character vs Characterisation contradictions in fictional characters is so important, it makes the characters real.

In documentary editing it is important to look for and carefully delineate what is your subject’s True Character vs what is simply Characterisation. This enables the documentary editor to reveal those aspects of True Character and Characterisation effectively to achieve an engaging story that rings true.

A follow up on the Goff letter...

2011-10-04T23:41:00.000-07:00

So I received a reply...

And my response...

Thank you Phil for your response

Unfortunately due to your poor grammar I was unable to understand your reply completely, for example, what does the following sentence mean?

"You need to see attendance at a meeting where the invitation came from Destiny as it actually was"

And when you said this "... democracy means people have the right to hear what we have to say" What were you referring to? Was it Shane Jones' comment that...

"based on what I've seen here... your movement will outlast me as a political player"?

Or was it his apology for the lack of religiosity in the Labour Party when he said this...

"... so don't for a minute feel, Bishop and Destiny members, that every member of the Labour Party is hostile to God."

This didn't sound to me like Labour communicating its principles, in fact it sounded more like Labour apologising for them. And no Phil, Destiny church members did not hear what Labour's views were on Destiny's policies of hate toward homosexuals because Shane Jones never mentioned them.

You see, a democracy only works if the voters can freely vote and if they have parties with clear principles they can vote for.

So Phil, you can feel free to be offended by my comments, but don't lecture me about democracy when you are the one failing to provide the clear principles you are responsible for providing in order for a democracy to work.

However, I appreciate your response,

Yours Sincerely,
James Brown

Final Cut Pro X mon amor...

2011-07-05T14:58:00.000-07:00

Apple has recently released FCPX: a full overhaul of the editing system on which my livelihood is dependent. Eeek.

FCPX

What's more there's been a lot of yelling and screaming from “legacy” FCP users within a week of release, this, to my mind is not really enough time to tell whether a user interface is going to work effectively. There’s a panic over the loss of late edition features like multiclips and chapter markers as well as older pseudo-obsolete features like EDL (I can’t call it obsolete just yet, I just sent one off to Digipost)

The only worrying thing to me is the automated effects that pose to do colour-matching with a single click, this sounds highly amateurish to me but strangely I don’t hear anyone mentioning this.

No, what I’m looking for in a redesigned program are baseline features, like: utilization of the 64bit chip, utilization of all available RAM, background rendering, basic workflow features like background importing and file conversion with clip analysis none of which were available on FCP7 and were not even possible with its outdated architecture. Personally I like the move to forward-looking compatibility rather than back-compatibility, how many dinosaurs can a program support before it itself goes extinct. Version 1.0 (well, let's face it version 10.0 is actually a version 1.0) is about getting the architecture right, it’s not about whistles and bells (and all the bugs that come with them).

This is Apple’s model, start simple, get feedback, make improvements. Don’t try to do everything at once before you know what people want.

I think I just talked myself into buying it…

2 days later

So I bought it, I’ve been sitting down for an hour, and I love it. The audio controls are miles ahead of FCP7, the way they are visualized is helpful and efficient, when you raise the audio levels it actually changes the waveform (fancy that?) what’s more it shows peaking within visualization and it also has an audio compressor which a video person can actually understand rather than playing trial and error.

The flattened colour correction rectangle (as opposed to the colour wheel) is brilliant, it gives me what I’ve wanted for a long time, accurate keyboard control of colour correction rather than having to clumsily mouse a difficult to move pointer around a wheel – it also has saturation adjustments for blacks, mids and whites which was a major pitfall of FCP7′s 3-Way Colour Corrector.

And for the very small percentage of us who use the Dvorak keyboard layout, it is the first FCP that can use keyboard shortcuts in Dvorak since FCP 4.5. I think I just fell in love.

Though the magnetic timeline is new to me, I can see how it might be better than a track based timeline in many ways, but this will take longer to judge. Still don’t quite get the file management side of things but the amount of import options you have is very impressive.

I feel as though Final Cut Pro just stripped out everything I don't use and gave me everything I wanted.

I may be forced to eat my words once I actually start a proper project, but so far it’s very promising especially for a 1.0. And it hasn’t crashed yet.

Open Letter to Phil Goff

2011-06-15T14:33:00.000-07:00

Dear Phil Goff

In your shameless attempt to gain the votes of 9000 Destiny Church members you have lost my vote.

