Entries by PyroKinetic

Eric Alterman's analysis of why Obama's rhetoric seems to differ so much from his actions; I encourage you to read the whole thing (it's quite long, but worth it).

So, according to a report via CNN's iReport feature (whose posts are not verified or vetted by CNN itself), the Gulf of Mexico oil leak is not just a single uncapped well, but many seperate leaks besides, all welling up from a fractured seafloor. If this is true, it is extremely disturbing, and is probably one of the most serious ecological disasters in human history--something akin to Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez spill, and the Dust Bowl all rolled into one.

The problems of a massive, ongoing, undersea oil geyser are, of course, manifold; besides devastating the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico (which is pretty diverse), ruining the economy of coastal communities dependent on that ecology, and annihilating the coastal wetlands that are an integral part of the nearby terrestrial ecology (and act as protection from hurricane storm surges for nearby cities and towns, including New Orleans), there is the simple fact that the world's oceans produce something like sixty or seventy percent of the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, and that all oceans on the planet are connected. If standard methods are used to attempt to stop the oil geyser and fail, and alternate methods are not employed, for fear they will inhibit the Gulf's capacity to produce additional oil in the future, we're looking at something like a 30-year wait for the gusher to stop on its own. In several months, this leak has caused untold devastation on a massive scale (admittedly mostly out of sight, hidden beneath the ocean); I cannot imagine what the consequences would be if it continued for decades.

The article has another disturbing assertion in it: the Gulf is the last oil-producing region capable of increasing its production. We have always known that oil was a limited resource, yet as time has gone on, we have only increased the rate at which we have used it. Besides anthropogenic climate change, fueled (pun intended) by our use of oil and gas, we are now reaping an altogether more urgent consequence of our refusal to invest in alternate energy sources. We have hampered ourselves through capitalistic greed, the assurance of profit today via an already commonly-used resource, instead of looking to the future; we are cursing ourselves with political and corporate inaction.

Ruin is the fate of all societies who stagnate, or become regressive; like species faced with external environmental pressure, we must adapt, or perish. Rome, once the mightiest empire in the world, could not change with the times, and fell into ruin; likewise the British Empire, the largest ever known. Ecological disaster through overexploitation of the environment has doomed countless human populations: from Greenland to the Fertile Crescent, throughout human history. Faced with the signs of their own impending collapse, these people, like many today, ignored them; and rather than change their habits, they attempted to continue according to the old customs, and they are now gone, and mostly forgotten; they are a smattering of archaeological sites, and footnotes in the history books.

I am not so arrogant and self-centered as to claim that humanity is doomed; so-called prophets with an inflated sense of importance have proclaimed their age the last age of human history since the dawn of time, and they have all (so far) been wrong; but unless we find within ourselves the strength to really change, to really look to the future, to hold within our minds an ideal that is radically different from the society we live in today, and to work towards bringing our world closer to that ideal than it has ever been, we will face terrible hardship in the decades to come. Already the rich-poor gap in industrialized nations is widening; as African nations develop, the same process repeats itself there, magnified a thousand times according to the relative quantity of development required. Authoritarian tendencies in government abound, and are largely ignored. Regardless of what action we take, our grandchildren will live in a world entirely unlike the one inhabited by America and Europe in the latter half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st; but it is up to the current generation to decide whether it will be a better one, or a worse.

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
--Pravin Lal

In other news, Joe Lieberman is a dirtbag.

The new trailer for Deus Ex: Human Revolution, while not showing any gameplay, does seem to be an indication that there's a slight possibility it might not suck as much as you'd think.

A cautionary tale for reporters about going up against people famous for their blinding intellect: don't.

If you're not watching the latest season of the new Doctor Who, you're definitely missing out. I was skeptical when I heard David Tennant wouldn't be returning; his version of the Doctor was even better than Christopher Eccleston's, combining just the right amount of zaniness and asskicking. Despite being much younger than Tennant, the new lead actor, Matt Smith, is just as good in the role, however; he's a bit more scatterbrained than Tennant, and not always as confident, but he gives the role a unique and delightful feel that some people (who have been watching far longer than I have) have compared favorably to Tom Baker's tenure on the show, and he's great at delivering lightning-fast witty dialogue. The new sidekick, played by Karen Gillan, is hilariously Scottish, and the two work very well together.

The new season has had a run of excellent episodes so far; in particular, the Weeping Angels (malevolent statues that move blindingly fast, but only when you're not looking at them) make a return and once again put themselves in the running for Scariest Goddamn Science Fiction Villain Ever. Doctor Who is yet another BBC show that, despite not enjoying the massive budgets of similar American television franchises, nevertheless has top-notch writing and acting, and if you have any interest in or tolerance for science fiction at all, it's definitely worth your 45 minutes once a week.

Steam, Valve's digital distribution service, is now available for the Mac, and Portal is free for both the Mac and Windows until May 24th. I downloaded Portal this afternoon, thinking "what the hell," and four hours later, the verdict is in: this game is up there with Deus Ex as far as best-games-ever go, and is probably the most unique, fun, and challenging puzzle game I've ever played. If you have not had the pleasure of playing Portal yet, you have no excuse.

