XBOX 360 - rawk or rank?

Recently the wonderful people at Bill's Corporation decided to drop the price of the XBOX 360 by 100 bucks or so on the three main console packs, and this was enough for me to take the plunge and invest in a 360. Well, maybe not "invest". My main focus was as a media extender to the lounge so I didn't have to keep plugging the laptop into the TV to watch digital media stored on my PC, but I also felt like playing some console games like Forza Motorsport and Fifa 08. Did it live up to the potential?

Yes. And no. Let me set the scene - I'm a PC gamer from way back. I remember spending hours downloading the first demo from ID software to play Quake on my 28k modem, which took fricken ages and multiple retries to get it to work (but was ulitmately so worth it). Wolfenstien 3D, Doom and Duke Nukem - these were my computer friends back in the days before the internet and P2P networking were the norm. I also concentrated mainly on First Person Shooters because there was more fun to be had, in my opinion, in the endless slime covered frag fests in Quake than any other genre of PC gaming. That's not to say I didn't play anything else - Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft and to a lesser extent Command and Conquer also took my fancy. And all in all, my PC was my gaming entertainment unit, which could also dial into work (if required) and run MS Office (badly) to work from home in some small capacity.

So when consoles like the Sega Mega drive, Super Nintendo, and PS1 were big, I just didn't get it - they were severely limited, you couldn't upgrade, the games were hellishly expensive, and the console was useless for anything else. What was the point? A PC could be comparable in cost, you could upgrade it with better hardware to get better performance or graphics, you could "share" media with your friends, and networking and dial-up internet meant you could play against each other as well.

Fast forward a few years - ok quite a few years, and whats changed? A pc is still ultimately more configurable and upgradeable than a console, but the console can now serve several other functions when not gaming. And this is why I bought one - I needed something not too expensive that could serve as a media extender, but also could do other things, and although the Xbox is a bit limited in its extensibility, it performs many tasks flawlessly.

PROS

Media Centre Extender
I no longer need to plug and unplug the laptop from the telly, and I don't compete with the wife if she wants to do work, and I want to watch the latest Top Gear. Its a permanent media player that plays a majority of my media files, and a pretty good extender for my mp3 library as well.

Gaming
I have always loved playing racing games on a console - I reckon its a far better experience with a controller than a keyboard. And sports are also much better on console than PC - Fifa 08 rocks on the Xbox, while I found Fifa 07 exceedingly difficult on the PC until I bought an Xbox controller to plug into the computer.

Social\Xbox Live
Its nice to know when your mates are online, if you feel like challenging them to a frag fest on COD 4, or just having a chat. I know you can do this on a PC, but the whole Xbox live experience is something new for me that makes the console seem a bit more social than it used to - makes it feel like you are logging onto a network of mates, rather than sitting in the lounge switching off from the world. The gamer card is also a great idea as the lure of competing with everyone to get the most game points becomes attractive to even the most lukewarm game addict. Getting all the achievements in a game takes priority just to give you those few extra points over your mates on Xbox live.

CONS

Media Centre Extender
While its great to have a fixed media player in the lounge, its annoying that it doesnt play every single media file I throw at it. It was the laptop I had beforehand, I could install codec's and alternative players and Bob would indeed be a blood relative. Now, I am restricted to WMA's and Divx content, which frankly sucks balls. Converting files is annoying, time consuming and not really an exact science, so I am loathe to convert things. It is one limitation I can live with I suppose as a majority of the content I watch is in the right format.

FPS Gaming
While great for sports and cars, the consoles have always sucked serious ass at First Person Shooters. The controller is just not designed for quick looks, fast reactions and agile aiming. It plain blows. I thought I'd give it a crack with Call of Duty 4, and I was severely disappointed. The aiming is slow and unwieldy for someone like me who cut his teeth on a PC mouse\keyboard, and its just frustrating playing FPS on a console. There are devices that you can use to plug a keyboard and mouse into a console, but from the reviews they are problematic, expensive and sometimes just plain don't work with some games (and hardware!). And further more, why waste time plugging keyboards and mice into consoles, when you've got a perfectly good gaming PC?

Components
Everything costs more. You get a standard pack when you buy the Pro edition (20GB hd, one controller, small remote) but a Universal remote costs more, the plug and play kit costs more, the headset costs more, and so on and so on. The Xbox does not cost what they advertise because you need the add-ons to make it work efficiently. Sure, it works out of the box, but who's going to pay for new batteries every few days for the controller? Who wants the shitty little remote when you can have a universal one that also does the telly? And to play multiplayer games and interact with others you need the headset - who wants to play games and not be able to yell at people?

In summing up your honour...
All in all am I happy with the purchase? Yes - its doing exactly what I wanted which was fill the hole of media player with other functions quite well, and I can see myself playing some serious Forza 2 in the coming weeks. There are a few niggles, especially around the media codec's and FPS gaming, but the latter can be fixed by not playing FPS games on the console, and the former by using streaming workarounds. The next big challenge is teaching the missus how to use the damn thing, and now that I've rewired the DVD\TV\Xbox, a new course in "remote control" management is due.

I might leave that one for a while.

