Songbirds

When I were a lad, I lived on the outskirts of a small town outside Cardiff. Our little home backed onto a country lane which in turn led to what I think will have been the green belt. One of my favourite childhood memories (aside from that time me and 3 friends went along the tracks to find that dead body - or was that the film Stand by Me, I digress) was when my dad used to take me for walks. We had an old, coverless bird-spotting book and a scruffy pair of binoculars. I was captivated by the way my dad could identify any bird by silhouette and song. In hindsight, he was probably lying, but I've had a bit of a interest in ornithology since my childhood.

I don't tell this story often, partly out of embarrassment, and partly because nobody cares about my childhood. But this story leads me nicely onto the real subject of this article - the decline of our once thriving and diverse songbird population.

One if my first thoughts was that they are being outcompeted by magpies, crows and other birds of this ilk, coupled with the fact that these birds also raid nests and take hatchlings in a particularly evil double-whammy. This was in fact going to be the crux of this article until I did a bit of research and found out one thing: it's bollocks.

It turns out that the RSPB, in conjunction with the Britsh Trust for Ornithology has just (10th March 2011) published the results of a staggering 35 year study on the causes of the songbird decline in the UK. It looked at a number of factors, such as the predator-prey relationship, and found that there is NO evidence for believing this hypothesis (that magpies/crows et al are to blame), and perversely found a number of instances of a positive relationship between the predators and the prey (where the presence of the predator encourages population growth in the prey species). The study included a number of different predators, including "nest invaders" such as: Great Spotted Woodpecker, Magpie, Jay, Carrion Crow and Grey Squirrel. Link to the executive summmary of the article here.

So, that idea throughly debunked, I'll put forth my hypothesis: We are to blame. Humanity the Virus (see: The Matrix) has systematically destroyed the habitat, limited the food source and introduced some competing species into the eco-system. I am no Ecologist, but if we restrict a species' food supply, habitat and introduce new competitors for the same resources, then the songbirds are basically fucked. (profanity used for effect, rather than poor vocabulary)

It may have come to a point where songbirds are starting to circle the drain, and the longer I live, the more that I see the circles get a little bit faster and a little bit tighter. There may be no recovery unless sucessive governments decide to do something about this and either legislate against these restrictions (which they won't do), or curb the introduction of new species (which they can't do). One day, not far from now, I predict that these some of these songbirds will become one of the 16 species to become extinct that day. It will be all our fault, and we can't blame magpies.

Chernobyl - 25 years on

Today Humanity reached a very black milestone. It has been a quarter of a century since the partial meltdown in the number 4 reactor in Chernobyl, and I cannot believe that in these 25 years we appear to have come no further to making this supposedly safe technology actually safe.

25 years later, there are still thousands of cases of cancer/leukaemia that are COMPLETELY attributable to this disaster. There are STILL restrictions in the movement of livestock as far away from Chernobyl as the UK.

There has only been one comparable nuclear incident in these 25 years, and it was only a few months ago. The incident at the Fukishima power plant in Japan should have heightened calls for nuclear safety, or at least the investment in sustainable technologies.

Here in the UK, investments are being made in Wind Farms, Water Turbines, Solar Panels, and all the naysayers can say is "but I don't see them working therefore they are not working"

For these renewable energy projects to be seen as viable, they must make economic sense - therefore the periods when they run would be at times when the power to run them is cheaper. So, they use power when it's cheaper to run them and make money. It turns the concept on its head, and is a little like the tail wagging the dog, but once the capital for these projects has been repaid, these important pieces of technology can start to make a difference when they are needed, rather than when it is economically possible for them to run.

There is a project very close to Sheffield, which is looking at installing a variation of an archimedes screw to generate power through hydroelectric means, an ingenious and animal safe method. This was explained to me in some detail over the weekend, and it appears there is very little funding available for projects of this scope. So, lets all band together and save this planet, one screw at a time!

Alternative Energy?

The IMDB Top 250 Challenge

Been talking about starting this for a while. And well… I’ve decided… It is time. That challenge being to watch every film on the IMDB top 250 although to save time I only intend to watch the films I haven’t already seen. People balk about the usefulness of the list sure. More recent films are grossly overrated. Films over 10 years old though I would argue deserve to be there since the hype surrounding them has long since faded and their ratings likely reflect a majority consensus as to their overall quality.

But regardless I intend to watch every film on this list and find out if there are any surprises. So starting with the top 10, here are the ones I’ve seen already.

No	Film	Seen?
1	The Shawshank Redemption (1994)	Y
2	The Godfather (1972)	Y
3	The Godfather: Part 2 (1974)	N
4	The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)	N
5	Pulp Fiction (1994)	Y
6	Schindler's List (1993)	Y
7	12 Angry Men (1957)	Y
8	Inception (2010)	Y
9	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)	Y
10	The Dark Knight (2008)	Y

So the only two I’ve not seen out of the top 10 so far are The Godfather Part 2 and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I think both are going to require patience since I’ve tried watching them before and neither particularly held my interest. Inception and The Dark Knight whilst good films I really don’t think deserve to be rated this highly. The Shawshank Redemption at number 1? I agree it probably should be. The biggest surprise for me on this list was 12 Angry Men – a film I expected to hate but totally loved. The film I’m a little fuzzy on – One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest – haven’t seen it for years and can barely remember what it’s about but I remember being blown away by it. Perhaps I should give it another watch sometime. If a film on this list really blows me away I’ll write a review otherwise I really can’t be arsed kind of thing. Next up: 11 –20. 

Cargo (2009)

I've been trawling the Internet for more sci-fi films lately since I've cannibalised pretty much every single sci-fi film in the English language worth watching. Now the only thing left is to turn my attention to world cinema and see if there is anything out there that's equally as brilliant as some of the best.