When you have your minister attend an event such as The Destiny Church Conference you give further authority to a hate group and cult. I saw no reporting of criticism by your minister Shane Jones of their bigoted anti-homosexuality stance nor did I see any criticism of their systematic taxing of church members in return for... nothing. So I can only assume the Labour Party was attending this rally to gain votes.

I hope you find this to be a poor strategic move. There are surely more than 9000 homo-sexual people who will be highly offended by your support of a hate group that actively targets them. Not to mention all the other people like myself who are simply interested in standing up for human rights.

I come from a family of Labour voters and have voted for Labour every election. For the first time I will be casting an invalid vote this year as a statement of no confidence. I doubt very much Helen Clark would have had one of her ministers support such a "cult" (her wording). But then again, she had principles.

John Ward Knox

2011-03-24T23:11:00.000-07:00

So I've been curating an exhibition for the US Ambassador, and have suddenly been thrown into a crash course in contemporary New Zealand art. In doing so I've (re) discovered the work of a friend of mine. Check out his well documented works on his blog, it will no doubt blow you away as it did me.
John Ward Knox

El Greco: Fresco-bomb

2010-12-07T20:39:00.000-08:00

The tradition of photo-bombing goes back to El Greco, where he would paint himself into "historical" scenes looking sarcastically at the viewer, as if to say... "This never really happened"

My mate Andy and I decided this was perfect for captions.

Needless to say, you may come up with your own... let's make us a meme.

Caution

2010-11-29T12:00:00.000-08:00

From Pharyngula

In Scotland, a football referee joked about the Pope on email. He apparently passed along this image

Someone complained, the ref was fired. Sigh.

So there's a call to inundate the Scottish Catholic Office with Pope jokes. I'm doing my small part by posting. Keep the meme alive, you don't get to have someone fired for criticizing pedophile priests and those that cover up for them (The Pope)... well not, at least, without it blowing up in your face.

Profound discoveries don't make any difference.

2010-11-25T12:05:00.000-08:00

I had this idea when listening to a debate about morality. The religious proponent was suggesting that without God, moral chaos will ensue.

Immediately it is evident that this is not the case, otherwise there would be a section of our society; atheists, running around causing a world of trouble and we don't see this at all.

You would think that discovering that the world is not designed and controlled by a super-intelligent being would have massive implications for things here on the ground.

But it doesn't. Non-believers act just as morally as believers and seemingly without any extra strain or cognitive dissonance.

Look at other examples. The best example of profound discoveries making no difference would be the discovery that the world is not flat and that it travels around the Sun rather than the other way around. When Copernicus and Galileo fought to expose this truth there was a perception that this was going to literally turn the world on its head. But the same everyday forces of nature didn't change, of course they didn't, we didn't go flying into the sky, or fall off the face of the earth. Everything continued as usual.

Another example that really gets me is Quantum Theory. The strangeness of Quantum Theory is astounding and yet it has been demonstrated to be real and has been used to make predictions of extraordinary accuracy. The discoveries of Quantum Theory include seemingly paradoxical positions, for instance, that something can be in two places at once, that observation of an event can affect the outcome and that the activity of quanta is wholly indeterminable.

But does this suddenly mean that we can (as the makers of "What the Bleep do we Know?" would have you believe) live in parallel with multiple selves, that we can be in two places at once, and affect the outcome of events with our minds, like we're living in a video game?

No.

Sorry folks "The Secret" is no secret, it's bullshit. Quantum Physics is called "Quantum" Physics because it describes the nature of quanta and only has effects at this scale of the physical universe. What is astounding about Quantum Physics is how order arises out of the interactions of unpredictable units. Once there is a large enough body of these unpredictable units their actions as a group become predictable, they have to adhere to the general rules governing physics and then we have what we appreciate in our day to day lives as "reality".

There are numerous other examples, for instance, if we one day discover that we have no free will (some hold the position that we have already discovered this) will we stop making "choices"? If the world is determined, should we all sit around and do nothing? If consciousness is an illusion, will we immediately pass out?

No. Everything will continue as usual.

So why do profound discoveries make no difference?

The reason for this is because profound discoveries usually refer to foundational principles or properties of the world. But we don't build our knowledge from foundational principles or properties, we infer foundational principles from our everyday experience and immediate knowledge of the world.