Neo Makes the Earth Stand Still

One of science fictions greatest movies is in the process of a remake. The Robert Wise masterpiece ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ is being updated by Scott Derrickson, known for such epics as Hellraiser: Inferno???, Urban Legends: Final Cut??!!!!??!?!? And the more well known Exorcism of Emily Rose. Robert Wise directed the original and went on to direct Run Silent Run Deep, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Andromeda Strain so maybe this will do for Derrickson what it did for Wise. Who knows.

I am quietly excited by this remake, I was very dubious before I saw the trailer which was released today but now I feel like it could be pretty interesting. Keanu Reeves plays the part of Klaatu previously played by Michael Rennie, an interesting choice. I think that Reeves has reached the age now that he can play these sorts of roles. Plus with the Matrix trilogy firmly under his belt I we can accept him in semi dramatic science fiction flix and not the dumb surfer cant act for shit FBI type guy.

Needless to say the new trailer for TDTEST looks dark and apocalyptic. There is a sense that the Earth is going to get totally trashed in a Roland Emmerich kind of way. That’s cool because I like that sort of stuff and when it’s done with a sci-fi background its even better. I hope that the message within the story is nice and clear. One of the great things about the original was its lack of ambiguity; unlike other B-grade sci-fi picture from the 50’s which needed more work to see the symbolism. Even when I watched the film as a kid I was able to walk away and say, ‘Great film, and it was all about how bad war is’. In saying that I understand that the remake is more about save the planet rather than don’t fight amongst yourselves.

Anyway it is scheduled for a December release which gives us plenty of time to speculate on what it will be like. Check out the trailer for the original film. Great stuff.

Mike Moreau - Tooned in

Mike over at his Stuff blog says it all really.

Cectic Skeptic

Stuff poll stuffed with....well stuff

The lovely people over at Fairfax media ran an article over the weekend regarding creationist material being sent to schools in New Zealand, as Mr Fett alluded to in a previous post. They also ran a poll for 12 or so hours along with it and Should schools be allowed to teach 'intelligent design? was the question posed. Now, we saw some pretty feverish posting from both sides for the duration of the poll, but the final results were Yes 15479 (46.5%) and No 17814 (53.5%). I didn't realise that many people read stuff let alone cared enough to vote - WTF?

I can only suppose that after it was posted on the Pharyngula and a bunch of creationist sites that both sides of the debate went nuts with poll scripts trying to outdo each other, because over 30,000 people voting on an internet poll is pretty bizarre even for a contentious topic such as this. To give you something to compare and contrast against, here's a run down of some of the totals for other super important questions posed by Stuff "

What's your favourite season?
11264 votes and summer was the winner. Crazy I know - who'd have guessed.

Pick your worst ever cover
11103 votes. When I first read this I thought it was talking about insurance - turns out its Music Covers. Winner was Celine Dion - You Shook me all night long. I didn't even know she did a cover of that, but she would have got my vote just for the simple fact she's couldn't sing her way out of a wet paper bag.

How financially literate are you?
8048 respondents, and I must admit I have no idea what the question means. Does it mean "Can you read a bank statement?", or is it talking about the stock exchange? No idea really - winner was "somewhat" which sounds more like a question itself - Some what?

And the pièce de résistance
Will warnings about long-term use of jandals make you rethink wearing them?
Of the 8853 people who bothered answering this one, over 5000 said "No way, I love my jandals." Wow. What illuminating information. I don't know about you, but I feel changed.

These internet polls we see on so many new sites these days are much like the ones I post on this site - a load of bollocks. A majority of them either ask questions so inane it would send your caffeine and cocaine hammered druglord neighbour to sleep within seconds (How interested are you in politics? 85% say Sod off!), or are so badly worded they are not even really worth answering.

This poll about ID for instance - the question, as pointed out by Bjorn over at Pharyngula was nothing to do with the article it linked to. The article spoke about creationist material being sent to schools in an effort to get their brand of nonsense into the science class. The poll asked a different question - should it be taught? In all fairness, who am I to say what the jebus nutters teach in their churches? Its their right to teach religion in religious classes or creationism in Sunday school. I may wish they wouldn't, as its total crap, but that's their right as a religion to teach the tenets of their faith. The same goes for a science class inasmuch as only science should be discussed therein, and since ID\Creationism is not science, it has no place there.
Bjorn did point out that if he ran a class he would mention it as a "this is not science" and while I agree with his philosophy behind the argument, I probably would agree with Alison and restrict that kind of thing to the higher years of school science and university. Our standard schooling should be teaching the science framework, creating skeptical and enquiring minds, and not bombarding them with every example of bad thinking in the world.

So if I were to answer the question on its own merits, I would agree with my Bjorn Free commenter and say Yes - people should be allowed to teach it. But in the context of the article, I would say No - not in the state schools.

And my point? Internet polls are bullshit. The question can be obtuse, you can use scripts to load them (much as this one obviously did) or you can be so confused you don't answer and the results are skewed beyond all recognition. Even Stuff say "Stuff polls are not scientific and reflect the opinions of only those internet users who have chosen to participate" and that's the best description ever - they are not scientific. They are meaningless.

The problem is that this information is used by lazy ass journo's to write articles. You see them frequently now on the major news sites "according to a poll on our site last week, 42% of people want to be flogged with licorice twice a week". Or they drop the "on our site" and it becomes "according to a poll taken recently, 85% of respondents have eaten a VW Beetle".