So the latest film I've watched is called Cargo - probably the only science fiction film Switzerland have ever made. The film is in German with subs and the subtitles were such a bad translation of what was actually being said that it left me thinking I could have probably done a better job. That and the English translation of the sentences didn't actually make sense at some points in the film. Still this was mostly forgivable because I still got the gist of what was going on even if I had to fill in some of the blanks myself.

This film is pretty visionary in its own right and considering it was made on a miniscule budget the special effects hold up reasonably well. Certainly they're leaps and bounds better than Babylon 5 although in honesty that's not a terribly difficult feat to accomplish. But if a story is well told often even dated  special effects can be overlooked. I do however fall into a school of thought that thinks 2001: A Space Odyssey is distracting because the SFX have dated so much. Perhaps I'm in a minority there. I loved the book but not the film so much really.

So it's a bit difficult to really compare this film to any others since the storyline is mostly original. It steals ideas from other space operas such as Alien and Event Horizon but doesn't end up becoming a stupid horror film, more one of a gritty drama set in deep space. It's difficult to say what this film is actually about as well without giving away crucial plot points. Sufficed to say the story revolves around a future where Earth has been rendered uninhabitable due to several unspecified ecological calamities and what remains of humanity is packed onto cramped space stations. Another world has been discovered - Rhea and the inhabitants of those stations relish the opportunity to settle on this world - a trip that takes years and enormous expense. This is really what the story is about, a cargo ship transporting goods to a deep space station and a doctor attempting to save up the money required to go. The staff man the ship in 8 months shifts alone and film attempts to capture the loneliness and ensuing paranoia as well as things that haven't even really been considered in sci-fi such as how cold the ships would get in deep space. Predictably though as the doctor is nearing the end of her shift it turns out she's not alone and must wake the others to find out who else is there and for what purpose. The film sort of builds to a twist which is the main plot of the film and to say too much would give it away. It kind of becomes very obvious what's really going on long before it's said on screen but it still makes for a damn fine film and a social commentary on corporate malfeasance.

There are some fairly major plot holes in this film and sometimes the actions of the characters make little sense in light of what's going on but the film mostly glosses over these with a backdrop that is artistically beautiful. Not the best sci-fi I've seen but certainly not disappointing. IMDB Rating 6.2/10

The Fossil Record...

I was reading a blog which belongs to a friend of mine yesterday (link) that refers to the volcanic island of Surtsey off the coast of Iceland, and that fossils have been found there. This island was created as a result of volcanic eruptions between 1963 and 1967, so logically thinking these fossils cannot be more than 50 years old!

I was intrigued when I read this and decided to learn more. It turns out that fossils were present on the seabed when the initial eruption occurred; chunks of rocks (called xenoliths) containing some of these fossils were "shaken" loose, carried up with the lava flow and deposited onto the still forming island. Go figure!

My friend's article yesterday went onto criticise the concept of radiometric dating. It seemed almost a throwaway comment, but again, got me thinking - are radiometric decay rates constant?

The truth is, I don't know. I'm not 4.6 billion years old and wasn't there during the big bang. What I do know can be inferred from evidence. For example:

Supernovae are known to produce a large quantity of radioactive isotopes (Nomoto et al. 1997a, 1997b; Thielemann et al. 1998). These isotopes produce gamma rays with frequencies and fading rates that are predictable according to present decay rates. These predictions hold for supernova SN1987A, which is 169,000 light-years away (Knödlseder 2000). Therefore, radioactive decay rates were not significantly different 169,000 years ago. Present decay rates are likewise consistent with observations of the gamma rays and fading rates of supernova SN1991T, which is sixty million light-years away (Prantzos 1999), and with fading rate observations of supernovae billions of light-years away (Perlmutter et al. 1998). link to source here

So, based on this (and other) evidence, it would seem that radiometric decay rates have not changed significantly over the last 169,000 years. So we have there proof of an old universe, rather than the 6000 odd years proposed by some Young Earth Creationists.

There is one model for radiometric dating which is consistent with Young Earth Creationism, that of Helium Diffusion (link), and from what brief research I have been able to conduct, this technique has been extensively debunked (link). Again, having read all this today, there are some holes in Radiometric dating, but it is the best method we've got. For less old samples, we've got Dendrochronology (tree-ring dating), and there exists a complete record for the last 11,000 years, with another set of data for the last 26,000 years. (link).

So, all in all, even if any type of radiometric dating is bogus, it doesn't really matter. Tree-ring dating and ice core sampling are used for a plethora of different purposes and their practical purpose is hinged on the fact that they are reliable for periods older than the last few thousand years.

Also let us not forget that these highly flawed and untestable techniques (Potassium-Argon, Uranium-Lead, Samarium-Neodymium, Rubidium-Strontium, Argon-Argon, Iodine-Xenon, Lead-Lead) cross confirm each other and arrive at the same dates for objects. Weird how they do that when they're so flawed.

Limitless (2011)

Got chance to watch this decidedly average Sci-Fi film the other day. Thoughts? Well it's decent and I enjoyed it a lot more than Battle: Los Angeles. The premise is also pretty clever - that premise being about a man stumbling across a drug that makes him feel smart and invulnerable (er wait... don't all drugs make you feel like that?). But in the case of this drug - NZT it actually does give him these qualities and consequently he makes the transformation from lowly writer to stock market tycoon in less than a couple of weeks. Naturally though the story isn't a simple as that because this drug has some serious side effects - like complete amnesia, psychosis, oh and it kills you if you stop taking it - a couple of dilemmas that the protagonist faces during the course of this movie. Ultimately the man - Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) manages to overcome these obstacles and we are left with a movie that is arguably pro drugs and was quite possibly funded by the pharmaceutical industry looking to sell more nootropics such as Piracetam and Adderall. But NZT, hell if I had some I'd conquer the world and you pathetic minions would have to bow before me. Time to get in touch with my dealer. The second best film I’ve seen at the cinema this year. Stars Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Tomas Arana and Anna Friel. 7.5/10.