So, what happens is, even if we have inferred an incorrect founding principle, and held it for centuries - that founding principle is based on our everyday experience and not the other way around. When that founding principle (or axiom) comes into conflict with our everyday experience, new complex amendments are made to the founding principle in order to accommodate the immediate reality of our experience.

I would posit that this is why our religions have so much content. Each contradiction begets a new caveat, so, instead of having one principle and a simple demonstration of its truth, we have, in the case of the Bible, a book of over a thousand pages, then we have hermeneutic frameworks to interpret those pages, eschatology, apologetics, theology, theodicy not to mention the thousands of different sects of Christianity which allow a circle of continuous contradiction and explanation to continue ad infinitum.

When one discovers that no God actually exists, they are left with everyday reality, the same everyday reality they were in before. They realise that biblical injunctions to love thy neighbour and not steal or lie have perfectly good everyday practical applications. After all it is because they have everyday practical applications that that they were written into the Bible in the first place.

Basically my point is that the baggage that surrounds our presuppositions about the way the world works misleads us when it comes to discovering a new foundational principle or property. It takes time, but the change of a foundational principle subtly changes the meaning of all the baggage that surrounds it, until it finds it's way back to reflecting our everyday experience of the world.

Anyway, that brings us full circle. I'd be keen to hear other examples of profound discoveries that don't change anything in the comments section.

2010-11-23T22:55:00.000-08:00

I finished a painting, but I can't show it to anyone... I've been told by my dealer. But I'm going to live life on the edge and let you see this very small section of a cloak, just cos I like it and require constant recognition.

Animal Labour

2010-11-22T12:05:00.001-08:00

It has taken some time but I expect to get a lot of mileage out of Darwin's new trick.

Has everyone met Ray?

2010-11-22T08:52:00.000-08:00

He begins with his characteristic sleepy tone "well, by 2020 we'll have computers that are powerful enough to simulate the human brain..."

Conrad Wolfram.

2010-11-22T08:45:00.000-08:00

I promise not to get too obsessed, but this talk was really good.

Ask Wolfram Alpha

2010-11-21T01:04:00.000-08:00

I just asked Wolfram Alpha if God exists it answered...

"I'm sorry, but a poor computational knowledge engine, no matter how powerful, is not capable of providing a simple answer to that question."

Very diplomatic Wolfram, but we know what you really think!

The Fabricator

2010-05-06T19:50:00.000-07:00

Check out this 48 hour film by the folks at the Electric Pink Company (otherwise known as a portion of the AV department at The Learning Connexion along with others.)

Another Arty Farty Post

2010-04-26T18:58:00.000-07:00

I've vowed to draw for at least half an hour every day and am posting the results on Facebook

I thought I'd weigh in on the Pope's current issues with picture I drew

2010-04-12T15:34:00.000-07:00

While I retain copyright you can feel free to distribute this picture where ever you like...

Open Letter to Willie Jackson concerning Brian Tamaki

2010-03-14T13:55:00.000-07:00

This letter to the editor is concerning Willie Jackson's recent article in the North Shore Times "Preying on Tamaki" which I thought was pretty idiotic, as you will probably gather.

Willie,

If you are so ashamed by the New Zealand media (of which you are a part) why is it you are not investigating these "real crooks" yourself? Rather than becoming an apologist for Brian Tamaki under the assertion "he's not as bad as those other ..... guys"

Let's take the following statement:

"Clegg & Co finance director Brian Clegg was recently sentenced to a year’s home detention for providing false information to prospective investors .......... A year’s home detention for ripping off poor and vulnerable Kiwis to the tune of $15 million is a disgrace."

I can only imagine one logical conclusion is intended by this and that is that Clegg has been treated unfairly! Because there is another white collar criminal out there who "provides false information" to his "investors" every day and has ripped off the most "vulnerable Kiwis" in New Zealand "to the tune of" about ... "$15 million" (or at least with a personal income of 1 million a year is getting to that amount very quickly) and he hasn't been held to account at all, his name is Brian Tamaki.

But, though this would be the logical conclusion to draw from your statement and the facts, I don't think this is what you intended to say.

And I'm guessing also when you stated that:

"he’s turned around thousands – gang members, criminals and the worst of the worst in our society?"