I guess all I'm saying here is that these polls cannot be taken seriously, and we should read closely what articles say when referring to polls.

“Opinion polls measure the public's satisfaction with it's ignorance”
Unknown

"I haven't trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex."
Erma Bombeck

Las Vegas plagued by ghosts; or just the wind

Recently the James Randi foundation held the latest TAM (The Amazing Meeting) in Las Vegas, number 6 in a continuing line of excellent get togethers for those of a skeptical bent. People like Phil Plait, James Randi, Penn Gillete, Adam Savage, Richard Wiseman, the Skepchicks, PZ Myers, Michael Shermer and more attend and speak about skeptical thinking, science and other such interesting topics. And while I would have loved to have gone, I am among the many who missed out. But apparently apart from the 700 or so people who turned up, there was also 1 million ghosts. Yes, you read that right - 1 milllllllioooon. (thanks Dr Evil)

Yes, some whack job called Doc Paranormal organised a march of the paranormal - 1 million ghosts marching down Las Vegas strip. He has his own blog dedicated to all things kooky and weird - namely himself. Heres a quote :

"Who am I? Let's just say I'm a national journalist and former adjunct professor at the late, lamented Edgar Allen Poe Community College. I've been exploring the strange since Mulder was in kneepants. You can call me Doc Paranormal."

Riiiight. Lets just say you're a weirdo who can make up any shit he wants, a former professor of a made up college, a Chris Carter aficionado with a short pants fetish and doctor of bugger all.

Apparently while the conference was going on in Vegas he had called on all his mates (they were both away unfortunately) to call up as many denizens of the underworld to plague Las Vegas, doing a march down the strip to protest the meeting. And apparently if his site is to be believed, there was plenty of media coverage of the march, and no coverage of the TAM. This is despite the fact that he does not supply any links to any media coverage, I cant find any on the internet, and none of the major news sources have anything on it whatsoever.

The funniest bit is that it looks like he posts questions to himself and then answers them on his blog in a kind of Agony Aunt style. Heres a wee sample :

Hi Doc:
I live in North Las Vegas where it was 110 degrees yesterday. Yet when I got out of my car to go to my job at the Flamingo, I felt a sudden chill pass across me. And then another. Since "cold spots" are often associated with the presence of spirits, could I have encountered a ghost or two involved in the Million Ghost March?
Custodian

Dear Custodian:
Could be. I have received several reports like yours. The march appears to have already begun. It should continue throughout the day as our friends from the Other Side come and go.

He\she stepped outside, and felt a cold spot? Could this apparent "cold spot" possibly be the wind? Wow - what an amazing pile of crap.

Apparently there were several stickers on show at the TAM meeting, and this weirdo has claimed that they were there specifically to deter the marching spirits, and that Jeff Wagg wore a talisman during the meeting to ward off the supernatural. Ha! What a joke.

Pity you cant leave comments on his blog - I can imagine the ones that most people would leave if they ever visited his site.

As for the 1 million ghosts, I somehow doubt that they were the spirits flowing on the Strip in Vegas that night - probably more of the alcoholic nature were involved.

Check out the latest Swift on Randi.Org for more info.

New Zealand not Epically Doomed, unlike Louisiana.

Phil Plait over at BadAstronomy.com has been banging the drum about creationism and evolution for a long time now and I wholeheartedly agree with everything he has to say. If schools want to teach Intelligent Design or Creationism then it should be done in the correct forum, which is not the science class. Anyway, where am I going with this? Phil Plait has done a pretty good job on this argument so I am not going to go into the specifics here.
The governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindahl, has just signed has signed a new state bill called the academic freedom bill which will allow creationism to be taught alongside evolution. Evolution of course being a Theory that can be proved by scientific means and principles, creationism cannot. And now the whackjobs in NZ are having a go as well.

The floodgates have opened. www.Stuff.co.nz in New Zealand reports that, “A Christian group promoting intelligent design over evolution has sent teaching material to schools that critics say is religious propaganda and sloppy pseudoscience.”
At least the critics have a voice. The NZ Education Ministry says:
“The unsanctioned material does not breach the Education Act and there are no plans to ban its distribution. But officials stress the theory of evolution underpins the science curriculum and schools have a responsibility to teach theories that are subject to accepted scientific scrutiny.”

A groups calling themselves “Focus on the Family” (meaning of course THEIR focus on YOUR family) sent Material to 400 high schools trying to get them to teach the hack pseudo-science in class.
Waikato University sciences senior lecturer Alison Campbell said:
“The material champions creationism - the belief that God created the world as described in the Book of Genesis - claiming the universe is too perfect to have been produced by chance so must be the work of an intelligent designer.
It represented a religious viewpoint, she said, not a scientific one, and had no place in science classrooms.”

Focus on the Family's executive director Tim Sisarich said the material was intended to expose pupils to an alterative theory of cosmology.
"We're a Christian organisation so we believe that God made the planet and God made the cosmos ... Science takes a theory and tries to establish it as the truth, and that's all this is."
Education Ministry senior manager Mary Chamberlain said parents had a right to withdraw children from religious instruction.