Comfort Vs The Atheist Experience

This would seem to be an interesting debate since whichever side you lean towards seems to think their side won the debate. I really can’t see how anyone in their right mind could consider this debate to have been a victory for Comfort though, Christians really need to put forward some better apologists than this.

Viva la Revolution?

The Onion

Brilliant site, can’t believe I haven’t spent more time on here.

CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs

Visit: http://www.theonion.com

Nuclear Industry Propaganda

Whilst the cluster-fuk(ushima) continues, the nuclear industry demonstrates once more that the thing that melts down worst when it comes to nuclear accidents is the truth. The governing body of the nuclear industry – the IAEA is subject to regulatory capture i.e. the body designed to provide oversight is more or less run by the industry that it is designed to be objective about. This leads to problems when it comes to truth so the table below offers a translation between what they say and what they actually mean.

What they say	What they mean
Not Serious	Serious
Serious	Catastrophic
Catastrophic	End of the world
4000 deaths	1 million deaths
No long term consequences	Multiple long term consequences
Not proven to have long term effects	We don't know
Never been proven to have long term effects	We still don't know
Excess Moisture	Radioactive water leaking at the rate of 1 gallon per minute
Stay Indoors	Air not safe to breathe
Evacuation Zone	You won't be able to live here again
Voluntary Evacuation	We strongly recommend you run away
Leak	Plenty of toxic shit in the environment
Explosion	This isn't really supposed to happen
Fire	Neither is this
Partial Meltdown	Meltdown
Fuel Rods overheating	Meltdown
Containment Vessel Intact	Cracked and Leaking
Reactor Core Damaged	We may have to bury it
We're going to flood it with seawater	What the hell else are we going to do?
We're going to drop water on it from helicopters	We really don't have a clue what to do
Elevated levels of radiation	These guys will get cancer
Radiation Exposure	Acute Radiation Sickness
This will never happen again	Until the next time it does
Cheapest source of energy	Minimum $250 billion dollar clean-up bill if we have a bad accident
Most environmentally friendly source of energy	After every other source of energy
No long term effects on Belarus	Pretty much destroyed their entire country
Cancer rates amongst liquidators only went up a few percent	They're aren't many of them left alive
Chernobyl wasn't as bad as people imagine	Less than 20% of children born healthy in Ukraine and Belarus
Some places have high background radiation	Having iodine-131 accumulate in your thyroid must therefore be a good thing
International Nuclear Event Scale	We needed a scale to determine how expensive accidents were going to be
New reactors are safe	We don't know yet how these could go wrong
No statistical increase in cancer rates	We can probably cover this up
The radiation they’re being exposed to is only the equivalent of one X-Ray or CT scan	We don't need to mention that you have a choice about being exposed to an X-Ray or CT Scan and that they do cause cancer
The bombs at Hiroshima / Nagasaki didn't cause any harmful genetic effects	They did but we're going to lie about it anyway
Nuclear power doesn't kill as many people as coal / oil etc.	It kills a lot more people, it just does it more slowly and they can't definitely say it was us
You can trust us	Definitely don't do that for fuck's sake

The Films of Christopher Nolan

Figured it was high time I wrote an article about this guy since he has to date achieved something that no other Hollywood director has ever achieved – that achievement being never having made a single bad film. So far. And that in itself is pretty impressive because all good directors seem to have a misfire at some point. Whenever a director like this comes along they earn themselves a fairly large fan base, and also a large following of people who hate them just to stand out from the crowd. The Nolan hating crowd will revile me for being a Nolan fanboy but I honestly think his films are spectacular and as I’ve said before appreciation of art is an individual quality. Rarely is it that a director can tell a story in such a way that it captivates and fascinates an audience especially when the story is something as mundane as Batman. In this case most people would agree that Nolan’s films are as good as I say. So here are his films from start to finish, there aren’t many but they’re all noteworthy.

Following (1998)

This was one of the last Nolan films I got round to watching before the release of Inception. I wasn’t expecting much from it because the movie was made on a budget of $6000 so why would I? The only other half decent film I can think of that was made on a comparable budget is Primer and the cinematography of that film wasn’t great at all. I was wrong. Not only is the film very watchable but it’s also very gripping and puts most $100 million dollar movies to shame. The film basically follows a young writer – Bill who follows people through the streets of London out of curiosity, to see who they are, what they do and where they go. Then one day a man he’s following turns the tables on him and asks why. The man – Cobb turns out to be a professional burglar and invites Bill to come with him as he burgles people’s homes. The plot gets considerably more complex though as Cobb has an ulterior motive and use for Bill that the young writer is unaware of. The psychology, manipulation and sharp dialogue make this. The film like all of Nolan’s uses sharp cuts from scene to scene and doesn’t tell the story in chronological order meaning the viewer has to concentrate on what’s going on and piece the puzzle together themselves. Ultimately the film ties up very well and builds to a spectacular ending. For its budget, this is truly a masterpiece. IMDB Rating: 7.7

Memento (2000)

Studio bosses must have loved following because they gave Nolan much more money to play with his next film as well as a few big name stars (Carrie-Anne Moss, Guy Pearce, Joe Pantoliano). On a $1 million budget, Nolan directed what is arguably one of the best and most artistic films in the history of cinema. The film centres on amnesiac Leonard (Guy Pearce) who suffers from a rare memory condition which prevents him from forming new memories. The last thing he does remember is the murder of his wife and throughout the film seeks justice and vengeance for that act regardless of the fact that even if he achieves his goal he will be unable to remember it. He does this through a system of notes, tattoos and mementos that let him know how his investigation is progressing. The film proceeds as a good old fashioned film noir-type mystery thriller that builds to an intriguing and ingeniously tragic ending (which is actually the beginning). But it’s still more than this, this film isn’t the average popcorn flick – the viewer has to pay close attention to clues and complex plot otherwise it’s doubtful they will understand the film at all. The viewer is cleverly placed in identical shoes to Leonard as the whole film is presented chronologically backward i.e. it starts at the end and works its way back to the beginning so the viewer has no more clue as to what’s actually going on than the protagonist the film is about. So for the movie goer who expects big bangs and stupid dialogue, look elsewhere because this film isn’t for you. For the movie goer who is open-minded and likes to exercise the old grey matter a little – this film is definitely for you. Add to this the solid performances of the actors, the haunting soundtrack and the at times profound dialogue, it’s not difficult to see why this film is so great. Nolan’s best. IMDB Rating: 8.7 (Top 250: 29)