... that you weren't meaning to support the notion that "Tamaki is a modern-day Adolf Hitler" who, of course, also turned around many street kids and gave them direction with the Hitler Youth and recruited gang members, criminals and other violent thugs to his service as well.

No, of course you were assuming that an ideologue recruiting thugs is a good, charitable and christian thing. Well, sorry Willie, history disagrees with you.

And this is the main reason Tamaki is newsworthy, because not only does he extort money from the poor and vulnerable but he does so with an ideology of divisiveness and separatism, in that he encourages Destiny's members to ignore and reject dissent or argument, intolerance, shown most evidently in it's homophobic, "enough is enough" campaign, and imperialism, in that he makes various claims of taking over New Zealand politics. His ideology also leads him to act in a ridiculous and often disturbing fashion which also makes for good news stories. So, he's not just a crook Willie, give him more credit than that, he's a white collar, bigoted, imperialist, messianic crook. That's what leads people to compare him to Hitler, that's what makes him a threat to society, that's what makes him interesting, not just the fact that he extorts money from the poor by lying to them.

But even if he was just a run of the mill white collar criminal, this is still no reason for you to make excuses for him.

Using the Dvorak keyboard layout with Final Cut Pro 6

2009-12-30T15:26:00.000-08:00

Worst public announcement ever to follow...

I realise troubleshooting uber-geek program incompatibilities is not the coolest thing to be doing on New Years eve, but give me some time it's only lunch time. I plan to be off the computer by midnight!

I've been having an issue with shortcuts in Final Cut Pro 6 due to my Dvorak keyboard layout (this is an ergonomic keyboard layout for safe lightening speed typing available in your computer's operating system) for about a year. This is before I had a serious go at fixing the problem. Using the Dvorak-Qwerty language input I was incapable of using any of Final Cut Pro 6's keyboard shortcuts, making it impossible to edit and type using the same language. Some others on the net appear to have had the same problem (really, there are 6 billion people on earth, at least 10 other people have suffered from this exact problem), but no solutions...

The Solution:

Don't use the Dvorak-Qwerty language input, use the Dvorak (only) input. Quit FCP, and make sure Dvorak is selected when you open it again. The keyboard now types in dvorak and the keyboard shortcuts all function as you would expect. I have no idea why I didn't think of this sooner, nor do I have any idea why it was so difficult to find this solution on the internet, hence my reason for writing this blog.

Sorry to my regular readers... ha... regular readers... this is pure naval gazing, I don't have regular readers, not anymore anyway.

See you next week with more discoveries, like the exciting new development that I can now hide the names of audio tracks in my timeline to enable me to view the waveform correctly for multi-camera syncing... oooooh.

A very narrow target market might find this funny.

2009-09-11T01:28:00.001-07:00

Darwin jumps through hoops

2009-09-11T01:26:00.002-07:00

Darwin 9 Months

2009-09-11T01:26:00.001-07:00

School Yearbook Photo

2009-08-16T21:18:00.000-07:00

I recently found an old yearbook photo of mine. How things have changed.

Ah, the good old days when I used to look like something out of an Aphex Twin video. I had model written all over me.

Not even... bring a photo of yourself and visit Yearbook Yourself

Megawoosh

2009-08-10T14:29:00.003-07:00

I'm a model, you know what I mean

2009-06-30T00:48:00.000-07:00

Those of my readers who have not met me "in the flesh" so to speak, may be unaware of the fact that I am incredibly good-looking, as is testified to by the following "modeling" photo-shoot fashion magazine photos.

You might have thought that this was the work of a veteran model-slash-actor, but in fact this was my first photo-shoot since I joined the Red Eleven models and talent agency over two years ago. During this time I had worked on my poses, eventually perfecting "Blue-Squeal". I think it was worth the wait, the world is ready now, apparently they weren't in the last 12 auditions.

Brynn, the considerably less attractive model at the shoot, had been fortunate enough to fall into numerous international advertising campaigns, underwear posters and television ads for aftershave and watches and such. I tried to give him some pointers on pouting, but as you can see he didn't really listen. Models...

The one where it looks as though I'm masturbating with a small microphone was a special favorite of mine, a proverbial up-yours to the pretense of the fashion industry. This had nothing to do with the fact that I wasn't paid for my work, I was happy to share the love.

If you'd like to have these pictures in hard-copy... you'd better get down to your local magazine store and pick up a copy of Real Groove magazine, before they run out.

