The Fallen Ones (2005)

Apparently three years ago I watched The Fallen Ones starring Caspar Van Dien and did a live commentary. Heaps of badness below the fold.

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Fallout 4 Mario 60 - Defend the Castle

Fallout 4 Mario 58 - Mass Fusion

Skyrim 24 - Journey to Karthspire

Skyrim 20 - A Night to Remember, Part 3

Skyrim 19 - A Night to Remember, Part 2

Skyrim 18 - A Night to Remember, Part 1

Fallout 4 Nena 41 - Vault-Tec Among the Stars

Fallout 4 Mario 52 - The Battle of Bunker Hill

Dishonored 6 - Learn About Weepers

Blind let's play of Dishonored continues.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Abridged)

Found where this was hiding on Vimeo. I need to have a convenient link to it.

 

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Abridged) on Vimeo.

Skyrim 15 - A Blade in the Dark

Well, if YouTube is going to make it easy to share my goofy gaming videos to my blog, that' works for me.

Why Have a Car There?

This is a little meme going around on Facebook which gave me an excuse to put something on the sorely neglected blog.

Why would someone have a car on this tiny island? It makes no sense! What kind of insanity is this?

It's the kind of insanity that realizes...

• The boat dock is on the far side of the island from the (light)house for some reason.
• Sometimes you might need to move heavy things from the dock to the house.
• Sometimes the weather is cold and wet and nasty when you need to go from house to dock or dock to house.

That said, I hope the car is electric and they have solar power or wires to the mainland or something, because carrying gas is probably a bitch.

Note: I have heard suggestions that this might be photoshopped. I doubt it (for reasons listed above), but it's certainly possible.

Also: There's clearly no good place to dock a boat on the house side of the island. It may need to be on that side though, since it does appear to be a lighthouse, so the separation of the dock from house may be unavoidable.

New Facebook Nonsense: Expert says Humans are Aliens

Expert says Humans are Aliens—and we were brought to Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago

This came up in my Facebook feed. I love the person who posted it, but this is complete bollocks. The evidence that humans originated on Earth is so plentiful that it would take extraordinary evidence to prove otherwise.

What if Humans are the aliens we’ve been looking for all along? According to experts, humans were most likely crossbred with another species, perhaps from the star system Alpha Centauri –which is one of the closest solar systems to Earth—in the distant past, giving birth to modern humans.

I can’t wait to find out who these “experts” are and what expertise they supposedly have.

Tell Al-Uhaymir modern day Iraq, where the ancient Sumerian city of Kish used to be, archaeologists found one of the oldest ancient documents on the planet, the tablet of Kish which is believed to date back to the year 3500 BC.

That is a pretty old document.

The Sumerian king list states that Kish was the first city to have kings following the deluge, beginning with Jushur. Jushur’s successor is called Kullassina-bel, but this is actually a sentence in Akkadian meaning “All of them were lord”. Thus, some scholars have suggested that this may have been intended to signify the absence of a central authority in Kish for a time.

It sure would be nice if the author of this article would provide references. Who are these scholars and what are their reasons for making these “suggestions”?

This ancient document is believed to precede the cuneiform writing of the Sumerians, and the Egyptian hieroglyphs for almost one hundred years.

Cuneiform writing dates back to around 3600 BCE, a century before the King list (which is written in cuneiform) was created.

Developing the ability to express thoughts through written language is one of the first ways in which man differed from the animal kingdom.

Five thousand years since, humans have developed electricity, divided the atom, developed computers, and led man to the moon. We have achieved things that other species have still not. No other species on earth can attribute such unique achievements in such a short period of time. Interestingly, compared to other species of the earth, our ‘evolution’ is relatively short.

Our period of evolution is about 3.8 billion years, the same as for all other life on Earth. We didn’t emerge from nothing just a million years ago.

It has been a short period of time, most likely a few million years since the first hominid walked on Earth. Precisely this is one of the biggest scientific questions of all times: Why have only our species emerged to this truly advanced technological intelligence?

A key reason is a genetic flaw in the genes that make our jaw muscles develop. Our jaw strength is much less than that of other great apes, but the reduced force means our skulls can be larger. That’s just one piece of a large puzzle, but there’s no evidence that extraterrestrials were involved.

Evidently, there is nothing more advanced than humans on planet Earth.

How do you define “advanced”? Every other species that currently exists is just as evolved as humans. Human intelligence has allowed us to modify the environment to suit us instead of adapting to the environment, which has resulted in some impressive feats, but it also seems to be on the verge of biting us in the ass.

While there are different ‘intelligent’ species on Earth, none of them makes use of technology like us.

