Bill Nye to Debate Answers in Genesis kingpin Ken Ham

Bill Nye is to debate Ken Ham on February 4th. Personally I think this is a mistake on Bill’s part as I doubt he has the ability to take Ken Ham in a debate. Indeed to take any creationist in a debate you must first be prepared to deal with the avalanche of dishonesty and misinformation they present in their arguments which I sincerely doubt Bill Bye is.

Justin Robertson presents: Revtone - Love Movement ( Ulrich Schnauss Remix )

Snowdonia is beautiful but so is the track this drive is set to: Justin Robertson presents: Revtone - Love Movement ( Ulrich Schnauss Remix )

Funny Scene from World’s End

The Queen of Atheism speaking at the Reason Rally

Mass Effect 3 Ending Meme

Captain Picard completes Mass Effect 3

 

Darth Vader completes Mass Effect 3

 

The Patriot completes Mass Effect 3

 

Fellowship of the Ring completes Mass Effect 3

 

Mass Effect 3: The ending

I’ve been watching with interest the ballistic reaction of the fans to the end of this franchise, the scope of it has surprised even me, so I’ve decided to compile some of that reaction into an article that summarises it.

So in just over a week, an extremely well organised movement of quite vocal fans has sprung up surrounding the furore over the ending to this game. You could almost say it has a religious quality to it, hardly surprising given the emotional investment people have in this series of games. So far a facebook group has formed which at the time of writing has around 30,000 members. Cells have also begun to form across the Internet. The main retake site was founded on Tumblr but Youtube videos have also started to go up. A letter writing campaign is being organised. Polls are being written. A charity drive has also so far raised around $40,000 dollars for sick children.

Let’s be clear about this in no uncertain terms – the ending was quite possibly the worst ending of any story in history. It was worse than the Matrix series, worse than Lost, worse than the Sapranos, it was quite simply bafflingly bad. Comments that other fans have made about it below, warning SPOILERS:

Imagine the Original Star Wars trilogy; you just sat through all three films, and you're at the part where Luke is face to face with the Emperor, who's trying to convince him to join the darkside, etc. And instead of how it ends, Luke says "Know what? Screw it. I just WONT BE A JEDI ANYMORE!" Drops his lightsaber and storms out. Fade to black. Roll Credits.

That is the best analogy I can offer about the clusterfuck that was the ME3 ending.

And the death star blows up all the planets in the galaxy, and Han Solo decides to chicken out and fly away from the battle and he crash lands on some random planet while everything else gets destroyed.

And then George Lucas offers you some DLC in a cheesy looking text box.

You have no fucking idea my friend. 3 games, hundreds of hours, hundreds of dollars, 5 years waiting for this game. It was all ruined in 10 minutes. There is no replaying Mass Effect 1, 2, or 3 once you've seen the ending. Honestly, starting a new game would just be sooooo fucking depressing. It's not that the ending is "sad", I don't care about that. It's that it's just so fucking terrible.

Normally I don’t get involved in these sorts of debates, but the endings really were heart wrenching to say the least. Best way to make a video game is to appeal to the fans and they did not at all in my opinion do that in any way with the current endings. I was real disappointed that all my effort led up to such a game changer.

I mean really BioWare, it’s Mass Effect, not an M. Night Shyamalan movie, we don’t need a twist at the end.

Everything about this game was perfect up until the last 10 minutes when it ended. There is no epilogue. Stuff happens, more stuff happens, and then the end. Rather than have some sense of closure, it opens about 20 more questions. It breaks from the story, changes tone and character, ignores current and past facts as well as making leaps of logic.

No wonder GAME wouldn't stock ME3. The collision of two such failed entities would probably cause a massive implosion of the space-time fabric. All we need now is an article about THAT. Someone give Hawking a tweet please!

http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/

http://robotgeek.co.uk/2012/03/13/why-the-retake-mass-effect-3-movement-is-making-history/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/15/paragons-of-protest-retake-mass-effect-raises-money-for-kids/

http://www.ingame.msnbc.msn.com/technology/ingame/some-mass-effect-3-players-demand-happier-ending-411424

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/15/upset-mass-effect-fans-entitled-gamers-or-responsible-consumers/

http://retakemasseffect.tumblr.com/

http://www.facebook.com/DemandABetterEndingToMassEffect3

I just totally love this tune.