Good odds for Big Wednesday?

2009-06-23T19:30:00.000-07:00

This morning when Michael Laws (on Radio Live) informed me that one third of lotto winners "knew they were going to win", it reminded me just how bad the masses and their mouth-pieces are at judging probabilities. Laws seemed to be suggesting that if one believed they were going win the lotto they had more chance of winning. Not only is this probabilistically wrong, but it is at its most basic wrong, after all, presumably TWO thirds of lotto winners didn't believe they would win the lotto - suggesting generally that one had more chance of winning if one did NOT believe they were going to win.

But even this wouldn't be correct, as it is not important what proportion of winners believed they would win or not, but how that proportion relates to what the ticket buying population believes in general about whether they will win or not. I would hazard a guess that a third of people who buy tickets believe they will win, or would say so if they did.

But you read this blog to see if the chances of winning tonight are good:

The chances against winning 1st or 2nd division are astronomical, and as we have seen for the last few weeks there is a good chance it will not go. If it does go, it won't be you, get used to the idea.

The chances of winning 3rd division (which is what we're hoping for here) are 1 in 35000. Which are fabulous odds to begin with, but lets whittle them down.

Last week 2.9 million tickets were sold, and this week an estimated 4 million will be. Last week 460 people won 3rd division, so if you increase that proportionately there should be about 634 3rd division winners, if we do it based on probability we should get 686 3rd division winners

So, lets take the 35 million prize and divvy it up between the roughly 650 3rd division winners. This gives us $53846.

These are good odds (if the prize gets past the first and second division posts)

So, what are the chances of it getting past these posts? Well, the chances of winning 1st and 2nd division with one line is 1 in 16 million each, which makes your chances of getting one or the other about 1 in 8million. With four million 6 line tickets being sold this makes 24 million lines. So when I entered this into Wolfram Alpha as (7999999/8000000) to the power 24000000 it gave me a 49.8% chance of the prize not being won in 1st or 2nd division (which shows just how difficult it is to win 1st or 2nd division!).

So taking into account this 50% chance that the prize won't make it to 3rd division we can take our 1 in 35000 chance of winning a share of the big prize and halve it...

Giving us a 1 in 70000 chance of winning $53846. Which, I'm sorry to say, are not so good odds, but are the best odds you will ever have playing lotto.

This is how I feel watching John Lennox debating Richard Dawkins

2009-06-02T17:21:00.000-07:00

Thou shalt not misrepresent thy opponent's position

2009-05-17T16:44:00.000-07:00

Having the name James Brown has made me a master in the art of the "never heard that one before", "good one", "it is, really?" response, complete with polite chuckle. But I really felt for Richard Dawkins this weekend, my having the privilege of seeing him speak (albeit via satelite video link) at the New Zealand Readers' and Writers' Festival.

"Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most out-spoken atheists, some might say, the High Priest of Atheism!"

"hmm, ha ha, good one... never heard that one before."

This was how our bumbling host introduced Dawkins, then going on to pronounce that he was the was "Oxford Professor for the Understanding of Science"... a position Dawkins relinquished 6 months ago. How embarrassing.

The "High Priest of Atheism" meme was perpetuated further by former Bishop (now agnostic) Richard Holloway, who was also speaking at the festival, this time in the flesh. As a volunteer, I had the job of escorting him to the signing table. I bit my tongue all the way in order to restrain myself from rebuffing his misrepresentation of Dawkins.

Holloway had gone on to talk about how he had "got Dawkins to say that he was, to some extent, agnostic". Dawkins explains the extent to which he is agnostic in the God Delusion, but as with most of Dawkins' opponents we shouldn't expect that Holloway has read past the front cover, and so with veiled conceit Holloway laid claim to this admission.

He seemed to, however, forget this immediately when it came to putting Dawkins firmly in the dogmatist camp in his following comments.

Holloway then said that Dawkins had expressed to him that he found it difficult to find an evolutionary source for pity. This, to me, smacked of the type of quote-mining undertaken by creationists who never grow tired of quoting Darwin's professed difficulty in understanding how the eye could have evolved, a quote that is followed by an extensive explanation of exactly how it could. No doubt Dawkins' comment regarding pity was also a preface to an explanation of how empathy arises through evolution, an area of much interest to himself, and many others in the field of evolutionary psychology at present.