Insomnia (2002)

Ok so this was Nolan's weakest film by far but in no way could it ever be considered a bad one. Essentially this film is a psychological crime thriller set in eternal daylight near the arctic circle. It stars Al Pacino as Dormer, a detective brought in from Los Angeles to help solve the murder of a high school student in rural Alaska. During the course of the investigation he becomes disoriented in the fog and accidentally shoots and kills his long time partner. After this fact it is revealed that Dormer is being investigated by Internal Affairs back home for corruption and that his partner was planning to fully cooperate with the authorities. So Dormer finds himself attempting to cover his tracks whilst the murderer he is seeking has witnessed the crime and his now attempting to blackmail him. As the film progresses Dormer finds himself being driven gradually insane by the lack of nightfall and sleep, delirium and hallucination soon start making it difficult for him to distinguish fantasy from reality, fact from fiction and most importantly morality from immorality. The feel of the film is one of tense disquiet and is set amidst the backdrop of a beautifully gloomy arctic wilderness. Stars Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank. A great film. IMDB Rating: 7.2

Batman Begins (2005)

I’ve never been a massive fan of films based on comic books. I mean I tend to enjoy them but they’re never especially good films, at least they weren’t until this one. By the time Nolan got round to doing this one, the studios must have thought the sun shined out of his arse because they gave him more big names in the cast list than you can shake a stick at (Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Rutger Hauer, Ken Watanabe). After the original Tim Burton Batman films I really wasn’t expecting much other than a good yarn but somehow this film was just in a league of its own. Somehow the very two dimensional character of Batman is given considerable depth and even real life plausibility. Everyone knows the story of Batman – the caped crusader but not like this they don’t. This film explains the rise of Batman, the motivations and psychological scarring that led Bruce Wain to become Batman. It explains the training and mastery of ancient martial arts that allow him to become seemingly invincible. Of course it’s not all dialogue and plot though the plot is interesting, it’s a great action film as well. The visual effects throughout the film are very impressive especially the hallucinogen scenes which are very well done. The pace is perfect as well, it starts out relatively slowly but builds to a thunderous action packed climax. It’s about as perfect as a film based on a comic book can be or so you’d think. Nolan followed this up with the Dark Knight which was better still. IMDB Rating: 8.3 (Top 250: 113)

The Prestige (2005)

The Prestige was another film of Nolan's that really hit the bullseye. Set in Victorian era England, the film depicts the rivalry between two competing magicians whose lives gradually become consumed by their hatred for one another, so much so that it eventually destroys everything that either one cares about. In typical Nolan fashion, the film is told chronologically out of sequence and jumps about in time and place but as usual it works perfectly in creating the appropriate level of suspense and intrigue. It's hard to classify this film as any particular genre as it seems to straggle the line between mystery, fantasy, drama and sci-fi - yes sci-fi.  It could be said without a doubt that Nolan has a proclivity for warped narratives and this film is no exception as it twists and turns in every direction ultimately building to a very unexpected ending (unless you have an exception eye for detail). It features an ensemble cast and stars Michael Caine, Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson amongst others. It even stars David Bowie as Nikola Tesla – the ‘real life wizard’ as the film puts it. My biggest gripe with this one - there would seem to be rather a large plot hole in this film [Spoilers] – When Hugh Jackman gets hold of the copying machine, why the hell doesn’t he just use it once and then do the trick the same way as Borden rather than killing himself every time he does the trick. Er… whatever it was a good film anyway. IMDB Rating 8.4 (Top 250: 73)

The Dark Knight (2008)

This was pretty much the most hyped movie of the year so naturally I wasn’t even remotely interested in watching it. Until it came out that is. The reviews from the critics were resoundingly positive and indicated that this was one of the rare occasions in movie history when a film actually lived up to and even surpassed the hype. Hollywood blockbusters aren’t generally supposed to make you think, they’re supposed to be straight forward action movies without plot or depth. The Dark Knight differs in this respect because whilst it could be considered a straight forward action movie, it also has plot and depth. The film continually twists and turns in every direction presenting moral and ethical dilemmas all over the place which Batman as the icon of justice in Gotham is constantly unsure of how to deal with. The film also introduces Batman’s nemesis – the Joker played by Heath Ledger. But Ledger’s Joker is a far cry from Nicholson’s Joker in the decidedly average Burton vision of Batman. Ledger’s Joker is arguably one of the most sinister and evil movie villains of all time. He’s corrupt, insane, psychotic, terrifying and down right psychologically disturbing. And this is really what you want from a movie villain where it’s a black and white, good vs evil sort of story. The Joker’s character in this film is absolute, no backstory, no reason, no rhyme, he’s just evil for the sake of it or as Michael Caine puts it in the film “Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” Once the film kicks off, it’s pretty much action and drama for two hours straight, not one scene feels superfluous and the film never feels slow. Lends itself well to repeat watchability. Stars Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Nestor Carbonell and Eric Roberts. IMDB Rating 8.9 (Top 250: 10)

Inception (2010)

