A Survey of Public Understanding of Evolution

Run over and fill out your survey on the public understanding of Evolution. I'm a little scared to see what the results yield seeing as my father, the man who spawned and encouraged by belief and respect for the scientific process has recently come to the point of saying "Both theories should be taught." - A point to which I might agree if one of the "theories" was a theory at all. Assuming a lack of evidence in another theory does not make your idea a theory. ... wait wait wait!!! I have one. I have a theory! My theory is that every supporter of Intelligent Design is a religious crackpot who has either supported at one time or currently supports a Republican Candidate, has a limited academic background, and eats way too many pre-processed food products. Oh, wait. There's a way to prove that, so it really could be a theory. Dammit, I don't think these nuts get the credit they deserve for coming up with an idea that is actually not a scientific theory. Pseudoscience is much harder than it looks. Anyway, Intelligent Design is just a crazy idea. Just like a lot of other man made crazy ideas, like the bible (don't get me wrong, its full of real gems, but wasn't that whole thing put together by a roman emperor? Based on the evidence, I have a hard time beliving it's a complete reference), or the idea that you should base your faith and your world view on blind ignorance. Go fill it out and leave your mark on the Creationism vs. Evolution debate.

http://www.evolutionsurvey.com/

The Clone Wars Premier

That's a picture of me with George Lucas after the Saturday Morning premier of "The Clone Wars" - yes, he's a thousand feet away so it doesn't count, but it was still cool to be in the presence of the man who created Star Wars.

It's been a while since episodes 1, 2, and 3 hit the screens. There was a lot of wondering if George had lost his mojo with the release of these films (unwarranted for episode 3 at least in my mind). The clone wars picks up in the period between movies 2 and 3 and develops a small but intriguing story about the politics of the greater war. Overall I was blown away by the animation. It was stunning, and beautiful. It didn't take long to forget about the visuals and fall into the story line. I've heard a few comments like "George is losing it because he can't hire live actors" or questioning the validity of the animated medium, but honestly, they should just let it go. The movies graphics are stylistically beautiful. Not quite human, but the animators really managed to breathe life into the characters. So people, the answer is, George has lost nothing. He's got a vision for this world that he's helped create and it's still going strong, whether animated or live action. The story, as mentioned, takes a single political incident and builds the movie around it. I don't want to get into too many details, because if you're a fan, you should see the movie when it comes out. But it includes some of the old favorite characters as well as expands the existing universe a bit. The plot is thick and compelling. Its not so simple that adults won't find it interesting, but not so complex as to make it difficult for the kids to understand and enjoy. Action sequences abound, but there is a fine balance between these and the story sequences. The transitions are so seamless that you rarely feel like either are stilted or waiting on the other. There will be a thousand reviews coming out soon, so I'll let them spill the details, but for myself, I'll leave you with this... If you're a fanboy, this is a must see. Animated or not, it's a well crafted and really enjoyable time at the theater. If you're not quite fanboy status, it's still worth seeing. George Lucas and team have produced a well crafted story in an interesting world, and have created a movie that is a lot of fun to watch. Some friends and I were sitting around after the movie and discussing it (some are pretty harsh criticss) but we all felt the movie was well worth seeing. And I think I understand just a little more of the Lucas philosophy of film. Make a film that is an escape from the day to day. Yes, indeed, its that simple. But it's the skill and craftsmanship he weilds that earns this movie an 8 out of 10 in my book.

Top Ten Reasons all SciFi channel movies suck

10. Twist endings that aren't so much twists as much as they are completely different tangents.

Okay, so the giant snake is about the eat the princess who is the only thing on earth that can keep the world from falling into the grip of a bazillion dragons and their minions. How is it another snake -which has never come into the story line at all before now- is fighting the beast to the death instead of the hero? Oh, and for good measure, it's probably a good idea to throw in another dragon which has also never been seen or heard of yet? Well, at least it ended.

9. Totally Unbelievable Battle Sequences.

How is it that when outnumbered 20 to 1 by bad guys (or dragons), the hero can drive between the rain of ammo when the military -armed with tanks, machine guns, rockets, missiles, gunship helicopters, grenade launchers, and a knife- can't kill one little giant reptile, much less stay alive? It just doesn't make sense, in that intelligence offending way. If you can video toaster in an army, video toaster in some casualties.