This is amazing. I knew that NZ had a large religious community and that is totally fine, I have no problem with that. I did not think we had the same type of minds here as in the US. I suppose we are lucky that we don't as yet seem to have those types of people in power that can make the crazy mistakes as Louisiana.

If you check the article on Stuff, you will see the standard religious morons coming out of the woodwork, making the same inane arguments. "Its just a theory", "we didn't evolve from monkeys", "teach the controversy", and "why is there no half monkey/ half human" is just a random sample of the horse shit the Committee for Lying for Jesus is posting. Always with the same crap that shows more about their lack of understanding, than their intelligence. I don't think it will ever get to the same level of stupidity that it does in America, with 40% of NZ subscribing to no religion, and another 30% subscribing to religions other than christian based ones, but its still worrying to see these knobs waving their flags every now and then.

Also interesting to see this kind of crap start surfacing just before the election, with Tim Sisarich and his cronies at the Destiny Church trying to get a seat in parliament to push their evangelical nonsense. Here's hoping come election time the same thing happens as every year, and they get laughed out of the polling booth.

Theres also a poll on the Stuff hompage about teaching ID in school. Go over there right now and give them the good news!

Is it a Bird - Is it a Plane

One of the worst things about flying is that little something, no matter how remote might happen to your plane. That slight niggle in the back of your mind that is inescapable. Everyone has it. Imagine being on a plane that sucks a bird into the engine on take off. What a mess. I wonder what that would look like.
Check out the video after the jump of a Boeing 757 taking off.

Lots of seats would need cleaning after this.. Scary.

FAIL : Life imitates Web

Ok, here's the scenario. Chick sees escalator, works out you could do a nifty trick, gets mate to film it, puts it on interwebtoob. Moron sees vid, thinks "what a neat trick" tries to emulate it, and screws up badly. See both vids after the jump.














Heres the original



And heres the moron


http://view.break.com/527060 - Watch more free videos

Need I say more.

UPDATE : Terry Pratchett not god botherer - no-one surprised again

Looks like someone took the time to ask Terry to explain what the dithering blockheads had reported earlier as a religious experience - and he does! See this article at the Mail Online (ignore the title, its bullshit again) where he says :

There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.

More excerpts after the jump.

Evolution was far more thrilling to me [as a child] than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn't take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.

So what shall I make of the voice that spoke to me recently as I was scuttling around getting ready for yet another spell on a chat-show sofa?

More accurately, it was a memory of a voice in my head, and it told me that everything was OK and things were happening as they should. For a moment, the world had felt at peace. Where did it come from?

Me, actually - the part of all of us that, in my case, caused me to stand in awe the first time I heard Thomas Tallis's Spem In Alium, and the elation I felt on a walk one day last February, when the light of the setting sun turned a ploughed field into shocking pink; I believe it's what Abraham felt on the mountain and Einstein did when it turned out that E=mc2.

It's that moment, that brief epiphany when the universe opens up and shows us something, and in that instant we get just a sense of an order greater than Heaven and, as yet at least, beyond the grasp of Stephen Hawking. It doesn't require worship, but, I think, rewards intelligence, observation and enquiring minds.

I don't think I've found God, but I may have seen where gods come from.

Celebs do the zaniest things

What do we consider a celebrity? Most of the time its someone who is popular for one of the arts like singing, acting or dancing. Other times its media related (radio show hosts), internet (popular bloggers) or even just for being in the spotlight far too much (I think we all know who that is). The one thing that all of these people have is that they are just people - a common cross section of average joe's who are talented in one or two area's, just like everyone else. And because they are just a normal cross section of humanity, they contain the full spectrum of weirdo's and freaks we meet in our everyday lives.

Stephen Fry is one of the least nutty people I read about. He may be gadget obsessed, far too smart for your average bear, and a talented actor, but he's also reasonably rational, severely underestimates himself, and backs his opinions with fact a majority of the time. He is the most unusual of celebrities in that he is one who's opinion I listen to, and while I don't agree all the time, I understand the point he makes and its usually based in reality.

Unfortunately, Stephen is in the minority when it comes to logic and reason combined with celebrity. The majority of people in prime positions of public interest out there are no more than glorified sock puppets when it comes to speaking in public. They twitter inanely about UFO's, the 9/11 conspiracy, how JFK was murdered by illuminati, anti-vaccination movements, feng shui, homeopathy and crackpot religions. Most of all, they use their fame and fortunes to further these causes/dementias, to the detriment of everyone else just because they think they know better. "I am famous, so I must know more than you!"

Even worse are the blind sheep of a public who sit there day in, day out being fed this crap, lapping it up, wondering if their celebrity horoscope might tell them how to get a piece of that famous pie, or if the homoeopathy pills they choke down will really help make the golf ball sized lump they found in their balls go down. Well horoscopes are utter fantasy, and homoeopathy is an 11 letter word for water, so not likely on both those fronts. But what other weird and wonderful crap have we seen recently from our morons in superstardom, and what impact does it have on the millions of muddled souls out there?