Just imagine for a second, if for some reason, mankind had to return to the jungle, and survive there. Many experts agree that most of them would not survive for a very long period of time.

One of the disadvantages of humans is that we need to learn just about everything about survival, unlike animals that instinctively know how to survive. The skills needed to survive in modern society are quite different from those needed to survive alone in a jungle, so someone used to living in a city could easily die in a wilderness survival situation, since they wouldn’t have time to learn what they need to do.

Many scientists agree that humans, in addition to their intelligence, are not very capable to occupy a wide range of environments. In other words, we are very limited when it comes to our planet.

Humans settled a wide variety of climates and habitats long before we had advanced technology. With NO tools we have problems, sure, but even with simple tools we can settle anywhere from Norway to the Polynesian islands.

In addition to our fascinating intelligence, biologists have also noticed contrasts between human physiology and that of other animals on earth. Many scientists agree that compared to other species on earth, humans are rather strange. For example, a baby horse when born, is able to walk and function almost independently, but this a human baby can not do, which makes us quite helpless. In other words, we are born before being neurologically ready for life.

We share that trait with all of the other Great Apes and many other primates.

Many researchers agree that there are many vulnerabilities that accompany our intelligence.

None that you care to name or reference, but I’m sure that there are many. I already described one disadvantage.

Humans on earth eventually became bipeds, which freed up our superior extremities allowing us to manipulate objects, create tools and much more. But for all this, experts believe that our species has paid an expensive price. Lumbar pain a sign that according to many experts could tell us a lot about our species. Curiously, other animals on Earth do NOT have this problem. It’s as if only humans are affected by some of these problems.

The upright stance of humans is a recent adaptation. Our spines had previously evolved to handle a quadrupedal stance. It’s no surprise that this change carries with it some problems, but they rarely keep us from reaching adulthood and bearing children, so they aren’t evolving away quickly.

So what does all of this mean? According to one expert, it means that we are the aliens we’ve we been looking for all along.

A new theory proposed by Dr. Ellis Silver states that there are several tell-tale signs present in the human race that suggest human beings did not evolve ALONGSIDE other lifeforms on Earth.

Finally a name. Unfortunately, it’s not clear that it’s the name of a real person. “I can’t find much of anything that suggests that Ellis Silver is even a real person, nevermind one with a doctorate in ecology from a US institution. Nothing turns up on Google Scholar for work by an academic by the name of Ellis Silver, and a regular google search just turns up countless links to Humans are not from Earth….”—Tulpesh Patel

The book called ‘Humans are not from Earth: a scientific evaluation of the evidence’ is basically a resume of theories for and mostly against man’s evolution on Earth. In the book, leading environmentalist and ecologist Dr. Ellis Silver goes through an evaluation of thirteen leading hypothesis and seventeen factors which suggest HUMANS ARE NOT FROM EARTH.

Leading environmentalist and ecologist? If he’s a leader in these fields, why is it so hard to find any publications from him in reputable scientific journals? Why is this one book that credits him as the author apparently the ONLY reference to him on the entire internet? Does he teach at a university? Which one? If not, what does he do for a living? What organization funds his research?

Mankind is supposedly the most highly developed species on the planet, yet is surprisingly unsuited and ill-equipped for Earth’s environment: harmed by sunlight, a strong dislike for naturally occurring foods, ridiculously high rates of chronic disease, and more said Dr. Ellis in an interview.

The same could be said of any species. Look at all the carnivores that can’t survive by eating plants! Look at all the herbivores that can’t digest meat efficiently! Birds that can’t swim! Fish that can’t walk! They are all unsuited to living on Earth!

According to Dr. Ellis, humans might suffer from back pain because our species initially evolved on another planet with a lower gravity, adding to the mysteries, Dr. Ellis also indicates that it is strange that newborns have large heads and make it difficult for mothers to give birth, which can result in fatalities for both mother and child.

Humans are hardly the only species that can have birthing problems, and I expect that the cetacean ancestors that still had vestigial legs had problems with them.

So where do we come from? According to Dr. Ellis, Neanderthals were most likely crossbred with another species, perhaps from the star system Alpha Centauri –which is one of the closest solar systems to Earth— in the distant past, giving birth to modern humans.

If this had happened, we would be able to trace the alien DNA. We have mapped the whole human genome, after all.

According to Dr. Ellis, there are millions of people around the globe who ‘feel’ that they do not belong on Earth.

Mostly teenagers, no doubt.

