Sci-fi films are as dead as westerns, says Ridley Scott

And, after a moment of shock and some deep thought, I'm inclined to agree with Scott's baldly stated contention.

At the Venice Film Festival for a special screening of his seminal noir thriller Blade Runner, Sir Ridley said that science fiction films were going the way the Western once had. “There’s nothing original. We’ve seen it all before. Been there. Done it,” he said. Asked to pick out examples, he said: “All of them. Yes, all of them.”

The flashy effects of recent block-busters, such as The Matrix, Independence Day and The War of the Worlds, may sell tickets, but Sir Ridley believes that none can beat Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Made at the height of the “space race” between the United States and the USSR, 2001 predicted a world of malevolent computers, routine space travel and extraterrestrial life. Kubrick had such a fastidious eye for detail, he employed Nasa experts in designing the spacecraft.

Sir Ridley said that 2001 was “the best of the best”, in use of lighting, special effects and atmosphere, adding that every sci-fi film since had imitated or referred to it. “There is an overreliance on special effects as well as weak storylines,” he said of modern sci-fi films.

In fact, I haven't even read a science fiction novel in a good long while that stirred anything resembling interest in my breast. I'm sick to death of the old tropes, and the new post-Singularity/other-side-of-Clarke's-Law experiments are about as compelling as reading someone else's dream log. Which is to say, not at all.

We've reached the end of the line for this kind of writing, I think. No longer the red-headed stepchild genre, science-fiction is now just a niche in the overcrowded realm of general fiction. Perhaps it belongs in the "improvisational mythology" bin. The old SF myths lie in ruins at our feet. The new 'roll your own reality' stories lack solidity. The center cannot hold.

Plasma life

Hot Gas in Space Mimics Life

"Clergy Response Teams" employed by US government to quell martial law unrest

This article has to be one of the most insane things I've ever read.

The US Government will employ "Clergy Response Teams" trained to quell unrest in the event of martial law.

What.
The.
Fuck.

Wake up, people!

Homeland Security Enlists Clergy to Quell Public Unrest if Martial Law Ever Declared

Could martial law ever become a reality in America? Some fear any nuclear, biological or chemical attack on U.S. soil might trigger just that. KSLA News 12 has discovered that the clergy would help the government with potentially their biggest problem: Us.
Charleton Heston's now-famous speech before the National Rifle Association at a convention back in 2000 will forever be remembered as a stirring moment for all 2nd Amendment advocates. At the end of his remarks, Heston held up his antique rifle and told the crowd in his Moses-like voice, "over my cold, dead hands."
While Heston, then serving as the NRA President, made those remarks in response to calls for more gun control laws at the time, those words live on. Heston's declaration captured a truly American value: An over-arching desire to protect our freedoms.
But gun confiscation is exactly what happened during the state of emergency following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, along with forced relocation. U.S. Troops also arrived, something far easier to do now, thanks to last year's elimination of the 1878 Posse Comitatus act, which had forbid regular U.S. Army troops from policing on American soil.
If martial law were enacted here at home, like depicted in the movie "The Siege", easing public fears and quelling dissent would be critical. And that's exactly what the 'Clergy Response Team' helped accomplish in the wake of Katrina.
Dr. Durell Tuberville serves as chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo Sheriff's Office. Tuberville said of the clergy team's mission, "the primary thing that we say to anybody is, 'let's cooperate and get this thing over with and then we'll settle the differences once the crisis is over.'"
Such clergy response teams would walk a tight-rope during martial law between the demands of the government on the one side, versus the wishes of the public on the other. "In a lot of cases, these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in which they're helping to diffuse that situation," assured Sandy Davis. He serves as the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13. Dr. Tuberville elaborated, "because the government's established by the Lord, you know. And, that's what we believe in the Christian faith. That's what's stated in the scripture."
Civil rights advocates believe the amount of public cooperation during such a time of unrest may ultimately depend on how long they expect a suspension of rights might last.

"We have broken the speed of light"

This is what you get when you have the Autobahn -- no respect for speedlimits. A couple of German scientists claim to have caused light to exceed c.