He also leveled that Dawkin's "hates" Freud, which did sound as much a silly emotive appeal as it does here and that he "doesn't understand metaphor". This is, no doubt, because Holloway sees the bible as allegorical - but that's because Holloway is an agnostic! Richard Dawkins did not write "The Agnostic Delusion", so I fail to see his point here. Again Dawkins' numerous concessions to the beauty of biblical imagery, music, to the majesty of the natural world, to his appreciation for metaphor, art and the numinous, do require his opponents to read his books, or listen to what he actually says before they respond.

But never have I heard people so certain as those that say we cannot know, but I won't go so far as to call Richard Holloway the "High Priest of Agnosticism"

The festival in general was very stimulating. Dawkins, was as usual, on his game managing to make the sterile medium of the video-link very entertaining and at times quite funny. Other highlights were "The Wisdom of Crowds" author James Surowiecki, and futurist George Friedman.

1973 Design for the Catholic Church's Archdiocesan's Youth Commission

2009-05-02T02:51:00.000-07:00

Catholic priests were apparently a lot more open about their indiscretions in the 70s.

Thanks to Goat Boy for this little gem.

Important Flu Warning.

2009-04-28T16:28:00.000-07:00

Activities to Avoid:

Ray Kurzweil

2009-04-28T16:17:00.000-07:00

Most of all I enjoyed Ray's comments about how we can predict things accurately at a macroscopic level, trends, Moore's Law etc despite having no power to predict the individual (microscopic) factors. It makes me think of all those people quoting Quantum Physics as a way of looking at human interactions, forgetting that Quantum Physics' Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle only applies to quanta, hence the name "Quantum" physics, not simply physics, which adheres to the (very predictable) laws of thermo-dynamics, as Ray points out. Back to the drawing board new agers.

That makes me think of...

2009-04-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

Before I begin, the title “That makes me think of” makes me think of Zefrank the progenitor of the game “That makes me think of”, which involves… well you’ll get the idea by the end of this entry (a long one since I haven’t “entered” recently).

So, Zefrank makes me think of sarcastic news reporting.

Sarcastic news reporting makes me think of Mahmoud Ahmadinegad who, just last week, opened the UN talks on racism... yes, that's right. He began with a tirade against "international jewry" (or something to that effect). This prompted a walkout by 23 EU delegates, joining a boycott by many countries including New Zealand; countries who had predicted such a speech by an entrenched anti-Israel proponent, theocrat and holocaust denier.

This makes me think of the proverbial pot calling the kettle black, which reminds me my coffee is over-heating on the stovetop. The tarnished poor-man’s-espresso maker was a (much appreciated) gift from my sister in law who flats with a barista. She was recently given a 3 hour lecture on the nuances of coffee brewing. One interesting insight was that when the coffee starts to splutter the oil from the coffee beans has been exhausted, and as this carries the flavour it is best to cease pouring before this point. This little piece of advice has improved my coffees immeasurably

Oil carrying flavour makes me think of abstract concepts being physically enacted upon. An example being the question “do you believe in Love?”. A question that is complete nonsense. One can believe that there is a feeling people are referring to as love, and that that feeling is relatable across humans, even animals. One can believe that someone else loves them but to believe in love external to the sensation or actions surrounding the concept of love makes no sense. Does it make sense to anyone else?

Believing in things that don’t physically exist makes me think of Vampires. A subject about which my wife recently wrote a short story, which has been published in Her magazine!!!

Vampires make me think of Twilight, the movie, new to video (unfortunately I missed it at the cinema, how did that happen…?) that stars nobody, an opportunity of which Michael Laws took advantage, by successfully attaining the role of the father vampire Carlisle Cullen. I didn’t see his name in the credits but as you can see from it the picture it was undeniably him...

Michael Laws reminds me of people who say irrational things, which brings us back to where we started.

Darwin

2009-04-12T15:27:00.000-07:00

This is an extra special entry on the blog, the long awaited (largely by my brother and parents) Darwin compilation video! We're still working on his recall and basic socialising with other dogs, but look at all the other cool stuff he can do! We've found that our local business village "Smales Farm" is a perfect skate-park for dogs with ledges, hoops, benches, gardens, fields and fountains (we haven't worked out what to do with the fountains yet...).

Word of the Day: Urbane

2009-04-06T01:43:00.000-07:00

adj.
courteous; suave; elegant and refined in manner.