Lightning in the clouds above the Iceland volcano. Via reddit.

There's games which have a steep learning curve, there's games that have clever elements of emergent gameplay, and then there's games where you can build a Turing-complete digital computer inside the virtual world.

Or whatever those wacky scientists say; in any case, the LHC is operational and colliding particles for the first time now.

Status display
Webcast

...Into this wild Abyss
The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave--
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds,--
Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,
Pondering his voyage...

If you haven't seen it already, I recommend you download or get the DVD of what is technically the last episode of "Battlestar Galactica," a telemovie entitled "The Plan." It's a fitting coda for one of the greatest series to ever grace television or speculative fiction, telling many of the events from the miniseries to the end of the second season from the perspective of the Cylon side characters. Dean Stockwell, as ever, gives an excellent performance as Cavil/Model One, and an alternate, if no less interesting, insight into what drove the antagonists of the series on their genocidal crusade. Though the action skips around quite a lot (and would make no sense to anyone who hadn't seen the full run of the series), The Plan succeeds in sketching the real conflict at the heart of the Cylon ego, between the machine nature and the human attributes inherent in the humanoid models. Stockwell in particular wonderfully evokes the tension between an artifical life form striving to be much more than he is (as his monologue to Ellen Tigh in Season Four indicates) and the limited human form his creators endowed him with. It's the sort of high-concept tension that only a show as well-written and -acted as Galactica could pull off.

The series you should be watching right this very instant, if you're not already, is Caprica. Sure, it's a spinoff of BSG, and yes, it's a prequel; but while the parent series was Star Wars with themes of artificial intelligence and how individuals determine their own fate, Caprica is Neuromancer with a heavy dose of Snow Crash, and riddled throughout with references to Gnosticism and Greek mythology. The drama of Caprica is not man vs. artificial intelligence; it is reality vs. virtual reality, seen through the eyes of characters who suffer an excruciating loss in the opening episode of the series, with religious extremism and terrorism thrown in for good measure. Like its predecessor, the futuristic setting, alien culture, and technological marvels are a backdrop for an immediately recognizable setting, and the overarching themes about the virtual worlds that inhibit our ability to percieve the world for what it actually is (whether they are digital, ideological, or emotional) are instantly familiar. It is a frakking awesome show.

by Frank Stockton

It was nearly a year after the occurrence of that event in the arena of the semibarbaric king known as the incident of the lady or the tiger, that there came to the palace of this monarch a deputation of five strangers from a far country. These men, of venerable and dignified aspect and demeanour, were received by a high officer of the court, and to him they made known their errand.

"Most noble officer," said the speaker of the deputation, "it so happened that one of our countrymen was present here, in your capital city, on that momentous occasion when a young man who had dared to aspire to the hand of your king's daughter had been placed in the arena, in the midst of the assembled multitude, and ordered to open one of two doors, not knowing whether a ferocious tiger would spring out upon him, or a beauteous lady would advance, ready to become his bride. Our fellow citizen who was then present was a man of supersensitive feelings, and at the moment when the youth was about to open the door he was so fearful lest he should behold a horrible spectacle that his nerves failed him, and he fled precipitately from the arena, and, mounting his camel, rode homeward as fast as he could go."

"We were all very much interested in the story which our countrymen told us, and we were extremely sorry that he did not wait to see the end of the affair. We hoped, however, that in a few weeks some traveller from your city would come among us and bring us further news, but up to that day when we left our country no such traveller had arrived. As last it was determined that the only thing to be done was to send a deputation to this country, and to ask the question: 'Which came out of the open door, the lady or the tiger?'"

An interesting New York Times article that looks at how best to reduce crime--and therefore the need for punishment--by combining deterrence with community-based policing.

The original CSI continues to get better and better; the latest episode, "Better Off Dead," continues the trend of the past few seasons, coupling crime investigation procedural with innovative and interesting storytelling. Heroes continues to have an excellent season; Season Four has moved away from the comic-book action-adventure style of the first three seasons and seems to be focusing more on the characters that inhabit its world. While still requiring more than the average amount of suspension of disbelief, it makes for an entertaining hour each week. However, the show you should really be watching is Dollhouse. If fans were initially disappointed with its lackluster beginning, the second half of the first season showed a glimmer of hope that the talent of Joss Whedon lives on. The second season, however, is as good as anything during the run of Firefly or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, if not better. What originally seemed to be a slightly gimmicky science fiction show has metamorphosed into a weighty meditation on the tradeoff between ethics and technology and the nature and origin of identity, with complex characters who are by turns monstrous in their behavior and noble in their intent; but the latest episode, "Getting Closer," (besides having Summer Glau as a guest star, which is always a delight) is one of those rare pleasures in television--the sort of thing that leaves you staring at your TV (or computer screen, as the case may be) for a good ten minutes after the credits roll. Let there be no doubt; Mr. Whedon has not lost his touch, and if you don't go back and watch Dollhouse from the beginning, then I can do nothing for you but offer my pity.

Because it's freaking hilarious.