I would have to say that this film was the best film released during 2010. It wasn’t the best one I watched last year as I’d been scouring the IMDB Top 250 for new greats – 12 Angry Men and It’s a Wonderful Life spring to mind but it was the best film released. And by a country mile. After a string of box office hits Nolan was awarded the most coveted prize a Hollywood director can attain – the do what the hell you like cheque. With that cheque Nolan crafted yet another triumph of cinema. The film has all the ingredients of an amazing summer blockbuster. It’s fairly cerebral – much more so that your average blockbuster, layered with complexity, for at least an hour of the film there are four different storylines taking place simultaneously (although not in a way that is confusing) and finally the film just oozes tension. The combination of Hans Zimmer’s impressive score and the constant action sequences for the last hour of the film just ratchets the tension up to boiling point and keeps you there on the edge of your seat until the end of the movie. So what is this blockbuster actually about? Dreams and the nature of reality. The protagonist is Dom Cobb, a man exiled from his home country for a crime he didn’t commit. Condemned to wander the world he works as an extractor – a type of corporate saboteur whose job it is to enter people’s minds and steal ideas from their dreams whilst they’re asleep. But then the head of a powerful corporation offers him a way home if instead of stealing an idea, he can plant one – something much harder to do as the subject can ‘always trace the genesis of an idea’. To give away any more of the plot would spoil the film although in fairness the plot is complex and fairly open ended. People will debate for a long time some of the finer details of this film especially the ending which had the entire audience gasp in bemusement. It is difficult to really classify this film. It feels like a mishmash of a few different films. The easiest way to describe it would be a cross between the Matrix and the Bourne Identity although it seems to bear similarity to a few other films I’ve seen such as the Thirteenth Floor and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The film even borrows some of the ambiguity of Memento as well as introducing the main character as a tortured soul who at the end arguably chooses to believe a lie so they can find their own happiness. Inception is one of the finer films to have been released in the last few years and deserves to be watched by anyone who loves an action blockbuster which keeps you thinking afterwards. Stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Marion Cotillard and Michael Caine. IMDB Rating 8.9 (Top 250: 8)

Nuclear Reactors Completely Safe Unless Something Bad Happens

WASHINGTON—Responding to the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sought Thursday to reassure nervous Americans that U.S. reactors were 100 percent safe and posed absolutely no threat to the public health as long as no unforeseeable system failure or sudden accident were to occur. "With the advanced safeguards we have in place, the nuclear facilities in this country could never, ever become a danger like those in Japan, unless our generators malfunctioned in an unexpected yet catastrophic manner, causing the fuel rods to melt down," said NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko, insisting that nuclear power remained a clean, harmless energy source that could only lead to disaster if events were to unfold in the exact same way they did in Japan, or in a number of other terrifying and totally plausible scenarios that have taken place since the 1950s. "When you consider all of our backup cooling processes, containment vessels, and contingency plans, you realize that, barring the fact that all of those safety measures could be wiped away in an instant by a natural disaster or electrical error, our reactors are indestructible." Jaczko added that U.S. nuclear power plants were also completely guarded against any and all terrorist attacks, except those no one could have predicted.

Source: http://www.theonion.com/articles/nuclear-energy-advocates-insist-us-reactors-comple,19740/

Are white people racially oppressed?

What’s in Spock’s Scanner?

It’s confirmed. I spend way too much time on YouTube.

March iPod Playlist

DJ Tiesto - Beautiful things

The Sun's Gone Dim and The Sky's Black - Johann Johannsson

DJ Sammy - L'bby Haba

The language is Tigrinya, a Semitic language related to Arabic, Hebrew, and Amharic, spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrea.

L'bby haba (Open your heart)
Yefkee'reka (I love you)
L'bby haba l'bby haba (Open your heart)
Yefkee'reka (I love you)
Hailee l'bby (The power of the heart)
selam haba (Gives you peace)
L'bby haba (Open your heart)
Fekree alo (There is love)
Hailee l'bby (The power of the heart)
Selam haba (Gives you peace)

Anna Nalick Breathe (2 A.M.)(Blake Jarrell Remix)

Haris C Feat Anthya - Tonight (Original Mix)

John O' Callaghan feat. Lo-Fi Sugar - Never Fade Away (Album Version)

Suncatcher - Good Morning (Original Mix)

Robert Nickson - Maybe Next Time (Original Mix)

Battle: Los Angeles (2011)

I got chance to watch this special effects bonanza a couple of days ago. There’s no plot really, the film is essentially a Saving Private Ryan-esque take on the alien invasion movie. From start to finish the film follows a group of marines attempting to battle their way out of Los Angeles under the direction of Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart), a man who they don’t entirely trust because he got some of his men killed during the Iraq conflict although as the film progresses he predictably wins their confidence. It’s more violent than Starship Troopers and has a plot less interesting than Lost in Translation which is quite an accomplishment on both fronts. It isn’t a good film particularly but as popcorn flicks go I suppose it’s an enjoyable yarn. Basically it was just an excuse to blow the shit out of Los Angeles and echoes other alien invasion films such as District 9 and Independence Day in this respect (although in no way was it as good as either). Since this is the second alien invasion movie released in the last year I suspect it will also be twinned with Skyline although I’ve yet to see that film so can’t say for certain how similar they are. If you get chance give it a watch but you won’t be missing much if you never see it. Stars Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez and Bridget Moynahan.

Alternative Nuclear Energy

In my last article I expressed doubts over the viability of nuclear energy to provide a stop gap measure in securing us a future with safe energy. Maybe I was too hasty. Nuclear technology exists which does provide a viable and 'safe' alternative. I use the word safe cautiously here because make no mistake this shit will still melt your skin off and cause you to puke and shit yourself to death if you come in contact with it. But this is the case with nuclear energy anyway. The main difference with the alternative source of nuclear energy - Molten Salt Reactors is that they're unlikely to explode and ejaculate copious amounts of toxic shit into the atmosphere. And this would seem to be kind of an important advantage.