Dr. Ellis explains: “This suggests (to me at least) that mankind may have evolved on a different planet, and we may have been brought here as a highly developed species. One reason for this … is that the Earth might be a prison planet since we seem to be a naturally violent species and we’re here until we learn to behave ourselves.”

All predatory species are naturally violent. Many herbivores (like hippos, for example) are also naturally violent.

Dr. Ellis concludes that mankind did not evolve from that particular strain of life, but evolved elsewhere and was transported to Earth (as fully evolved Homo sapiens) between 60,000 and 200,000 years ago.

That’s a conclusion that does not follow from any evidence.

Furthermore, as noted by Robert Sepher, according to modern DNA sequencing, it is demonstrated that humanity as we know it, isn’t just ONE single ‘race’ that descended from the same ancestor in Africa, but a hybridized species, with a far more enigmatic truth behind it all.

Robert Sepher appears to be a fringe quack, but at least a bit of search shows him to be a real person.

Many questions have been raised in the discussion about Rh negative blood. If mankind did, in fact, evolve from a mutual ancient African ancestor, theories state that everyone’s blood would be compatible, but regrettably, this is not the case. This raises numerous questions that science alone has not been able to fully answer. Where did Rh negative blood come from? And why is it that a Rh negative mother carrying Rh positive children tries rejecting her own offspring? Is it possible that this can be explained by a rather controversial theory? A theory which suggests that humanity isn’t in fact one race, but a hybridized species.

Which theories “state that everyone’s blood would be compatible”?

As for this controversial “theory”, I would like to see it stated clearly. I would like to see predictions made based on this theory. I would like to see tests performed to see if the predictions match reality. I would like to see the findings published in reputable journals. I would like to see the tests repeated by other reputable scientists. I would like to see these “scientists” do what scientists do when they think they have made a discovery. Publishing sensationalist books for the general public is what quacks and hoaxers do.

The book was written by Robert Sepehr, Species with Amnesia: Our Forbidden History tells us more about the enigmatic blood type Rh-negative. Not only does Species with Amnesia suggest mankind is, in fact, a hybridized species, the author suggests that highly advanced civilizations have been on Earth before us, just to be destroyed by some great global catastrophe, as mysteriously, history tells us.

Getting tired of this worthless blather now.

Sepehr argues that for each race that has died out, another has taken its place, with a selected few holding on to the memories and sacred knowledge of the past race. In our vanity, we think we have discovered some of the great truths of science and technology, but we are in fact only just beginning to rediscover the profound wisdom of past civilizations. In many ways, we are like an awakening Species with Amnesia, yearning to reclaim our forgotten past.

Oh, great. Now we have “wisdom of the ancestors” woo, too.

The Basque people of Spain and France have the highest percentage of Rh negative blood. About 30% have (rr) Rh negative and about 60% carry one (r) negative gene.

“There are 612 primate species and subspecies recognized by the international Union for Conversation of Nature (IUCN), and not one has Rh negative blood”. – Robert Sepehr, Species with Amnesia: Our Forbidden History

The article ends there. No summary or any proper conclusion. It just stops. Pretty terrible writing, in addition to being full of nonsense.

Humans evolved on Earth. There is no way that aliens from Alpha Centauri or anywhere else could interbreed with Earthly life. You’d have a better chance of cross-breeding a Neanderthal with a carrot.

The Myth of Perseus and the Gorgon (the short version)

Someone on badmovies.org asked how the Clash of the Titans movies (new and old) differ from the original Perseus myth, so I obliged by retelling the myth for them. Then I figured I should put it on the old blog, as well, so here it is.

Behold Acrisius, King of Argos. He has a daughter named Danae. According to prophecy, if Danae has a son, he will kill Acrisius, so Acrisius keeps Danae locked in the tower.

Behold Zeus. Zeus is horny, and Danae is hot. No locked tower will prevent Zeus from satisfying his lust.

Danae gives birth to a son, Perseus. Hoping to keep Perseus from growing up to kill him, Acrisius puts Danae and Perseus in a wood chest and sets them adrift on the sea.

Behold Polydectes, King of Seriphus. A girl with a baby just washed ashore in a wood chest. That’s something you didn’t see every day back then, so he grants them asylum in Seriphus.

Over time, Polydectes realizes that Danae is hot, so he starts to put the moves on her. Unfortunately, Perseus has grown into a strapping young demigod and master cock-blocker. Needing to get rid of Perseus, Polydectes tricks him into boasting that he could kill the gorgon Medusa (whose face will turn anyone who looks at it to stone) and bring back her head. Polydectes holds him to it, forcing him to go on a suicide quest.

