For those who don’t know me so well, yes I am being sarcastic. Second Life continues to nonplus me with its eye-gougingly ugly graphics and clumsy reproduction of everything that is banal and sad about the real world, along with a whole bunch of ugly shit that I am so glad does not exist in the real world. Incidentally these images were made on a machine with a video card that cost more than $1K.
This was a line from the internal monologue of Mark Corrigan in a recent episode of Peep Show. Reference is also made to a weekly podcast, which really caught my attention, but alas I can find no such thing online. Either it was simply made up to serve the joke or has since been discontinued… or I am just unbelievably bad at searching tonight.
Please Alain, if you are reading this (and I know you are) send me the URI for your weekly podcast— We needs it!
You know, I’m looking at this photo and thinking that combined with the slogan it would make a smashing t-shirt design…
… I’m pretty sure he would be spending a lot of time messing about with computer graphics.
I’ve been working on some environment and reflection mapping today (at the office) and was looking for useful sample data, then I recalled this famous image and thought it might be fun to try to try to reconstruct the scene. As it turns out Escher really was a pretty damn good draftsman (who knew!). Below are the front [effectively the original] and back [inferred] of his shiny sphere:
The black hole in the center of the latter represents the region which is effectively obscured by the sphere, so cannot be reproduced. The wacky distortions around the hand are partly caused by the fact that the artist includes his non-reflection finger in the original illustration, as well as the phenomenon of parallax (reflection maps can only reconstruct the scene properly where the observer and the objects reflected are a long way from the sphere— the closer they are the more distortion you will get if you try to view things from a different angle).
Here are the remaining view directions: left, right, up and down
Pretty neat eh? Unfortunately I can’t produce a high res version of these right now, because that’s not what this software is designed for, but looking at these it does strike me that it might be fun to create a custom image transformation that could take any size reflection map and "reorient" it with very high precision (without turning it into texture maps and doing a screen cap as I have here). Possibly someone else has already done this— if so I don’t care so please don’t tell me… it’s always more interesting to work these things out for yourself :)
The most popular link on del.icio.us as of this moment:
Over 500 Scientist Counter Global Warming Fears
first posted… on 2007-09-12… saved by 1275 people ( 585 recently )
So, it appears that finally we have this enormous number of scientists stepping up to tell us what we secretly knew all along: that global warming is nothing more than a liberal scam designed to cripple the West, just when we need our strength the most. The opening paragraph of the linked article:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 — A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that 1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or that 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun’s irradiance. "This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850," said Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Dennis Avery.
Granted it’s not actually a petition, a report, or even proceedings from a recent get-together of sceptical minds. It’s an independent analysis of [probably] published literature. Still, it does sound very damning, and may make one think twice about getting sucked in by the Chicken Littles of the world (who, let’s face it, have a racket to protect).
Other researchers found evidence that 3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly; 4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings; 5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and 6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate.
Ok, ok, so at this point I’m kind of wincing like I have a headache coming on… but at least the major points are numbered, making for easy reference. So please tell me, am I being especially unreasonable when I note the following:
So please go read the original article, and maybe even Have your Say at the end. Jesus Christ I hate it when online articles use that line for comments. So empowering!
BTW, I don’t want to be a link whore, but it would be nice to get a del.icio.us link out there of my own, since so many people seem to be so ready to swallow the first thing that questions the "establishment"— link to this post on del.icio.us
It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I find astrology to be very silly and annoying, so much so that back at the beginning of 2003 when I discovered that the BBC was hosting an online community for astrology enthusiasts within the context of a broader feel-good site called 360, I felt obliged to wade on in and question their validity. What really galled me about it was that is was that 360 was a spin off from another community project known as h2g2, a site inspired (and cofounded) by the late Douglas Adams. For those who don’t know, Adams was an atheist and huge fan (and friend) of Richard Dawkins— In fact I believe that it was Adams who introduced Dawkins to his now wife Lalla Ward (Romana #2 from Doctor Who). What I’m basically getting at is that he didn’t suffer fools gladly and held little regard for the supernatural.
What follows below the fold is the full transcript of my ensuing discussion with at least one bona fide astrologer. I saved a copy of this conversation for posterity, since it represents a collection of the most thoughtful arguments I have taken the time to make against what I and many others would describe as classic psuedo-science. Since it was so long ago (and the original site no longer exists) I don’t feel too bad about republishing it here.