Molten Salt Reactors rely on a different principle to modern nuclear reactors in that the fuel's already molten so that in itself precludes the possibility of a meltdown. But they have another advantage - they don't have to use transuranic elements such as Uranium or Plutonium for fuel. MSRs can use Thorium as part of their fuel cycle and the advantage of using this is it doesn't spontaneously fission - it needs a catalyst. So when you switch the damn thing off you don't need to wait several months for it to actually be off, it's off. The fail-safe mechanism in these reactors is one that doesn't need to be controlled by humans. If the reactor gets too hot, a plug in the base of the core melts and the molten fuel leaves the containment vessel and drops into a holding area. Once the molten fuel is separated from the catalyst - fission ceases. Essentially the reactors save themselves. These reactors also operate at normal atmospheric pressure which eliminates the possibility of a pressure explosion such as at Chernobyl or very nearly at Fukushima.

Add to this other advantages such as the fact these reactors can be used to burn up long lived radioactive waste and in themselves produce dramatically less radioactive waste (between 10 - 10,000 times less). The fact that Thorium is cheaper and far more abundant than Uranium then it would really seem to be a no brainer to use these instead. Unfortunately the technology isn't quite ready for practical application. The reason this technology wasn't developed in the first place is because it didn't provide us with an easy way to kill several hundred million people in the space of a few hours which is obviously a capability which we as a species simply couldn't live without. Traditional reactor design led the way because as a by-product it enabled the development of nuclear weapons. Using a Thorium fuel cycle makes it difficult to develop nuclear weapons because as well as them not being produced in sufficient quantities, it's difficult to chemically separate the generated isotopes of Uranium. It's still possible of course but wouldn't be an economically sound way of building an atom bomb. There are also good technical reasons why U-233 has never been used in atom bombs. And Plutonium production – forget it.

So maybe if the nuclear industry really wants a renaissance, they should follow China’s lead in developing this technology. Perhaps people would be more amenable to having an energy source that doesn’t cause total pandemonium when it goes wrong. It won’t be astronomically expensive to develop either. Just a thought. 

Henryk Górecki - Symphony No. 3, Op. 36

The Death of a Nuclear Future?

We were once promised faithfully that it would never happen again yet for some reason, quarter of a century later here we are up the same creek without a paddle. What events do I refer to? Chernobyl of course and its new baby brother – Fukushima Dai-ichi.

The facts coming out of Japan have so far been scarce from the initial denial of any kind of meltdown to the gradual admission of a partial meltdown to the admission of a partial meltdown in three reactors, to the admission they have no ability to cool the fuel whatsoever. This much was already obvious long before they admitted it for several reasons - the detection of radiometric caesium and iodine in the atmosphere indicated that radioactive material had escaped the containment vessel. The explosions were also a dead give away - the presence of hydrogen alone indicated that the zirconium casing around the fuel rods had begun to melt because they had to be hot enough to strip oxygen atoms from the steam inside the reactor through dissociation. This is what caused the hydrogen build-up in the upper part of the reactor building leading to the subsequent explosions. Initially TEPCO chose to lie about these things, either that or worse – they didn’t have a clue. One thing is so far certain – we aren’t being told the whole story. And as with all nuclear accidents it will likely take an age before we finally know the truth.

The media have in recent days been criticized for showing ‘disproportionate coverage’ of the disaster unfolding at Fukushima Dai-ichi. Especially amidst the backdrop of a humanitarian tragedy that totally eclipses it in scale. I disagree with that consensus. People across the world have been deeply worried that this could be a repeat of Chernobyl and the world in general has been spooked by the very thought of the prospect. Indeed in recent days its ghost has come back to haunt us once more. The Chernobyl disaster was ultimately a hundred times worse than the recent Earthquake in Japan. It wasn’t just a disaster either, it was a nightmare. Let's be fair about this as well - nightmare isn't even a strong enough word to describe that event. For as long as the human race exists, people will continue to pay the price for that disaster and even after we’re long gone – nature will continue to pay that price in our absence. Even though Chernobyl can only be directly connected to the deaths of 31 people due to the initial criticality event, the consequences were catastrophic. Vast tracts of land across the Ukraine and Belarus were rendered uninhabitable. Hundreds of thousands of people had to be forcibly relocated. Cities across the Ukraine and Belarus were reduced to ghost towns. Radioactive fallout contaminated land across most of Europe and the northern hemisphere. But it continues to get worse. Of the 800,000 liquidators sent into to clean up the disaster, around 100,000 are now dead with another 100,000 permanently disabled. The fallout has been responsible for innumerable health problems in the affected populations and not just from cancers, from intestinal problems, circulation problems, respiratory problems, endocrine problems and autoimmune diseases. Many of the people suffering will ultimately die from exposure to the fallout, numbers now estimated to be over a million people since 1986. The economic cost of the disaster alone is in the realm of at least several hundred billion dollars. Then we have the the massive number of birth defects and stillborn children. The deep psychological scarring of its victims. The 200,000 women forced to have abortions. The farmland deemed unfit to grow produce. The mass slaughter of irradiated livestock. The pollution of the water table in affected areas. The list just goes on and on and on. The accident at Chernobyl didn’t just kill people, it destroyed their souls.

So 25 years later had we really learned anything. It turns out not. The entire world was gearing up for a nuclear renaissance, the horrors of Chernobyl having faded sufficiently from the public consciousness. With the threat of global warming, our dependence on middle-eastern oil imports, safe nuclear power was supposed to be our salvation and now the dream lies in ruins. Governments were convinced that nuclear energy was somehow now safer than it had been in that much simpler time only a generation ago. Then all of a sudden events in Japan threw a massive spanner into the works. Now granted it was on the part of the Japanese an act of extreme stupidity to not only build one of these reactors on seismically active ground but also near a stretch of coastline guaranteed to be hit by tsunamis. Their hubris and faith in technology has bitten them hard. But it was a faith shared by the rest of the world. We have been repeatedly assured by our governments over the years that it could never happen again, that reactor design in the west is much safer, that meltdowns cannot happen now. That is correct apparently, until they do. So now the pro-nuclear lobby has naturally got to change its tune a little and point out that in Britain we’re not on a fault line. That’s correct so therefore it’s safe, I mean it’s not like there are any other threats to our country that would see a nuclear reactor as being a good target now is it? Not like terrorism for instance.