Behold Hermes and Athena. Zeus has sent them to help get Perseus out of the mess he has found himself in. They provide him with some of the gods’ own magical artifacts: winged sandals that allow him to fly, a helmet that turns him invisible, a sword that will cut through pretty much anything, a shield with a reflective inner surface, and a satchel to carry Medusa’s head, if he ever gets it. They also give him directions to the Graeae.

Behold the Graeae, sisters of the Gorgons. The Graeae will know where Medusa sleeps at night. They’re not willing to give up their sister’s location easily, though. Funny thing: the Graeae only have one eye and one tooth among them. Perseus manages to snatch those and only gives them back after they have revealed the location of Medusa’s lair.

Cocky young demigod that he is, Perseus is no fool. Wearing the cap of invisibility, he approaches Medusa, looking only at her reflection in his shield, and cuts off her head while she sleeps. He drops her head into the satchel and starts flying back to Seriphus. (In some versions he is pursued by two other gorgons, sisters of Medusa, but being both invisible and soon airborne, he escapes.)

Behold Andromeda, a maiden tied to a rock by the sea. She is a sacrifice to the Kraken. Perseus spots her as he is flying home and thinks she’s hot. He lands by her father Cepheus, the king of Ethiopia, and offers to kill the monster and save her… if he can marry her. Cepheus agrees, and Perseus offs the Kraken (stories are fuzzy on whether he shows it Medusa’s head or just lays into it with his super-sharp sword).

Behold Phineus. He also thinks Andromeda is hot, but now she’s marrying some courageous foreigner who saved her from being eaten by a monster. Unfair! He gets a bunch of his buddies together to crash the wedding and kill the foreigner. Perseus shows them Medusa’s head, and they shut right up.

Perseus returns to Seriphus with Andromeda, where he finds that Polydectes has been getting super creepy and stalky with Danae. Perseus shows him Medusa’s head to put an end to that.

Hermes and Athena then pay a visit to congratulate Perseus and take back all of the magical artifacts he borrowed, as well as Medusa’s head, which he is starting to have a little too much fun with.

Some time later, Perseus participates in a sporting event in a neighboring kingdom. In the discus throw, he throws so far that the discus goes into the crowd and nails a guy in the head, killing him. Turns out to be King Acrisius, who had gone into hiding when he learned that Perseus had survived and grown up. (Don’t try to avoid prophecies. It never ends well.)

With Acrisius dead, Perseus is the heir to the throne of Argos. Good times.

Addendum: Why is Andromeda tied to a rock?

As noted, Andromeda is hot. So hot, in fact, that some people in Ethiopia (including her mother, Cassiopeia) said she was hotter than the Nereids (sea nymphs).

The Nereids heard that, and it pissed them off, so they complained to Poseidon.

Poseidon was always more into nymphs than humans, so he agreed to punish the tasteless mortals. He sent his hit-beast, the Kraken, to Ethiopia to either destroy the city or eat Andromeda. Their choice.

Second Addendum: What's a Kraken?

The Kraken is actually a sea monster from Scandinavian mythology, not Greek mythology, but it had a cool name, so the producers of the movies used it. The name of the monster in the Perseus myth is not always given, but it is sometimes identified as Cetus.

Fallout 4 Mod List

I figured I would create this list for my tiny following on YouTube. This is the list of PlayStation 4 mods that I use when playing Fallout 4. I'll try to keep it updated, and using it should allow me to use one link in YouTube videos to share my whole mod list.

• BoS Uniform Ballistic Weave
• Vendor rugs and a guard rug too!!
• [PS4] OCDecorator
• [PS4] OCDecorator DLC
• [PS4] Scrap Plants, Leaves, Skeletons & More
• [PS4] STS - Scrap That Settlement! - Base Game
• [PS4] Better Synth Relay Grenades No Squads [PS4]
• [PS4] Wild Plants, Nuka & Alcohol for Settlements: Season Pass Version
• Buffed Minutemen Militia 2 [PS4 Version]
• [PS4] Static Basket and Bins
• [PS4] USO Base Game (Core Component Of Unlocked Settlement Objects)
• Bostonairport+mechanistlairworkbenchfix ps4
• Unlock Ballistic Weave
• (PS4) Streamers Best Friend (Radio Silence)
• [PS4] UCO Base Game
• Saving Survival Mode

Bad Movie: Pegasus vs Chimera

On October 26, I watched Pegasus vs Chimera, a movie I found on DVD for $3. I live-commented my pain on Facebook, and I've transcribed that below the fold...

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World On Fire

The Good Doctor

Venison Stew

I am supposed to take something to a Halloween party, and I have a venison roast from one of my family friends who hunts on his property. Pretty sure this guy lead a good life and never knew what hit him.