Celeb : Robbie Williams
Wackiness : Believes in UFO's and likes to go out into the wilderness with a Spotters guide book and binoc's to see if he can tick off the notable aliens. "Robbie has been taking pals out to the woods for long weekends. He wants to live like a cowboy in a Western. He also has a fascination with UFOs and thinks he has more chance of seeing one away from Los Angeles' bright lights."
Science says : No proof as yet of any extraterrestrial contact
Possible Effects of Imitating Star : loss of income spent on chasing phantoms, loss of credibility among friends and family when you tell them what you do, and loss of brain as it melts out your ears.

Celeb : Jim Carrey
Wackiness : Jim's been brainwashed by his new missus that vaccines are bad m'kay, and we are poisoning our children by injecting them with this stuff.
Science says : Are you out of your mind? Denying children a vaccine is tantamount to signing their death warrant. There is no evidence that vaccines are even remotely bad for you in the way these idiots purport.
Possible Effects of Imitating Star : very sick children who have no immunity to disease's, possible death. One of the stupidest star-led causes I have ever heard of.

Celeb : Heather Mills
Wackiness : Says that milk is the main cause of obesity in school children. Nothing to do with the MacDonalds right?
Science says : This is a thinly veiled PETA protest against cows as herd animals. Not based on science whatsoever, and is totally a social prejudice against anyone who is not a vegan. If PETA had their way, we wouldn't eat anything.
Possible Effects of Imitating Star : sick kids again who wouldn't get some of the more essential nutrition in their diet.

Celeb : Prince Charles and other royal inbreds
Wackiness : Homoeopathy actually does anything
Science says : Its water. It doesn't do shit except for the placebo effect. You are paying millions of dollars each year for water. Well done Charlie.
Possible Effects of Imitating Star : your wallet has an amazing tendency to become lighter, yet your illness continues unabated. IF you are seriously ill, you are risking your life by believing in this snake oil.

Celeb : Madonna
Wackiness : I'm unsure exactly what she believes in - I think she's just a twit. But she does buy into this Kabbalah water crap, which is some spiritual Jewish water peddled by The Kabbalah Center, which is supposed to heal, center you, make you at one with the guiding yadda yadda yadda.
Science says : Its water. Even Jewish rabbi's say its bubkes.
Possible Effects of Imitating Star : more rapid deflation of bank account, followed by acute swelling of the "I'm a tit" gland.

Celeb : Geri Haliwell, Tom Cruise, Oliver Stone, John Travolta etc. etc. etc.
Wackiness : Scientology. A religion dreamt up by a bad science fiction writer to make money, and believers think we descended from Clams and you can spend half a millions dollars to be audited to retrieve god-like powers. Riiight.
Science says : (shrugs shoulders) There's no evidence that anything they claim is even remotely true, but this is a money making operation, not a scientific organisation no matter what the call themselves.
Possible Effects of Imitating Star : you are a loony.


I could go on writing all day. The point I am making is that these people that we as consumers of mass marketed media put on a pedestal, are no smarter or dumber than every one of us. They are just a cross section of society containing the literate, smart and logical, as well as the kooky, weird and downright nuts. The problem lies within the fact that they have a power to coerce people through their fame into causes and bullshit that have no basis in reality. We should treat them just like everyone else - show me the evidence. If you have a cause or belief, show me the evidence it is true. Otherwise, shut the hell up.

Jeremy Clarkson Rakes in the Cash

Yesterday Mooghead sent me this article from the telegraph in the UK. It appears that Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear has secured himself a small fortune. The BBC know what they have with Mr Clarkson, that is the most entertaining presenter on TV at the moment and it looks like they will do anything to keep him at the Beeb. The goss is that Mr Clarkson will take a percentage of the worldwide profits from the Top Gear brand, this has been disputed by the BBC but what a score if it’s true.

It is said that the new deal will put Clarkson in the same league as other BBC presenters such as Jonathan Ross who earned over 18 million pounds over a 3 year period. Top Gear is BBC Two’s highest rating program and is watched by over 235 million people. That shows the pulling power that he has. Some people get paid far too much but as far as I am concerned Jeremy Clarkson is worth every penny. A BBC spokesperson said:

"Top Gear has become a massive success story in the UK and all over the world. It has gone to another level: it is now a family programme – it's not just for men who like cars. What percentage he actually gets and how it works needs to remain confidential.”

It is surprising that he falls into this category of presenters because he is one of the more controversial at the BBC. He is well know for his comments which many would deem politically incorrect and some say that he is an advocate for speeding and dangerous driving. This is all rubbish, his jokes are in jest and is people take them literally they are too sensitive, and he is probably one of the safest drivers on the road.

All I can say is well done Clarkson and continue with the good work.

Here's some video of Clarkson doing what he does best.

Comedian George Carlin dies age 71

George Carlin, legendary comedian, passed away on Sunday from heart failure. Famous for his "Seven words you can't say on TV" which became expanded to 11 as his career progressed. After Lenny Bruce, he is one of the most influential shock comedians ever, and was ever forthright in his opinion that society had too much of a hang up with what was dirty, and what was indecent.

"The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things — bad language and whatever — it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition. There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have."
George Carlin, Associated Press, 2004

He will be sadly missed. Check out a Youtube clip after the jump for a sample of his work.

Comics are all kinds of cheesy goodness

Heres a tasty selection of all the best comics I've read this weekend around the interwebnettoob. Check em out after the jump.