One of the reasons this accident has the world on edge is because it is so reminiscent of Chernobyl. The parallels are obvious. Granted I doubt the radiological release from the plant will be anything close but the rest of it has the same modus operandi. The evacuations, the radiation warnings, the exclusion zone, the explosions, the fires, the panic, even the pictures of the damaged reactor buildings look the same. The initial surge in radiation was detected hundreds of miles away from the Fukushima site, similarly the first clue that the Soviet Union had a serious nuclear problem came from Sweden. After the Chernobyl accident, the Soviet authorities went into a state of denial. Currently the Japanese authorities are in a state of denial. Initially the Soviet government lied about the seriousness of the Chernobyl incident, the Japanese authorities are currently lying about the seriousness of the Fukushima incident. I think I may be doing the Japanese a disservice here though, they are dealing with the problem a hundred times better than the Soviet Union dealt with Chernobyl. The Japanese at least admitted they had a serious problem and began evacuating straight away unlike the Soviets who tried at first to make-believe that nothing was wrong. That’s not to pour scorn on the bravery of the Soviets who originally dealt with Chernobyl, each one of them tried to rectify the situation knowing with absolute certainty they were going to die. In the same vain and before the eyes of the world the faceless Fukushima 50 has been used to personify the disaster in Japan – giving us a real life fairy-tale to believe in as they embark on a suicide mission to fight their own nuclear nightmare against insurmountable odds. That sounds sickeningly pretentious but I like it, it’s poetic. These men took on the mission to cool the reactors knowing full well it could mean their lives and in doing so they have won the admiration of the world.

Ultimately the problem with nuclear energy is it's a lethally toxic technology. It wasn’t developed as a technology of peace, it was developed as a weapon of war that has since been adapted for peaceful purposes. In so doing so we created our own metaphorical Frankenstein and when this stuff goes wrong it goes very badly wrong – people will pay the price… forever. We’re kind of like children playing with fire and every now again we will get burnt. In order for us to fully utilise this technology we should really need to be assured that it's 100% safe but as the events at Fukushima illustrate, no matter how many safety measures, false assurances and propaganda we are given, there is no such thing. Pro-nuclear activists will nevertheless continue to insist this technology is safe. Let me give them a clue, it isn't and it never will be. The spin they’ve tried to put on this event has been interesting – spin like ‘things are under control’ and ‘the radiation is not a threat’. The problem I have here is do they seriously believe that anyone will ever believe that explosions and fires anywhere near the vicinity of a nuclear reactor is an acceptable state of affairs? The question as to whether this technology is safe has already been answered, it was answered at Windscale, it was answered at Three Mile Island, it was answered at Chernobyl and now it has been answered at Fukushima. But this isn’t the question that really needs to be asked is it? Because surely by now we know the answer. The question here isn't a question of whether we should use nuclear energy as it is a question of whether it's worth the price we could potentially pay. Without nuclear we can likely kiss goodbye to the electronic utopia we've built for ourselves because there simply isn’t another alternative. Our technological civilisation is built on a thirst for energy that can’t be quenched any other way. Renewable energy will never cover the void and oil as well as not lasting forever comes mainly from countries we simply cannot trust. The latter comes with massive environmental problems of its own. People could I suppose sacrifice the luxuries but no government on Earth is going to make that call and I can’t see the world turning back to candlelight somehow so regardless of the political fallout from Fukushima, nuclear is here to stay. As an added bonus we’ll get plenty of reassurance from governments that they’ve run numerous tests on our reactors and that nothing can possibly go wrong with them. Which is obviously quite comforting until you realise that man made disasters don’t occur because of what we thought of, they occur mainly because of what we didn’t think of. If we get away with one calamity every twenty years which seems to be the going rate, we may only be due two more before more practical power sources are developed. As to where and when those calamities strike we leave that to chance.

This incident has at the very least highlighted the desperate need for openness, honesty and transparency in the wake of a nuclear accident. The public need to know exactly where they stand so they can make informed decisions. This obviously can’t happen if a private company is trying to protect its own financial interests. Perhaps the IAEA will reach some sort of agreement about this in the coming months. If the nuclear beast is here to stay, we deserve the right to know when we’ve got to run away from it. My own preference would be this... invest heavily in nuclear fusion. No matter how expensive it is, ultimately it buys us an alternative. Convincing people that it’s safe is going to be tricky given how tarnished the word nuclear has become but sooner or later we really need to crack this problem because a safe sustainable future depends on it. For the size of the economic hit the world would have to take if we ever had to evacuate a city the size of Tokyo, this seems to me to be a more acceptable gamble. For the cost of one Chernobyl, we could have had a limitless clean environmentally friendly energy source. But alas it’s not like humans to exercise that kind of foresight.

Quality

Doom 3

I finally managed to complete this game after owning it for several years and must say it’s a damn good yarn. Essentially it’s a first person shooter science fiction horror. Plot? I didn’t really notice one to be honest but it is there. What the game lacks in storyline it more than makes up for in gameplay and is ultimately more or less a simple reimagining of the classic DOS game Doom. The game features all the same monsters from the original (along with many more) and although the plot of the original eludes me, I’d have to say it’s more or less the same. You start out as a marine on a routine assignment working for the UAC on Mars in the 22nd century and due to the experiments they’ve been conducting, Hell invades the base with the eventual objective of making it to Earth. Your job as a marine is to stop Satan and his minions from completing their mission of invading Earth – that’s it. From start to finish the game is basically running round shooting monsters, demons and zombies. Thus it’s arguably features more gratuitous violence than the original which had parents outraged back in the early nineties. It’s deeply immersive and and the tone of the game sucks you in like any decent video game should, the dark lighting and spooky atmosphere set by the soundtrack keeps you on edge and frequently makes you jump when monsters and demons jump out at you from some unseen corner. The game features all the same weapons from the original including the BFG. It also features a weapon called the soul cube which I think the game would be impossible without. I didn’t immediately realise this was a weapon and tried playing a level of the game without it. The lack of health power ups was making things extremely difficult until I realised the soul cube would kill an enemy every so often and replenish your health with theirs. This made it pretty much a flier approaching the end of the game. The boss stages during every part of the game are very difficult and usually take at least several attempts to get past. At times I was kind of wondering if it was even possible to get past some of them at all but eventually all of them do go down. This game would have been slightly more fun to play if it didn’t cause my laptop to badly overheat, so much so in fact that I had to manually cool it with an icepack from the freezer. That’s not really a fault of the game though, more one of my crap laptop. This is a decent game and I think it would make a wicked multiplayer if I knew enough people with machines capable of running it. Something for the future here.