8. Bad Timing of Sentimental Crap.

The idea of love and eternity should not even come into play in the same scene where the giant creatures battle it out for global supremacy and the the spirit of the chick you've been trying to nail for the first half of the movie turns into a giant pearl and gets eaten. It's kind of like asking someone to pat their head and rub their belly at the same time. It's possible to do, but mostly uncomfortable, and ultimately serves no purpose. Don't do that to your audience, it's annoying.

7. Good Actors, bad ideas - and vise versa

The guy from Carnival, and the sidekick from Xena (okay, she's not a great actress, but she's good, and kinda cute) should not be allowed to star in a movie that ties Noah's ark with the Apocalypse in a Beowulf wannabe monster flick. And then Grendel, a story that is as much about battling ones own inner demons as it is a monster flick, gets some dude with the dynamic range of a slab of wood as it's lead. Uncool.

6. The "Development"

None of the development sequences really ever wind up developing anything as much as it winds up setting up the next action sequence. Also related to number 4. I imagine the writing sessions to be something like, "We can't jump to the next action sequence because of some continuity issues, here's a few lines of dialog that sets it up. Now we can have more stuff explode and splatter blood! God I love our Video Toaster."

5. The "Special" effects

Nevermind the blood effects looking like something out of a 90's FPS video game. Everyone loves video toaster, it's the greatest 80's video effect engine ever, but please use the blood spattered explosions and lightning effects sparingly, and try to stick to items that might believably be left unharmed by those things.

4. Really Bad Dialog

Yeah, I can't really put anything here, as there aren't really any memorable moments in the dialog to quote. Typical horror dialog rules apply, but get taken to a whole new absurd level. Here's a guy who has much more stomach for it than I do, read some of his reviews.

3. Implausible Sets

What's most amazing is how half the buildings in downtown L.A. having been shot up by gunship helicopters, and blown apart by dragon fireballs, amazingly have no structural damage at all. Lets ignore the leap of logic it takes to get from downtown LA to somewhere that looks like an ancient Mayan ritual sacrifice. Apparently those are abundant in LA, but I would imagine its a bit south of Hollywood.

2. Horrible Cinematography

It might have something to do with having to shoot around your expensive helicopter shots of downtown Los Angeles, or maybe it's just artistic license when you're compositing shots of Hawaiian lava flows, the inside of a subway, and a guy melting from the feet up. Don't know, don't care. It's just not pretty.

1. Bad Source Material

It's not like they're reading the best of SciFi over there in the production offices makeing all these movies and stuff. I mean, outside of Dune and Grendal, where are the Asimov novels? Where are the Heinlein, or the Arthur C. Clarkes in this vast putrid waste of video that the SciFi channel spews out every quarter or so? I appreciate camp, and even appreciate the fact that young writers who could not possibly get published otherwise can somehow adapt a crappy story to television and make a few bucks. If they were after pulp scifi, that would be okay... but with great series, like Battlestar Gallactica, it's painful to watch the movie making dollar be squandered, especially when great movies can be made on a budget.

Why we have high fuel prices...

Here's an interesting graphic that gives details about why gas costs so damn much. It's also interesting that middle America pays less than us poor saps out of the coasts, which might explain why they're so hot to drill our coastlines and wait 10 years or more for there to be any real impact on the price of gasoline. Thanks to The Big Picture for pointing this out.

One interesting thing the graph points out is that the weakening dollar, and foreign competition for oil are key components to the high price of gasoline. Would the dollar be as weak if we weren't spending hundreds of billions on the war in Iraq?

Hello Red States: Barack Obama is not a Muslim. Yes, its a fact.

It finally hit home how effective misinformation and propaganda are at shaping public opinion. Having watched Barack climb through the ranks of Illinois politics, and been overall pretty pleased with his progressive stance as well as his ability to get things done, it hit home -after a family visit- how easy it is to get a generally biased portion of middle America to swing toward the rich white candidate on the basis of fear, ignorance, and bigotry.

Here's the Snopes article that debunks it as an urban myth.

I'm having trouble finding the article, but it was in a major news rag, about how a woman tracked down the sources of this myth and traced it back to a candidate that was running against Obama back in the Illinois Senate days. I'll update here if I ever find it again. It was a good read and really exposed the workings of the far right media and their attempts to slander anyone that stands against their agenda. UPDATE: Found the article finally. It's a Washington Post article outlining the attempts of Dr. Danielle Allen to find the source of the slanderous emails. "An Attack That Came Out of the Ether" - WashingtonPost.com

Just for good measure, here's a list of the Top Ten Obama Myths. I'm sure this will make my family happy.