UK Papers report utter crap - no-one surprised

Terry Pratchett is a brilliant author. While some may read this and disagree, I would like to gently make the point that I'm the one writing this and you can bugger off. He has stated many times during his career how he is an atheist, and "blames god for not existing" and he was recently diagnosed with Alzheimers. If you've read any of his novels he takes the idea of gods and puts it in its proper place of comedy and ridicule. But recently my attention was drawn by Moogs to an article in the Times about TP finding god, and he asked what I thought about it. I'll admit, my first reaction was unfavourable.

I mean, the temerity of the man - how dare he! But after a few seconds I calmed down and wondered if it was indeed true - it didn't really go with everything else he has said about religion. So I did a wee bit of research, read the article on Times Online and did a search for any other bits of info surrounding TP and his conversion to god bothering. What did I find? Not much - the article points to an "unexplained experience" he had when he was first diagnosed with Alzheimers.

“I’m certainly not a man of faith, but as I was rushing down the stairs one day . . . it was very strange. And I say this reluctantly, because I am trying to deal with this situation in as hardheaded a way as I can. I suddenly knew that everything was okay, that what I was doing was right, and I didn’t know why.”

"It was a thought that all the right things are happening in the circumstances; and I thought, ‘Well, that’s all right then.’ I don’t actually believe in anyone who could have put that in my head – unless it was my dad, and he’s been dead a few years.”

“It is just possible that once you have got past all the gods that we have created with big beards and many human traits, just beyond all that, on the other side of physics, there just may be the ordered structure from which everything flows.

“That is both a kind of philosophy and totally useless – it doesn’t take you anywhere. But it fills a hole.”

Ok, time to get the deconstruction stick out.

The first point to make is that all of these statements have been made in different interviews. He said some of it an interview as reported on Times Online, and in another interview in the News Review. Two separate interviews, probably about two completely different things, and bad quote mining = stupid Times Online article.

Secondly, he doesn't ever say "I've found god, I'm off to bash some bibles". The headline for the piece in Times Online was "Alzheimers leads atheist Terry Pratchett to appreciate God", and in the Telegraph it was "Terry Pratchett hints he may have found God". No he doesn't - he says he had an unexplained experience. The closest he comes to saying god is "I'm not a man of faith". So does this mean every time someone proclaims that they are not of faith, they actually are? What sort of bizarre and twisted logic is that?

And thirdly, the phrase "unexplained experience" does not mean god. Nor does it mean the flying spaghetti monster, or Ramadama Ding Dong had anything to do with it either. In fact, usually when people use the word "unexplained" people immediately leap into the UFO category, and its surprising they didn't this time. He says that he felt "everything was ok" and that "all the right things are happening in the circumstances". So what he's saying is that he felt at peace with himself at that particular time, and happy with the way things are going. I see no god in that. I feel happy frequently, and at peace with my decisions in life - but at no time do I interpret a divine hand in my life. Just because everything is going your way, does not mean some benevolent beardy weirdy sky god has his eye on you.

Its a load of bollocks in my opinion - a sloppy peice of journalism created by some nancy in between his sessions at the boozer. And the other papers have just copied it verbatim because its mildly interesting, and they can't be bothered checking the facts. What rubbish.

As an aside, even if this were accurate (and I have no way of verifying this unless TP decides to respond to my email) who cares? I don't care if he suddenly clutches at the rosary, and heads down to the local guilt merchants for a session in "all the things he's done bad". That's his prerogative. It has no bearing on my opinion of him as a writer and I will continue to buy his books until they stop becoming good books to read. I hope he continues to write for many years to come, and his "embuggerance" of an illness goes into recession, or is cured (no thanks to the NHS). Sure, it would be disappointing to see someone with a serious brain disease succumb to religion, but again - who am I to say what he should believe in?

I think the best indicator of the veracity of these articles is something he said during the interview :

“Faith in what? If I get pushed in this corner, I believe in the same God that Einstein did. Einstein was a clever bloke."

And what did Einstein have to say on the subject?

If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
Albert Einstein, 1954, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press

Alien statue to scare the crap out of mom.

I want one. I want 4. Can you imagine having these things loitering around the dark corners of your house, ready to scare the flying crap out of people? Brilliant. Its 7 foot 7 inches tall, steel, foam, latex and resin model on a 4 x 2 foot base. The cost is a bit prohibitive (US$5200 + shipping), but money is no object when it comes to art like this. Check out the home site over at Monster Galaxy.

See more pictures after the jump

Why don't you ever see the headline "Psychic Wins Lottery"?

Its not really that surprising to someone like me that we don't see the headline "Psychic wins dickloads of cash!", apart from the fact that your average editor probably wouldn't go with the adverb "dickloads". I was asked recently whether or not I believed in unmapped potential in the human brain, to which I answered "yes - especially in mine if the teachers in my school days are to believed", but I knew that was not the point they were getting at. Do we have the ability to predict the future, speak to each other over great distances using only our minds, or find my bloody car keys?
Absolutely! But not in the way you may be thinking.

