Wednesday, April 19, 2006
It's almost summer, and that means movies. yay!
X-Men: The Last Stand - May 26, 2006
Cars - June 9, 2006
Nacho Libre - June 16, 2006
Superman Returns - June 30, 2006
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - July 7, 2006
A Scanner Darkly - July 7, 2006
Lady In The Water - July 21, 2006
Snakes On A Plane - August 18, 2006
For Your Consideration - September 22, 2006
Labels: film/tv/books/arts, geek stuff
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Redshirts and the Stormtrooper Effect
From Wikipedia.com: “A Redshirt is a stock character, used frequently in science fiction but also other genres, whose sole purpose is to violently die soon after being introduced. Redshirts are a plot device used to indicate the dangerous circumstances faced by the main characters at the start of a narrative, akin to the 'canary in the mine shaft.'” The term originated from the original Star Trek series, where “typically, a landing party would consist of Kirk, Spock, McCoy (all main characters who stood zero chance of dying) and one never-before-seen red-shirted ensign, who would be dead by the end of the mission, usually within minutes.”
“The Stormtrooper effect, also called Stormtrooper syndrome, is a cliché phenomenon in works of fiction where minor characters are unrealistically ineffective in combat against more important characters. The name originated with the armed Imperial Stormtroopers in the original Star Wars trilogy, who, despite their considerable advantages of close range, overwhelming numbers, professional military training, full armour, military-grade firepower, and noticeable combat effectiveness against non-speaking characters, were incapable of seriously harming the protagonists. The effect is generally employed either to increase the dramatic tension of a chase scene or to accentuate the heroes' fighting prowess...” It has been expressed in an equation,
“where n is the number of "bad guys", x is the number of "good guys", and J is the number of Jedi present (if any). The equation reads, "The probability of a bad guy hitting his target is equal to the inverse of: all bad guys present plus the cube of the number of good guys present (plus one) plus the number of Jedi present (plus one) to the tenth power." From this, one can infer that the presence of a good guy has a detrimental effect on the bad guys' accuracy, while having even one Jedi present is a veritable death sentence, as well as being more inaccurate in larger numbers.”
It should also be noted that this only seems to be in effect when the troopers are opposed to the protagonists, as Episodes II and III show the troopers to be quite an effective fighting force, up to the point where they no longer ally themselves with the good guys (ie., Order 66), and their ineffectiveness extends to the end of Episode VI.
The Stormtrooper Effect can oftern be seen in other movies such as The Lord of the Rings or the Indiana Jones movies, and scores of movies that both proceeded and followed Star Wars. Another classic example can be seen in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, where the pirates not only never kill Steve, but Steve seems to never run out of bullets on a single load.
(A related rule is The Inverse Ninja Law, which states that the skill level of any particular ninja in a group is inversely proportional to the number of ninja in that group. In other words, one ninja in a group of thirty ninja is no threat, while a single lone ninja is a great threat.)
These phenomena are often parodied in other works of fiction, such as Galaxy Quest, Family Guy, or Stargate SG-1 (where one minor character in peril (not coincidentally played by a Star Trek regular) exclaimed "We're dead! We might as well be wearing red shirts!")
Read more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormtrooper_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirt_%28science_fiction%29
Labels: film/tv/books/arts, geek stuff
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
More Random Things.
Cookie Monster struggles with his own personal demons...
Represent.
This is my BOOMSTICK!!!
Speaking of indulgences...
Praying Mantis:1
Hummingbird: 0
Go! Mighty Orbots!
Cute. Sorta.
Some people can pull off playing key-tar.
The Newsom Boys' Snow Golem:
Labels: geek stuff
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Narnia and Kong vs. Plankeye and Fanmail
After Peter Jackson finished his films of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, he went on to do a remake of King Kong, while others (with the help of Jackson's Weta Workshop) made Lewis's (Tolkien's fellow Inkling) The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I ended seeing both of the movies around the same time and bought both dvds on the same day, and I can't help but notice how each of them seems to have Lord of the Rings as a starting point from which they branch out in different directions.