"Urbane" is one of those peculiar words where, simply using the word, makes the speaker seem characterised by it. Much like the word "pretentious", which almost inevitably makes the speaker seem pretentious.

Some might think that using words like "Urbane" also makes one sound pretentious, but who cares what they think? Philistines!

Quote of the Day

2009-04-06T01:34:00.000-07:00

"I know not with what weapons the third world war will be fought, but I know that the fourth will be fought with sticks and stones."

Albert Einstein

Robots

2009-04-06T01:19:00.000-07:00

Below is a video of the Big Dog. Sounds badass doesn't it?

It's a sort of robotic mule that is being used to track down and capture Osama Bin Laden! He's going to be laughing his ass off when he sees this hobbling around the corner.

It's probably best you turn your volume down, the noise is mightily irritating.

For a less frivolous look at the future of military roboticisation check out P.W.Singer: Military Robots and the Future of War. Singer talks about the moral dilemmas of robotic and remote warfare, particularly interesting is a disturbing new phenomenon: "War Porn".

Quote of the Day: His final authoritative bushism

2009-03-30T01:30:00.000-07:00

“I’m going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there’s an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened.”

Former President George W. Bush, speaking about his upcoming book at a fundraiser in Canada (via HuffPo).

Earth's arbitrary hour.

2009-03-28T16:06:00.001-07:00

My involvement in Earth Hour (8.30pm-9.30pm last night) was largely due to my wife's position as Sustainability Team Leader at her workplace. This means she has the unenviable task of devising green initiatives and getting others to play along. In solidarity we also "celebrated" (if that's the appropriate word) earth hour at our home last night with a candle-lit dinner with some friends we recruited that afternoon, with the lure of some delicious rice risotto. HA HA!!!

One of my friends had been of the same opinion as Paul Henry and Michael Laws that he should spend his earth hour using as much power as possible to offset any effects of the "gesture" put forward by earth hour proponents. Natalie and I were most happy to thwart this plan, and just look how much happier he was for it! What a happy chappy!

It really was just a gesture though and didn't aspire to be anything more, I probably used as much power as we saved during earth hour driving to the supermarket to buy candles (which we don't have around the house, of course). It simply gave us something to do for the night, and showed us how much fun you can have when you change the parameters of your daily rigmarole.

This morning we woke to Finlay Macdonald on Radio Live spouting some idea about Gaia, and that if Global Warming is happening, it's just the earth (a living organism) adjusting to humanity. I've heard this hokum before, and it overlooks one important factor: I don't care if the planet survives, I care if humanity survives, and if the planet's way of "adjusting" to humanity is to create an inhospitable climate for humanity then we are screwed.

Earth hour's probably on its way through Bible belt, mid-west USA at the moment... I wonder how that's going.

Asian drivers... have mad skills

2009-03-27T02:15:00.000-07:00

I plagiarised this gem from Rove.

Quote of the Day

2009-03-27T00:57:00.000-07:00

"... this is blood for fashion and I'm bleeding it."

Suede, the guy with the gaudy blue fou-hawke from Season 5 Project Runway.

Word of the day: Effluent

2009-03-27T00:22:00.000-07:00

adj.
flowing forth or out.

n.
1. sewage or industrial waste discharged into a river, the sea, etc.
2. a stream or lake flowing from a larger body of water

The word effluent is one of those handy words that enables the user to achieve ultimate nerd points by making the following double-meaning burn on your unworthy adversary.

"I hear the words, effluent from your mouth"

... meaning both, the innocent: "flowing from your mouth" (referring to the adj. meaning) but simultaneously "sewerage from your mouth"! (referring to the n. 1 meaning) In other words "yo talkn' sheet". Semantic BURN!!!

This burn is best suited to youtube comments sections and emails to radio hosts, for achieving superiority from the safety of one's computer chair...

Pope Being-a-dick

2009-03-23T18:05:00.000-07:00

Pope Benedict XVI, not content with parading his fine robes around Europe delineating the definitions of imaginary places like Hell and Purgatory, has recently traveled to Africa in order to... you guessed it... perpetuate the AIDS epidemic. By denying the efficacy of condom use as protection against HIV the Pope is denying the overwhelming scientific and statistical evidence that condom use is and has been proven to be the most effective protection against the spread of HIV/AIDS... but this is nothing new.