Great answer to Pascal’s wager

Sheffield Riots

Sometimes I think people just get too violent around here. View discretion advised.

Dare to Know–Dawkins & Hitchens

Top 10 Most Ethereal Movie Scenes

This is an article I’ve been thinking about writing for a while but wasn’t sure how to categorise it. It concerns points I've noticed in movies where a particular scene just transcends everything else in the film and cinema as well. The visuals, music and dialogue can occasionally combine perfectly to give a scene that's just out of this world. Although it usually happens near the end of films, it does occasionally take place during the film and in some films it just continues weaving in and out throughout the narrative usually culminating in a film I’d consider to be excellent.

If movie-making is an art then these are my guiding principles as to what I would like to accomplish were I ever to undertake the same feat. Sometimes I find that if a film has one of these moments in, it usually has several - a sort of dreamy theme weaved into the film that gives it depth. All of the films on this list definitely make it into my top 100, even if it is just on the strength of one scene which I consider to be cinematic perfection.

10. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – this film is definitely dreamy throughout – most of the film takes place purely in Jim Carey’s mind so you’d kind of expect that. The visual effects are subtle and yet if you think about it, quite complicated at the same time. This film is definitely one that bends reality and has an ethereal quality throughout.
9. Memento – Another mind bending film from Christopher Nolan, told entirely from the perspective of the damaged protagonist. The score and constant scene shifting of this film makes it a little confusing to really follow what’s going on but as the pieces start fitting together, the films dreamy setting begins to take on a new twist. An excellent film and one that also has an ethereal quality throughout.
8. The Butterfly Effect – This one only really has a dreamy sequence near the end where Evan finally manages to find a way to fix everything that he broke. The score and tragic way he does this always work a sort of magic I find. Even though the directors cut ending is harsher and probably makes for a better film, I always preferred the happy theatrical ending.
7. Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome – I liked all the Mad Max movies to be fair and even though I consider this to be the weakest instalment in the trilogy, I find that moments in this film have a quality that is superior to the other two. Some of the scenes from crack in the earth are tragic but the ending is where it hits home most.
6. The Adjustment Bureau – the most recent release on this list but it instantly become one of my favourites for a number of reasons. The dialogue and chemistry between the characters is strong as is the general plot of the film that personifies fate as a force that physically interferes with the lives of the characters. The haunting musical score also works strongly to the films advantage.
5. The Jacket  - It’s difficult to sum this film up but the cold, bleak and disconnected feel of the film has a beauty unto itself. It’s also pretty haunting and has an ethereal quality throughout. Included is the scene where the protagonist stands over his own grave as he struggles to find out how he died, all set with the haunting Sidottu soundtrack that plays throughout the film.
4. Sunshine – My least favourite film on this list but the ending sure is haunting. Firstly the main character stares face to face with a nuclear explosion (which is slowed down for dramatic effect) and then it cuts to earth where we see that the Earth’s climate has been suffering – evidenced by the snow on the ground around Sydney, Australia. All of this takes place with Underworld’s To Heal playing in the background. Perfectly executed.
3. Meet Joe Black – this film is generally weird throughout but the ending sure is touching. I’m not sure whether you’d have to watch the rest of the film or not to get the context. I imagine you probably would but the final scene really brings home what the film has been building up to.
2. Vanilla Sky – everyone I know hates this film and I really think it’s unjustified. Sure 90% of the film is kind of slow and doesn’t make much sense but then the film just thunders to quite a climatic and really existentially crazy finale which suddenly brings into context why the rest of the film doesn’t make sense. I always find the journey of awakening that this film presents at the end to be one of the best scenes in cinematic history. Everything about it works including the brilliant Nothing song by Icelandic artist Sigor Ros and subsequent life review that the character undergoes. A very clever piece of cinema.
1. Blade Runner – Had to do it but this film isn’t my all time favourite for no reason. The film is brilliantly atmospheric and haunting throughout, all the while offering a lot of philosophy and existentialism and a dark dystopian vision of the future. There were a few scenes from this film I could have presented such as Rutger Hauer’s Tears in Rain speech at the end but in the end I settled for Morning at the Bradbury which highlights Roy’s sense of despair and loneliness, all the while with the amazing Vangelis score playing in the background.