We have broken the speed of light

The problem with strident scientism

In The Dawkins delusion: science good, the rest bad astrologer Neil Spencer makes some telling points on how arch-skeptics can be just as dogmatic as non-scientists. I've enjoyed Dawkins' earlier books such as The Blind Watchmaker and The Extended Phenotype, but I find his new crusade against mysticism irritating.

He rails against radical fundamentalism as the harbinger of a new dark age, without realizing he's just as radical and just as fundamentalist.

Oxford philosopher discovers the Matrix

Try not to bump anyone on the way in... The party's already underway, glad you could join us, Professor Bostrom. Grab a drink.

Our Lives, Controlled from Some Guy's Couch

Perceiving the truly alien

How much of what we see is actually based on "icons"?

"Chair", "person", "machine", "mammal", that sort of thing. I would argue a lot of our perception of the world is tokenized in this way. So what happens when you move into a world where literally everything is new, far outside our token-library?

Here's a fascinating account of one of the first deep-sea bathysphere dives, and how the view out its porthole affected the observer.

Vectors - An FSX Film

Here is the new video from Lotus! You can get the high-res download here.

"To save America we need another 9/11" WTF!?

This op-ed has to be the STUPIDEST thing I've read in a very long time.

America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.

What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.

Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.

The unity brought by such an attack sadly won't last forever.

The first 9/11 proved that.

All I can say is "Oh My Fucking God".

Many thanks to Anonymous poster #1 who pointed me to this followup article by the same asshat who wrote the above op-ed. What a fucking moron.

Pebble's minimalist nostalgia journey

I love YouTube.

Ever since hearing about Steve Reich's music at a George Winston concert I was hooked on the minimalist movement. It's a thrill now to be able to see his stuff performed in various guises.

Here is a quintessential (which means, literally, "fifth essence") minimalist piece: Reich's Clapping Music. First, the standard version:


And now performed solo. Bravo!


I'm also fond of composer John Adams. Here are two versions of his "A Short Ride In A Fast Machine". This is the original scoring:


And here it is played on balinese gamelans. Wow.

William Gibson gives a talk in Second Life

Talk about the serpent eating its own tail: here is the man who coined the term cyberspace, now entering it as an avatar. I'm a geek. This has a kind of technorgasmic completeness that leaves me almost speechless.



There are more installments on the right sidebar.

Money, banking, and the Federal Reserve

This video clearly explains why the US economy has steadily declined over the past several decades, fueled by the devaluation of the dollar by the actions of the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve is neither a Federal agency (it's owned by private, international banking interests) nor a Reserve (they actually *lend* us the money we use in circulation (which doesn't exist in the first place), and charge us interest for its use!

You will find no clearer, succinct explanation of why our economy teeters on the edge of ruin, likely to collapse utterly....very soon.

Pebble learns a new word today

And what a lovely, lovely -- almost elven -- word it is: luthier. Do you have any idea what a luthier might be? I'll give you a hint. A luthier is to [something] as a fletcher is to arrows. Here's another hint: the most famous luthier in the world is a name almost everyone will recognize. Also, some luthiers are known by the subgroup archetiers.

Give up? Here's the definition. And here is where I stumbled upon the word.

Merriam-Webster says it's pronounced "LOOT ee er", but a friend who knows about such things swears it's the correct pronunciation is "LOOTH ee er". Which I like better anyway.

And here, as extra credit, is the blog of an experimental luthier.

Physics: Can The Future Leak Into The Present?

Here's an interesting article from MSNBC entitled Putting Time in a (Leaky) Bottle. It discusses new ways of extracting subtle information from quantum processes that seems to come from the future, without collapsing the wave function immediately.

Alter egos in a virtual world

The unplugged world is having to wrap its head around the notion of online avatars, and how they relate to the people playing them. Here is NPR's "huh, what?" piece on the phenomenon. (Thanks to Hiro Protagonist for the link.)

Oh, but look out! The online world is a big, scary place filled with crazy people, even terrorists! Better shut down all online games, just to make the world safe for our ruling elite, so they can play harmless games like "blow-up-the-WTC-to-scare-everyone-into-submission".

Fuck that noise.

These avatar-enabled explorations of identity are a sign that the real world has become deeply, inescapably un-free whether we consciously admit it or not. People have given up almost all their freedom, at this point. Why can't they be allowed this one last escape? Because it's the nature of tyranny to want more power, always more.