My economics teacher many years ago was very fond of the saying "There's no such thing as a free lunch", as I'm sure many Economics teachers are. I've found that particular piece of advice more relevant in everyday life than anything else he ever said. Probably because it's the only thing I can ever remember him saying, but that's not important right now. My point is that you can apply that epithet to absolutely everything - all rewards require effort or payment in some form to be acquired. We work to gain money to pay bills and buy things we want. We cut firewood to stay warm. We throw water at the neighbour’s cat to stop it crapping on the lawn.

This does not however stop us yearning for the ability to get that easy money. "Wouldn't it be neat if" and "I wish I could" are always the beginning's to sentences of dreaming and fantasy. And dreaming and fantasy is squarely where psychic ability lies. It’s the mental equivalent of a free lunch - no real effort for big return. Speaking to the dead, moving objects by thinking about it, reading events yet to occur and speaking to others across large distances without talking. Wouldn't it be cool if we could do these things? Sure, but if wishes were doughnuts I'd be Homer Simpson. These things are all highly improbable, and all the current scientific testing and data tells us that its not possible for a human to perform any feats of psychic ability any more than it can produce a 20 kilowatt laser out of its butt.

Most of the psychic abilities that people profess to hold in high regard (a 2005 Gallup Poll indicated that 41% of Americans believe in ESP) are all ways of getting answers without any hard work. Can we find out what happened to a person without searching every square inch of ground between here and Timbuktu? Can I find out what my mother thought of me before she died without months of intensive therapy to realise I just need to let her go? Can I make the remote control come to me without me getting off my fat ass? I think most people want to believe in psychic abilities because it’s an easy way out, and people love easy answers. When was the last time a majority of people were satisfied with an answer to a question that was complex and convoluted? People like simple and straightforward, and much like religion, psychic abilities fill that niche in our psyche. How did that happen? God\psychic ability did it. Michael Shermer says “Most of us, most of the time, want certainty, want to control our environment, and want nice, neat, simple explanations...We must always work to suppress our need to be absolutely certain and in total control and our tendency to seek the simple and effortless solution to a problem. Now and then the solutions may be simple, but usually they are not.” ¹

But I reckon there is a way we can have our cake and eat it too, and it won’t be through a bunch of scam artists, phone operators or tinfoil hat wearing new-agers. It’ll be science baby, and its not too far off neither.

Telepathy
With modern mobile telephony, we pretty much have this one now anyway. You can with the press of a few buttons speak to virtually anyone in the world, or with the appropriate routing, anyone on the moon as well. We already have the ability to communicate via phone without speaking and the next step is of course to have this technology implanted in our body. By the time they get to that stage, computing power will be so compact that we won’t just be talking, but we’ll be doing business and other important things like sharing pr0n.

Telekinesis
Combine the ability to voice commands without speaking, and small robot army’s of either specific function robots, or multipurpose nanotech, we can do pretty much anything. Sound a bit farfetched? We are making leaps and bounds in nanotech, and not too far off we will be able to perform the smallest operations by programming these nanobots to do the job for us. The ability to affect objects physically with our brain power is something we can do now with remote manipulation of robots. Remove the joystick and console, and wire it directly to our brain and you have in essence the basics of telekinesis. Also why get the remote to float across the room when you can change the channel by thinking about it?

Speaking to the dead
We can already, but not it a conversational “Yo deadhead - hows it hanging?” kind of way. Advances in forensics and medicine allow us to interrogate the dead to get information specific to their life and their death. Every year we expand the techniques for extracting information from the dead, and we increase the reference material to which we refer to when deciphering that information. While we may never get the answer out of the corpse about what they thought of our Sharon, we can tell if it was indeed our Sharon that had a hand in their death.
I know that people want answers from the dead more as a reminder of who they were when they were alive, and to delay the realisation that they are gone forever. But today’s advances in digital recording technology also make it virtually impossible for anyone to be truly gone forever. Everyone leaves an imprint in this digital world through home video, television, cell phone cameras, YouTube, Google Video and many other shared mediums.

Predicting the Future
The more we know about the past, the better we can predict the future. That does not mean we won’t make the same mistakes, and it will never be foolproof, but what is? Tell me one thing in this universe that involves human decision, that will 100% reliably, every single time a coconut, never fail always be correct? With faster computing power and more and more accurate modelling programs we can predict outcomes faster and more accurate than ever before. This allows us to look to the short or long term and make decisions based upon our projections for the future.

It all sounds very next century I know, but most of the technology or techniques are currently available or in development at the time of writing this post. The biggest problem people have is not that its available, or that we as a species can accomplish these technological marvels, but that its based on hard work. And that’s why, for a while at least, psychics and seers will be able to fleece the unsuspecting mark by selling them the dream of easy answers. Until technology reaches the point where it overtakes these charlatans and delivers the ability to accomplish these feats without “magic”, they’ll be sniffing round the fringes for a while yet.

¹ - from Michael Shermers book Why People Believe Weird Things (2002) p59

It's Official - Ice Found on Mars

The Mars Phoenix lander has done what it was sent to Mars for. It had found solid evidence of ice on the red planet. The lander dug a small trench which revealed a white shiny substance. This has been up for much debate over the last week as to whether or not it was ice or salt. But it looks like it is probably ice.