My initial comment is given as a response to the topic introduction: Astrology - Try it for Yourself. Unfortunately I no longer have the content of this intro, but it was basically a blurb about how positive and useful astrology can be in our lives. Some choice quotes appear below. On only a few occasions does the conversation become petty, and by and large I feel that I conducted myself in a reasonable fashion— ok, I do get quite snarky towards the end, but I can’t help it because it’s insane that people can take something like astrology seriously… oh just read on and it will be pretty clear what I think…
Read the rest of this entry »
Currently single, I find myself more and more aware of this dilemma of when to tell a potential "someone" about this blog. On the one hand I think it would be great if we could get to know each other the regular way, before I reveal that there exists this vast online repository of information about myself— which may be a huge turn off for someone I’ve only just met. On the other hand it’s nice to think that someone wouldn’t be scared off, and that it might actually help them to get to know me better (although of course there is always going to be a lot about me which doesn’t get recorded here, it is still very much me ).
Then there’s the practical issue, of exactly how one hides a blog which is already public. Right now, if someone knows my name then they can google me, and from there it’s only a click or two to get to my front page. I could try removing all references which link my name to this site, but then I don’t really want to hide my identity here— that’s not what blogging is about for me.
So currently I figure that at least if I tell someone about it it saves me having to wonder if they’ve already discovered it themselves and are secretly learning all my strengths and weaknesses.
… But then, if I did somehow keep it secret I’d be free to use an anecdote without worrying that they’d already read it on the blog… and the fact that I’m already imagining this post being read by someone I want to impress, and considering not posting it for that reason alone…
Hmmm.
If I do decide to make it less traceable to my name (just enough to avoid the casual googling) I will do it at the same time I change the domain and remove stinky Wordpress (which means probably sometime within the next 5 years).
Update: A very cute and slightly pertinent comic from xkcd
There’s a cute little hypothetical question that everyone has heard, and somehow it’s popularly believed that the answer to this question can neatly summarize a person’s outlook.
Is the glass half empty or half full?
Of course when someone is asked this question the answer is going to be chosen to match their own self opinion, so someone who considers themselves an optimist will answer half-full, a pessimist half-empty, and prickly bastards like myself will get annoyed and simply refuse to answer the question.
A half-empty glass implies that you have just drunk the other half, which to me sounds like a positive thing. A half-full glass implies that someone is too stingy to pour you a whole glass, which sounds like a negative thing. Without understanding more about the context it’s impossible to give a truly meaningful answer to this question, except in that answering the question at all you are confirming your support for a fatuous world-view that really gets my hackles up.
Had Adam not recommended this documentary to me, I probably would have skipped it, assuming it to be the work of yet another reactionary loser setting out to beat Michael Moore at his own game (the title doesn’t help). Instead it is a breath of fresh air, simply examining Moore’s work and revealing tactics and methods which are not exactly admirable.
The central message is not that Moore is a Big Fat Liar, so much as that in his quest to influence the American people he has lost sight of what a documentary is supposed to be— namely true, in such a way that what the audience comes away believing is in fact the truth (or at least part thereof). This is not an issue of bias, since as Moore rightly points out (when hassled by idiotic mainstream media) it is not his responsibility to present "both sides" in a fair and balanced way. Even in this post-post-modern era such a thing is impossible, and ironically the only people who might believe it to be otherwise are the FOX news viewers who may just swallow that official line.
The issue raised is mainly that of misrepresentation through editing and omission, as well as implications of links and causalities which may not actually exist. The film doesn’t really question Moore’s political stance, in fact it is just as effective as his own films at making conservatives look like misinformed religious freaks (but then it’s pretty easy to get a dumbass quote out of any group of people if you ask enough of them). It boils down to the issue of whether the end justifies the means, and watching this little doco while reflecting on Moore’s films it is easy to imagine that he is firmly in the YES camp on this issue, whether he acknowledges it or not.
I’ve always been fine with Moore’s unique blend of hyperbole and regular joe, there’s a logic to it and it seems harmless enough, but using quotes out of context and fiddling with timelines (and adding fictional content for dramatic/comic effect without marking it as such) is misrepresentation, and that kind of sucks, undermining his messages (and therefore any good that may come of them).
You can get Manufacturing Dissent on DVD or as a torrent from all good repositories. It’s probably good that it sounds more like a backlash movie than it is (and will likely be sold as such), because really what it does is remind us that nothing is as black and white as we would like to believe, and perhaps those who so passionately hate Michael Moore for the evil fat anti-american Satanic communist that he is will see this and be surprised that you can in fact criticize a person without trying to destroy them.
BTW I still think you should go see Sicko if you are a US citizen and you haven’t seen it already, because it is total bullshit that you guys don’t have universal healthcare :)
These are the archives for September, 2007.