What this really reminds me of is when Scott Siletta and Adam Ferry left the band Plankeye after their fourth album. While Eric Balmer and Luis Garcia continued on with Plankeye, it was definitely different without Scott's vocals. Scott, meanwhile, goes on with his new band Fanmail, which seemed to take the powerpop elements of Plankeye and push them to the extreme. Both new Plankeye and Fanmail were quality, and had the elements of old Plankeye, but neither were quite the same.
I'm not sure if I had a point to all this.
Labels: film/tv/books/arts, music
Tleilaxu Face Dancers and the Righteousness of Christ
"In his life and death Jesus Christ fulfilled all the righteousness that God’s law requires. When we come to God in Christ, we are clothed in the righteousness that Christ fulfilled. Our works merit no favor from God. Only Christ, and his righteousness credited to us, merits God’s favor. And this we receive by faith, and faith alone." (John Piper) (See Galatians 3:27 and Romans 13:14)
Analogies always break down, but I found an interesting parallel:
In the Dune novels by Frank Herbert, a secretive organization known as the Bene Tleilax used genetic manipulation to create human shapeshifters called face dancers, who could pretend to be other people, which of course caused much political intrigue. As their technology became more advanced, the face dancers could not only change their face, but the size and shape of their entire body, and eventually even their minds. The problem came when they became such perfect copies of other people, that they forgot that they were face dancers and actually believed that they really were the people they were copying (which of course rendered them ineffective to the purposes of the Tleilaxu). For all practical purposes, they became who they were supposed to be.
When Christ enters our lives, we 'legally' become children of God and are instantly declared righteous (justification), then His Spirit works in our lives to make us righteous (sanctification) through a gradual process that takes the rest of our mortal lives (which is why we still sin in this life), until we are made perfectly righteous in the Resurrection (glorification). We are declared children of God, then He works in our lives to make us more like Him. We become who we are.
Labels: film/tv/books/arts, religion/theology/philosophy
Don't miss the 2005 MIT Time Travellers Convention!
That's right, you only need one such convention. In the words of host Amal Dorai, "The convention was a mixed success. Unfortunately, we had no confirmed time travelers visit us, yet many time travelers could have attended incognito to avoid endless questions about the future." Or maybe as Tina Fey suggested: "too bad people from the future already know the party sucked."
Info is as follows:
MIT Time Traveler Convention
May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)
(events start at 8:00pm)
East Campus Courtyard, MIT
3 Ames St. Cambridge, MA 02142
42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W
(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)
RSVP not required for time travellers, but some sort of proof is.
Or you can always visit the original Destination Day in Perth:
Destination Day
12 Noon (UTC/GMT + 8 hours)
31st March 2005
Forrest Place, Perth 6000, Western Australia
31° 57' 7" , 115° 51' 32"
(31.9522 , 115.8591 in decimal degrees)
(In both cases, I suggest you compensate for the Earth's orbit and spacial drift.)
Physicist Stephen Hawking has suggested that we can know that time travel is impossible because we haven't met any time travelers from the future, assuming that a time traveler would actually want to visit Stephen Hawking.
And while I'm at it, here's three words you won't see together:
Calvinist Time Traveller. haha
Labels: geek stuff, science/tech
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Would you like to go... faster?
Enter Harry Egger, the fastest sportsman on earth, who reaches his speed without external power. He is 33 years old and comes from Lienz in East Tyrol, Austria (and not Malaysia, as you might think). Last winter, Harry got in a savvy scientific super skiing space suit and went down a crazy-go-nuts ramp attached to a giant Red Bull can in France (once again, not in Malaysia), achieving a speed of 154 mph. A parachute comes out of his bottom so he can slow down and not end up crashing into the kitchen of the ski lodge, which would get soup and hot chocolate everywhere. (www.speedski.com)
Labels: science/tech