Mars has a different atmospheric pressure than here on Earth, that being the case liquid water can not exist. What happens is that when ice is exposed to the atmosphere it literally turns straight to gas, skipping the liquid stage, this is called sublimation. NASA has just announced that the patch of white shiny stuff they found has started to vanish, this can only mean that sublimation is taking place. The only real thing left for Phoenix to do now of find evidence of organic compounds that lead to life.
This is a major discovery, we now have evidence that water existed on Mars and is still there in ice form.
Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona said:

"It must be ice, these little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."

That's not bad going, the craft has only been there for 24 days. It was day 20 when the hole was dug and 4 days later they an ounce that they have found ice.

Needless to say that the discovery has come at an interesting time. The US Presidential candidates have been announced and who knows what is in store for NASA and space exploration. Hopefully this will encourage the new President to re-examine the current policies and throw a bit more money their way.

This is another nail in the coffin of intelligent design or creationism (whatever its called). I see a future that many have predicted, seas on Mars and colonists walking the land breathing the air. Start terraforming now I say.

Death star invades my body, and I'm not happy.

Its that time of year again. Winter has spread its dusky wings across our Land of the Long White Cloud, causing all who dwell within to cry "Ah shit - flu season". Yes, that picture to the left is not Darth's Hangout, nor the Emperors Crib - its a 3D representation of the dreaded flu virus (see more at 3DScience.com). And the little bastard got me this year. So since I was forced to spend the last few days, and the next few as well, getting to know it so intimately, I figured I'd check out what makes this virus unique - does the rep live up to the hype?

Its a pretty fearsome idea really, that something as small as a virus, be it influenza or other, can lay an organism such as ourselves to waste. We can't see it, we can't predict its arrival and nothing we can do can protect us from its onslaught. It has the ability to put a severe dent in the worlds population, and can mutate at such a rate that standard vaccination programmes will never control it to the extent that vaccination inhibits other diseases.

Lets look at the score board Miss Ford
It's been with us from the very beginning, and dare I say it, it'll be there at the end too. The first recorded case of the flu was roughly 2400 years ago by our man Hippocrates, and we have never looked back. Every year between 40,000 to 50,000 New Zealanders report to the doctor with its symptoms (1-1.5% of pop), and every year between 30 and 100 Kiwis die from it, although generally from secondary complications such as pneumonia, rather than the virus itself. The flu was at its worst during the 1918-1919 Spanish flu epidemic when the infection rate rose to 50% globally, and current estimates say killed 50-100 million people. In the first 25 weeks of the pandemic it killed 25 million people. Contrast that with HIV\AIDS which has killed 25 million in 25 years.

But whats yours dad?
Theres several different strains, and you've probably all heard of H5N1 (bird flu) which was bandied around in the last couple of years as being the next big global killer. Luckily for us, it never happened, as it never mutated into a very effective transmitter between humans, and those who caught it were typically in extremely close contact with birds. But what's with the H's and N's? The H and the number stand for which one of several known types of the protein hemagglutinin, an antigenic glycoprotein found on the surface of the influenza viruses. It is responsible for binding the virus to the cell that is being infected. The N stands for the number of the known types of the protein neuraminidase and thats a glycoside hydrolase enzyme. It is frequently found as an antigenic glycoprotein and is found on the surface of the Influenza virus. They use these two markers to type the strain of influenza virus, along with other information to make it more specific, such as first species its found in, the different species of flu virus (A, B or C) and even the country of origin.

"I say we roll them in there and nerve gas the whole fucking nest"
After the Spanish flu pandemic, successive pandemics have had smaller footprints in terms of deaths and cases reported. This has been put down to better response with antibiotics to control secondary infections in the post Spanish Flu years. These days we also have vaccinations (up yours Jim Carrey!) to help us fight the good fight, thanks to the US Army who after losing thousands of men in the first world war, developed a vaccine for use in the 1940's. That has continued on to today where we have Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere vaccine that is updated every year with the most prevalent strains. It is seen here in NZ as the injection of the dead virus strains that we can get for free if we are in the high risk categories and some employers pay for it if they are nice.

The best defence is a good offence
The best way to avoid the flu is, well, luck I suppose. There's no real way to avoid the little bastard, but you can lessen the odds. The virus is more predominant in winter, and although there's a few good hypothesis's no-ones exactly sure why. So during winter, be extra vigilant about your personal hygiene. Stay away from people in the 2nd and 3rd day of infection as they are at their peak of infection, and stay infectious for up to 10 days. Its an airborne and contact virus so when you cough and sneeze (if you've caught the blighter), save others by doing it into a snot-rag or tissue. Children are more infective that adults, giving off the virus up to 2 days before exhibiting symptoms and remaining infectious for up to 2 weeks after.

Your best bet is to take to the hills and live in a cabin for a few months every year. But remember, birds and other animals such as pigs carry the flu, so if its a choice of living in a hut being a vegan for months at a time, or flu for 10 days, I'll take the flu thanks.

So bugger all you can do about it really. Grin (or grimace) and bear it. Stock up on tissues, lemons and DVD's, and prepare to endure a visit from your favourite friend - the Flu.

More info check the following :

MOH Website - Ministry of Health NZ
Wikipedia - for more information that you'll ever understand
Facts and figures for New Zealand - lots of up to the week reports on how the flu and other diseases are progressing in NZ.