Philosophy #1

Signs

A million times better than another film that shares the same name - and it's only 12 minutes long!

The Rise of Anonymous

I was thinking about writing a legends article for this group because in many ways they are, however I reserved judgement this time because they don’t quite fit the bill. In fact they don’t really fit into any category because their motivations… aren’t individual ones. The only people who haven’t heard of this group by now probably have little understanding of the Internet and indeed the virtual world in general. So  for those readers I’ll try and introduce the idea of exactly who or what anonymous is.

Anonymous is arguably the world’s first ever superconsciousness, a gestalt entity comprised of hackers and cyber activists from around the world. The entity has no leadership, no evident direction  or intent but nevertheless acts with a high degree of unison when trying to achieve certain indescript goals. They are in a way an example of an anarchic, digitized global brain and act as a cohesive entity in much the same way a flock of birds acts as a cohesive entity. And this is interesting because they are an example of a true anarchy that actually works. The name “Anonymous” has since become used as a mass noun to describe the group. This name arose from the image posting boards of sites like 4chan and 7chan whereby every poster on those boards is not required to register and so posts under the moniker anonymous.

They have been described by the media in various ways – most notably as hackers on steroids and cyber terrorists treating the Internet as though it were a real life video game and their prowess is certainly powerful in this arena. Through their collective actions, the organisation has now become powerful enough to shake governments or at the very least be a major pain in the ass. For instance during the 2010 – 2011 Tunisian protests, Anonymous assisted the Tunisian people by delivering DDoS attacks against 8 Tunisian websites taking them offline. Anonymous then proceeded to attack Egyptian government websites during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. The group is currently involved in on-going operations  in Libya and Iran and aims to prevent those countries from censoring information from the Internet as well as disrupting government misinformation. I pointed that the Internet was a crucial factor in my  earlier article about the Middle-East. Anonymous are an instrumental part of that factor. The group has also conducted other major operations against countries including Operation Titstorm in which they attacked the government of Australia over its proposed censorship of the Internet.

Anonymous are perhaps most well known for the now infamous project Chanology which saw them declare all out war against the Church of Scientology. The impetus for the project was supposedly the church issuing a copyright claim against a leaked video of Tom Cruise acting like a complete fucknut but more likely Anonymous were just beginning to recognise their potential and were looking for a quarry worthy of their mettle. Chanology saw the group identify with a purpose which has gone on to become the core tenet of their loose ideology – that of preventing Internet censorship, which they now seek to crush in all its forms. The initial salvos of Chanology began on January 21st 2008 and saw multiple DDoS attacks against Scientology websites, massive numbers of prank phone calls and black faxes. It wasn’t long before the activities of anonymous drew the attention of the fabled ‘wise beard man’ who is apparently the only person anonymous have ever listened to. He cautioned them against conducting illegal activities against the church and said they would be far more effective if they protested peacefully. Beginning in February 2008, members of anonymous protested in more than 93 cities world wide all wearing masks from the film V for Vendetta to protect their identities.

The goal of project Chanology

The first message from wise beard man

In recent months, the group has launched attacks against MasterCard, PayPal, Amazon and other organisations who supported the oppression of wikileaks as well as sought vengeance for the perceived set up of Julian Assange (legends article to come). Anonymous has been noted by some observers to be the successor to the wikileaks crown and if that happens, there’ll be pretty much fuck all anyone can do about it especially in light of their attacks against the bank of America and the computer security organisation HBGary Federal - the company favoured by the US government for keeping its information intelligence secure.  The Anonymous attack on HBGary Federal humiliated the company causing massive damage to its public image. Hacktivists working for Anonymous managed to steal a large amount of sensitive data from the company including thousands of emails and data stored on its servers. They also hijacked the company’s website and posted the message “You brought this upon yourself. Let us teach you a lesson you’ll never forget: Don’t mess with Anonymous”. The stolen data exposed company activities including a planned smear campaign against wikileaks and the data was later published on P2P networks effectively destroying their public reputation. The company has since failed to meet revenue projections and the parent company HBGary Inc has begun sales negotiations. Operation Leakspin similarly involved wikileaks and took a second look through intelligence data released on wikileaks for potentially overlooked cables / information and the further promotion of that material on the Internet.

Below: Messages from Anonymous

 

Is this group good or bad? I’m not entirely sure, some of their actions are good but some of the actions attributed to them whether through disinformation or because of the actions of some anonymous members are not. In this respect they would have be classified as a neutral force in the world, the collective unconsciousness of the people who comprise that group – a chaotic neutral force. In their wake they leave pandemonium and in general scare the shit out of anyone who ends up on the wrong side of them. It’s interesting but it seems now a virtual certainty that groups like this will soon begin to seriously influence the course of human history and that for me at least is a fascinating development. In the age of the Internet we probably should have seen something like this coming yet for some reason we just didn’t. The rise of anonymous was to some extent an unexpected side-effect of the information age although the enjoyably terrible film Hackers did to some extent predict something like this. And as for the future, well with digital native generation now reaching adulthood expect to see  a lot more weird shit like this going on in the future.

Below: Members of Anonymous protest