Above and Beyond

Hitchens dead at 62

Probably the greatest of all the new atheists.

Mass Effect 2 (2010)

Well I did promise my review of the worthy sequel to Mass Effect before long so here it is. What can I say about a game that is by many gamer’s standards one of the best computer games ever made. I suppose I could just agree and say well yep it pretty much is, this game is fucking awesome and like Mass Effect is one of the best computer games ever made. The same game engine was used though with significant updates which improve the quality of the graphics, improving the quality of the graphics over a game where they were already pretty much shit hot I might add. Once again Bioware hit the nail on the head with this one and it does in some ways feel like ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ of the Mass Effect saga. If the third instalment is to be ‘Return of the Jedi’ then hopefully it will round off this series of games with a suitably epic finale. I’m reserving judgment on that game and praying to the God I don’t believe in that they don’t fuck it up which seems from some of the chatter on the Internet to be a distinct possibility. But in comparing this instalment to ‘Empire’ I think I’m doing it justice because this game is much darker than the first. The main character dies at the beginning of the game only to be resurrected by the Nazis of the future and their xenophobic leader – the illusive man. Throughout the game, characters from the first instalment question your loyalties and motives whilst you serve the purposes of the sinister Cerberus organisation. But it seems no other organisation in the game will head Shepherd’s warnings leaving you with no other choice than to work for the bad guys. To this end you must assemble the meanest squad of assassins, convicts, lunatics, thieves and lowlifes the galaxy can muster and then attempt a suicide mission beyond a mass relay no one has before returned from.

So the only game I can really compare this one to is the first. Like the first, the graphics and score are amazing and add a deep overall atmosphere to the game. Combine this with the excellent scripting and voice acting which has 546 characters speaking 31,000 lines of dialogue or around 10,000 more than Mass Effect. You would expect a deeper and more complex plot than the first to unfold because of this, but paradoxically this doesn’t seem to be the case. This is probably my biggest gripe with the game – it doesn’t expand on the Mass Effect universe nearly as much as the first and this was a little disappointing. True we get to see things that were hinted at in the first game such as the war-torn Krogan homeworld and the Quarian Flotilla and these are things we really wanted to see but we are denied the deeply complex political intrigue of the first. I suspect that the third game is where this series will really shine because we’ll get to see all of the home worlds of the major races and this will in many ways complete the picture of the ME universe. This game did streamline the RPG mechanics considerably, in fact mostly to the point of just getting rid of them altogether. This does make the game easier to play but I think the cutbacks were a little excessive and some are likely to be reintroduced in the third. The main focus of the plot of this game is on the characters of the team you build and helping them all fix qualms in their lives before undertaking the suicide mission. Failure to complete their loyalty missions results in their deaths on the suicide mission, and failure to complete any of the the loyalty missions results in your own upon completing the game. This will probably make it a little weird in how your decisions are supposed to carry over to the third. Oh yes, forgot to mention that, all the decisions you make in the first game have an effect on the characters in this one. Some of the main decisions from the first have a serious effect on how aliens view humanity – such as whether you decided to save the council or not. Either way though the ruling council still wants nothing to do with you since you’re a member of Cerberus so it becomes obvious that the outcome of many decisions wont become obvious until the final chapter. And this is my ultimate gripe with this instalment, much of it felt unnecessary, you thwart a reaper plot but so what, they’ll be here en-masse in the third game, felt too much like a filler episode.

Ultimately though, these complaints are largely trivial. You still have a massive universe to explore and although the missions are linear, the order to approach them isn’t giving the game a hybrid sandbox feel. The vistas are impressive and for the most part superior to the excellent first. The same moral shades of grey in your decision making exists and the game is just as absorbing as its predecessor. Stars Martin Sheen, Carrie Anne-Moss, Tricia Helfer, Claudia Black and Adam Baldwin amongst others. An excellent and worthy sequel which I liked probably a little more than the first.

In Time (2011)

It’s with a heavy heart that I write to tell you that I’m reviewing the trailer for another film… and that it stars Justin Timberlake. Ok he’s not that bad really but the plot of the new film he’s in that’s set to be released this October possibly is.