Africa is a place close to my heart, and in particular - the cradle of humanity: Tanzania, where I traveled in late 2007. The population of Tanzania is one quarter Catholic (9,000,000 people) and has the highest prevalence of HIV in Africa at 8.8%, that's 1,500,000 people. It is not an exaggeration to say that, just in Tanzania, there are millions of lives that are put at risk in the wake of the Pope's statements.

At the same time as pleading for his right to deny scientific facts in light of his religious beliefs the Pope ironically criticises what he calls "a dictatorship of relativism". Relativism (as Pope Benedict is referring to it) is the post-modernist notion that everyone's beliefs are culturally subjective, and are equally valid. They are, as it is often said "true for them".

The Pope seems to think that this is an aspect of the secular consciousness. And in a way it is, however only so much as the secular world is a pluralist world and so allows people like himself to spout disinformation (like the inefficacy of condom use) on that grounds that he has the right to hold such views on faith. It seems strange to me that the one aspect of secular life that caters for his unsupported views (relativism) is what he chooses to criticise.

Being an atheist myself, I agree with Pope Benedict XVI that relativism holds too much sway in society. I think when someone wants to lie to impressionable people at the potential cost of millions of lives, that that person should not have recourse to abscond from their responsibility behind a wall of faith, and be respected for it.

And seriously, who can respect someone who rides around in this contraption?

You can do something about it by signing this petition. If you're generally left of centre you might like to enrol for their email newsletter and sign other petitions.

UNfree speech

2009-03-22T19:51:00.000-07:00

I used to quite like the idea of the UN, that was until they tried to deny me the right to my most treasured pastime; criticising religion.

It's been in the works for a while, with a coalition of Islamic "voices", led by Saudi Arabia, lobbying the UN since 1999 against freedom of expression regarding Islam, but over the past year the UN Rapporteur, supposed defender of freedom of expression has been warming to the idea of taping the collective free world's mouth. A storm in a teacup has been brewing over this lately most notably concerning an article by Johann Hari, columnist for The Independent, questioning the UN Rapporteur "Why should I respect these oppressive religions?" on 28 January 2009:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated 60 years ago that "a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief is the highest aspiration of the common people". It was a Magna Carta for mankind – and loathed by every human rights abuser on earth. Today, the Chinese dictatorship calls it "Western", Robert Mugabe calls it "colonialist", and Dick Cheney calls it "outdated". The countries of the world have chronically failed to meet it – but the document has been held up by the United Nations as the ultimate standard against which to check ourselves. Until now.

Subsequently the article was reprinted by an Indian Newspaper; The Statesman, resulting in mass riots and the imprisonment of both the editor and publisher. Johann Hari has been told that he too will be imprisoned if he visits Calcutta. He has written a follow up article entitled Despite these riots, I stand by what I wrote in which he annunciates the opposition's argument:

A typical supporter of the riots, Abdus Subhan, said he was "prepared to lay down his life, if necessary, to protect the honour of the Prophet" and I should be sent "to hell if he chooses not to respect any religion or religious symbol? He has no liberty to vilify or blaspheme any religion or its icons on grounds of freedom of speech."

For commentaries on this check out Pat Condell's Rant on the subject or Lou Dobbs interviewing Christopher Hitchens on CNN.

Pat has an interesting idea, and that is to make a religion of free speech itself, and in doing so enshrine your free comments in the uncriticisable terms of religion. Lets hope no psychopaths decide to enshrine their beliefs in support of racism, mass murder, enslavement of women, oppression and genital mutilation in terms of a religion... then we're all in trouble.

DIY Scumbag!

2009-03-22T19:27:00.000-07:00

Suffering after a momentary lapse in cognitive ability lead to two days of hard labour laying down paving bricks in our patio, otherwise known as the rockies (it's not very flat).

Darwin was a great help digging, and even when we weren't utilising his skills he did some unnecessary pro-bono work in the front yard.

Note: I just tried to feed Darwin two lunches back to back, and was alerted to this fact by my visiting grandparents and their equally elderly traveling companions. I'm getting Alzheimer's over and done with now while I'm young enough to enjoy it.

The Atheist Experience

2009-03-19T21:01:00.000-07:00

This says it all really.

Editing Humour

2009-03-19T20:32:00.000-07:00

New Zealand's One News makes it on to failblog: