Archive for category Uninformed Critic
Handwriting recognition on the iPad
Posted by Grg in Grg's Reference, Rant/Rave, Uninformed Critic on Monday, June 21, 2010
…and when I get one, it’ll have this:
Hokey smokes!
Massive Bat Die-off in NJ? Maybe…and another fungus to blame!
Posted by Grg in Dumb thoughts, Rant/Rave, Science Fandom, Science/Geek, Uninformed Critic on Friday, June 5, 2009
Hibernia Mine doesn’t appear to be an active spelunking site, but you never know what desperate cavers might do in New Jersey. The Star-Ledger report fails to mention that the Fish and Wildlife Service has asked for a voluntary moratorium in the northeast to prevent the further spread of the disease.
So, like the frogs and bees, we have another fungal infection at the root of an animal die-off. With the bats, however, it seems decidedly linked to human activity, but there still could be a climate connection. (After all, why are people suddenly carrying fungi?) This press release from Cardiff University suggests climate change is causing fungi to grow more rapidly and “fruit” more frequently.
So, if you are doing math at home, is it:
warmer/wetter climate = more fungi + disease + accelerated decay (fungi hasten wood rot) = more CO2 = climate change
Yikes.
Why I don’t go into the water Britain …Reason #1,767
Posted by Grg in General stuff, Grg's Reference, Science Fandom, Science/Geek, Uninformed Critic on Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The Telegraph reports finding a 600ft jellyfish crop circle found in an Oxfordshire field.
Kill it!!! Oh, wait…
At the end of the article, the writer oddly refers to an entirely different crop circle from last year, and reuses the quotes from a retired astrophysicist on how THAT crop circle encodes pi.
I had to re-read it to figure out the this reference really had nothing to do with the jellyfish. Bizarre.
Black Sheep, THE best grossout horror comedy I’ve seen in years
Posted by Grg in Rant/Rave, Uninformed Critic on Monday, March 16, 2009
After seeing a trailer for it in front another Netflix rental, they immediately thought of us (gross out horror comedy, check! New Zealand, where Aly and I honeymooned, doublecheck!), and that’s why I love Liz. We sat Julia in the other room with pizza and Horton (she had just gotten a plastic lamb at the Elmwood Park zoo that afternoon, and that, plus guts, would have been too much — Responsible Dad!) and watched the hell out of that sucker. I was immediately taken back back 10 years to Liz and Aly’s apartment, watching horrible, horrible movies and being asked never, ever to go out and choose a movie on my own again.
But Black Sheep is everything I wished those other horror movies were. I give it: ♥ ♥ ♥ ∞, which I think means its good. It’s tough to say on this scale.
It was a fun film and you can see early Peter Jackson all over it, which isn’t a surprise considering that it takes place in New Zealand (I once described parts of the North Island as “rolling green hills covered in little white dots”) and because Weta Workshop did the effects (there was one scene where I swear they just replaced orcs with sheep). In fact, the first mutant lamb reminded me of the Sumatran rat monkey of Jackson’s Dead Alive (or Braindead, depending on what market you’re in, I guess).
I consider this movie an exemplar of the genre. Not as funny as, say, Shaun of the Dead, but a lot more disturbing. Fast-paced and scary in its own right, true to its own internal logic and funny without being slapstick-silly at every turn. It was well thought out and nicely put together, despite the low budget, full of nice, light touches and the rare treat of character development. In fact, I found the dialogue, in particular, to be smartly written. It is also a very bloody film, in the most meaty, visceral sense of the term.
As I said, you can see Weta Workshop’s hands all over this film. The special effects were great, especially the were-sheep and other sheepish monsters, but they weren’t above adding a few catapult-launched sheep for cheap, tension-cutting laughs. (Especially one flying lamb followed by a well-executed Wilhelm scream.)
It was also a beautiful movie, full of well-framed shots of the green, rich New Zealand countryside. (As I said, it was a very New Zealand movie — I also took smug delight in being able to explain what Aotearoa meant.) The attention the filmmakers paid to the landscape — not that I really know anything about cinematography — allowed the flick to move beyond the typical standards of the genre to something that was really quite well-crafted and watchable. I don’t know much about the director, Jonathan King, other than this is his first film, but I look forward to seeing his next one.
So, all and all, a proper pizza-and-beer flick, although you might want to hold the sausage.
“…we are all vainer of our luck than of our merits…”
Posted by Grg in Dumb thoughts, Grg's Reference, Uninformed Critic on Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Still breaking in my Sony Reader. Sure it isn’t as hip as the Kindle — and doesn’t have wireless — but it does what I want it to do very well. I’m on my third Rex Stout Nero Wolfe novel in the canon, chronologically, The Rubber Band.
Stout came out on of the gate roaring with the first novel Fer-de-lance. All of the Wolfian trappings were in place: the beer, the brownstone, his schedule, Fritz, Theordore, Saul, etc. Archie did the leg work while Wolfe sat back, grumbled and occasionally “relapsed.” All these touches carried the novel through what was otherwise are fairly lame, plodding plot. It was also the longest Wolfe novel.
It lacked the quick action and gotcha moments of later Its like watching a pilot for a familiar television show. Sure, Spock’s there on the Enterprise, but who the heck is Capt. Pike? Hrmm, that’s a bad analogy. All the parts are there, but it just feels slightly off.
The League of Frightened Men was better, but suffered from having too large a cast (the titular league, obviously). League was notable for getting the pattern down — Wolfe’s in-office interrogations are always as entertaining as Goodwin’s sleuthing — and for establishing the bond between Wolfe and Goodwin. They fight like an old married couple, yet they firmly know the bounds between employer and employee. Heck, Wolfe knowingly gets in a car with an unhinged woman to save Goodwin (while Goodwin bawls his eyes out thinking his lapse in judgement sent Wolfe to his doom).
The Rubber Band has everything, right down to the exasperatingly complicated case that only Wolfe can tease out. So far, in the series, its the first perfect Wolfe novel. And there are many more.
And Louie, Louie Gets Me Hot Just Thinking about It
Posted by Grg in Dumb thoughts, General stuff, PR Guy, Science/Geek, Skeptic, Uninformed Critic on Tuesday, February 24, 2009
In an article published in the April 2009 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers found that teenagers who preferred popular songs with degrading sexual references were more likely to engage in intercourse or in pre-coital activities.
Already, with the euphemisms. What are pre-coital activities? Heavy petting? Badminton?
Writing in the article, Brian A. Primack, MD, EdM, MS, Center for Research on Health Care at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, states, “This study demonstrates that, among this sample of young adolescents, high exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex in popular music was independently associated with higher levels of sexual behavior. In fact, exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex was one of the strongest associations with sexual activity…These results provide further support for the need for additional research and educational intervention in this area.”
If I had known this then, I would have taken extra care in putting together mix tapes for the girls I fancied.
Surveys were completed by 711 ninth-grade students at three large urban high schools. These participants were exposed to over 14 hours each week of lyrics describing degrading sex. About one third had previously been sexually active. Compared to those with the least exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex, those with the most exposure were more than twice as likely to have had sexual intercourse. The relationship between exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex and sexual experience held equally for both young men and women.
Similarly, among those who had not had sexual intercourse, those in the highest third of exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex were nearly twice as likely to have progressed along a noncoital sexual continuum compared to those in the lowest third. Finally, the relationships between exposure to lyrics describing non-degrading sex and sexual outcomes were not significant.
Students reported the number of hours per day that they listen to music and their favorite musical artists. Through a detailed content analysis, the percentage was calculated of each artist’s most popular songs containing lyrics describing degrading sex. An exposure score for lyrics describing degrading sex was then computed by multiplying each student’s hours of music exposure by the percentage of his or her favorite artists’ songs that contain lyrics describing degrading sex.
Oh, OK, I think I found the problem here. They surveyed “711 ninth-grade students at three large urban high schools”…now, I’m no expert on youth culture, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find a song popular among urban high schoolers that wasn’t about degrading sex. Of course kids listen to songs about sex.
When I was a kid, I’d hover over any material, in print, on video or sketched by a 17th c. Dutch Master in the often vain hopes that there would be some sort of sexual content in it. A kid would no sooner pass up a song about deviant sex than they would a Trader Joe’s Vanilla Joe-Joe (Crom, I love them). On the surface, there seems to be some correlation/causation confusion.
And that’s the danger of it. For all I know, this is probably good, legitimate science and there are factors here that just aren’t coming across in a press release. Mark my words, this press release will picked up unedited and regurgitated in news outlets across the land.
It doesn’t help to use phrases like “noncoital sexual continuum” as if that’s a normal everyday figure of speech. What does that mean? It sounds like the leading cause of blindness in teenage Borg. I’m assuming “noncoital sexual continuum” is how we round the bases in science-speak. Does that make it degrading? If so, I don’t know what’s normal.
How do you quantify degrading sexual lyrics, anyway?
“I’m sorry, son, that hip-hop song rates a 6.5 on the Ludacris scale and, well, that’s logarithmic and the logarithm is going to get you. Your mother and I don’t want that sort of thing in the house. You understand? Good, now here’s $20, go see American Pie 7 while your mother and I get our freak on…Gladys, where’s the butter and the Lil Wayne?”
The Uninformed Critic Presents: Battle of The MST3K Stars
Posted by Grg in General stuff, Grg's Reference, Rant/Rave, Uninformed Critic on Tuesday, January 29, 2008
RiffTrax vs. Cinematic Titanic…Mike vs. Joel…
RiffTrax
Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett
Audio tracks to be played while viewing DVDs
Advantage: New and dying-to-be-mocked films, Fred Willard, a library of over 50 flicks (including the Star Wars Christmas Special) and the completely necessary battle of the state quarters.
Cinematic Titanic
Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, J. Elvis Weinstein , Mary Jo Pehl and Frank Conniff
MST3K-style DVD of bad Movie
Advantage: J. Elvis frickin’ Weinstein, visual gags
Winner (without actually sampling product): RiffTrax is strong, with 50 shows for easy download. However, if Cinematic Titanic can produce more than one video, they are the hands-down winners.
Since our home DVD player is also our home CD player, I cannot listen to any of the RiffTrax without expending effort (that’s haaard…waaah…and don’t get me started about watching on my computer). Then again, if Cinematic Titanic doesn’t appear on Netflix, there’s little chance I’ll see it anytime soon.
Take Home Message: Why can’t Mike and Joel just get along?
Note to Nelson: Write another novel. I loved Death Rat.