Directed by Andrew Niccol of Gattaca fame, In Time depicts a future where everyone stops aging at 25 years old and will die one year later unless they are able to purchase more time. Time is the universal currency of this film and the more a person has, the longer they’ll live. When the title character (Justin Timberlake) inherits a massive amount of time from someone he soon finds himself on the run in an attempt to keep it. Or something along these lines anyway. It sounds very much to me like a twisted version of Logan’s run (which was decent to be fair).

Despite the concept of this film sounding a shade crap, I have faith that Niccol will do something interesting with it and faint hopes that it will be as good as Gattaca – very faint hopes I might add. With names like Olivia Wilde, Amanda Seyfried and Cillian Murphy it does have a chance. In truth I think it will end up feeling a bit more like Limitless than being a classic but no doubt it will be a good yarn anyway.

Old World Blues

Can’t believe this has been out six days and I didn’t even know. From all counts it is also the strongest expansion pack across both FO3 and FO:NV. Awesome. There is also one further DLC pack to come – Lonesome Road. And then years of no more Fallout. Epic fail. Still at least I’ve got FO3 for the PC now, maybe some heavy modding experiments to come.

Mass Effect (2007)

Well this caught me off guard. Having been goaded into going to PC world and having a conversation with someone I thought was American but in fact just had an American accent, I ended up buying this game being assured that it was the best science fiction RPG out there. I’d seen the cover for the game and various advertisements a million times but nothing about it ever particularly caught my eye. Anyway on the advice of two salesmen and a £5 price tag I decided to give it a shot and see what all the hullaballoo was about.

I honestly wasn’t expecting to like it at all but after the introduction cut scenes you end up on Eden Prime, a human colony recently invaded by a sentient race of robots known as the Geth. And from that moment, the vista and music tell you this game is going to be something else. The game really just throws you into the action and initially you have no clue as to the nature of the galaxy you’re in. A complex plot unfolds rapidly though and draws you in very quickly. As to the nature of the plot, I would have to describe it as more or less a space opera a la Babylon 5. In fact the parallels between Mass Effect and Babylon 5 are obvious even from the beginning – a galactic community of races who don’t necessarily get along with each other, complex human politics adding to the problem of galactic relations, the citadel vs the babylon stations, jumpgates vs mass relays, and the most obvious parallel – a first contact war between humans and the most powerful race in the galaxy – the Turians. In Babylon 5, it was the Minbari although in Mass Effect the war wasn’t as one sided and humans were begrudgingly given considerable recognition in the galactic arena after a very short amount of time because they inflicted more casualties upon the Turians than they suffered themselves in this war. This of course leads to resentment amongst the other races who view them as dangerous upstarts already seeking to control everything despite being newcomers. Ultimately though the game takes a turn for the dramatic even with the background of political intrigue as an unknown race known as the Reapers threaten to wipe out all life in the galaxy. Trying to convince the council that one of their own special forces agents is responsible is tricky but this level introduces the citadel which is essentially a giant space station built by an extinct ancient race known as the Protheans. As the game progresses, the fate of the galaxy would seem to rest firmly in your hands and the nature of the RPG allows you to make either renegade or paragon decisions which will ultimately carry over and affect the next two games.

As for the actual RPG mechanics, they’re not perfect and initially seem too complex to get to grips with – in fact it took several hours of gameplay before I fully understand exactly how they worked. Once understood they do however enrich gameplay. But where this game really shines is the graphics and score. The graphics are majestic on every level and planet and this is only further augmented by the haunting score that accompanies the game. Every aspect of it feels very finely crafted right down to the superb script and voice acting. I would even go so far as to say this was the best £5 I ever spent. The game weighed in at about 33 hours gameplay for me which is longer than I suspect it takes most people but I did select my class as vanguard allowing me to use biotic abilities – which feel as though they have limited usefulness. I wouldn’t quite say this was the best RPG I’ve ever played as incarnations of Fallout still beat it but in honesty, it’s damn close and I sincerely wish there were a few more games out there that set the quality bar this high. Of course upon completion, the fun didn’t stop because it took me less than 24 hours to buy the next instalment in the saga which I will review shortly.

And our survey says…

“Earth facing a mini-ice age!”

Is this the right answer? Our survey says…

So the media (shockingly) have been butchering science reporting in their usual manner. Let's see what the scientists actually said when compared to what the Daily Mail reported.

I like this guy!

Another 48 hours of my life about to disappear

Will post a review if it's any good.