Ingredients:

• 1 venison roast
• 1 large onion
• 2 carrots
• 3 celery ribs
• 2 red potatoes
• 1 turnip
• 1 garlic clove (at least)
• 1 can of beef stock
• 1 bottle of beer
• 1/2 teaspoon of fish sauce
• rosemary
• thyme
• black pepper
• salt

Stammel wanted to lend moral support, of course. I'm pretty sure that if he could crawl into my pocket, he would.

Monologuing

Feed Me

Scary Disney Moments

Daredevil 'N' Friends

Kidnap the Sandy Claws

Dip It In Carbonite

United We Stand

Survival with Style

And my friend Bonnie's short film went up on YouTube yesterday, so BONUS VIDEO!

Something Troubles Me

I Crush Everything

Scary Insects

Vicious

The Old Republic

Goblin Kings

You Could Stay Here Forever

Guardians

Grave Mistake

State Zero

Batman v Superman

The TARDIS Awakens

The Warriors

Salon of No Return

Who Wants To Live Forever

It's hard to go wrong with a Lindsey video. And as a bonus video, I recorded a Fallout 4 gameplay video of my own yesterday, so why not share it, too?

The Humungus Speaks

Lord of the Labyrinth

Assuming Direct Control

Le Wrath di Khan

Scoobythulu

Mean Teddies

Mean Teddies from Tyler Novo on Vimeo.

Roboshark

I found Roboshark on Netflix a week or so ago. I live-commented on Facebook, and I'm transcribing it here. In case you are wondering what Roboshark is, here's a trailer.


My commentary is below the fold.

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Fallout 4 Security Door

Long time, no posts. I'm a terrible blogger. But I made something amusing while playing Fallout 4, and I created a little video to describe it, so I might as well share it via the old blog. I have already started expanding on the project, so I may do a more extensive video in the future.

Suspicious Email

I neglect the blog so much. Everyone once in a while, though, something happens that reminds me to do a post. This one falls in the "suspicious email" category.

This came to my work email address. The email source is not in one of our business domains, so that tells me it's not our help desk, if it's anyone's.

The grammar is dubious, which doesn't help.

The language is pretty typical for a phishing email.

So, screw you "Marian O'Rourke"; there's no way in hell I'm opening that attachment.

Crushing Kellogg (Fallout 4 Spoiler)

It's really no secret that you're going to have to face this guy in Fallout 4, but I suppose the spoiler warning is warranted if you've never had this conversation and want to go in "cold" the first time. You also get an idea of how he fights. This is one solution to dealing with him: lots of drugs.

The 40 Plot Holes That Weren't (continued)

This is old news now, but I hate to leave things unfinished.

Original annoying article: 40 Unforgivable Plot Holes in 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'
Part one of my response: The 40 Plot Holes That Weren't

Click through for the rest.

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Defending the Castle

This isn't exactly the same Castle as in my previous post, as this is a new character, but my defensive setup is largely the same. I let the Institute know that I was not going to be joining them. They didn't take the news well. They can bring it; I've been preparing for this day.

Share My Pain: Zombeavers

I was bored at home on a Saturday night, therefore bad movie. How bad? "Zombeavers" bad. Behold the trailer...

I live-commented on Facebook, and I have copied the transcript below the fold.

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Building Up the Castle

If you follow me on Facebook, you may know that my current gaming obsession is Fallout 4. One of the features in the latest version of Fallout is settlement-building. You need to set up radio beacons to attract settlers, then make sure to satisfy needs like food, water, and beds for the people who show up. You also need to prepare for attacks on your settlement by various factions that want to steal your resources or just destroy for fun.

Settlement building seems to be one of the most popular aspects of the new game. Lots of YouTubers have uploaded videos of their settlements, and some have published detailed how-to videos. My own entry is not very elaborate, but FO4 has given me the opportunity to mess around with the video capture features of my PlayStation 4. I therefore present my own Fallout 4 settlement video.

The 40 Plot Holes That Weren't

Nena showed me an article called 40 Unforgivable Plot Holes in 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' by Seth Abramson of the University of New Hampshire. She agrees with me that most of them don't qualify as either. It looks to me like Seth wasn't paying attention half the time.

I can be an argumentative jerk, so I'm going to dissect his article item-by-item.

This is your spoiler warning.

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The Force Awakens

I have now seen the movie twice. I was a bit disgruntled the first time, as I had avoided spoilers until mere hours before I actually got to see it, which put me in a somewhat negative mood.

I was past the negative feelings this time, so I think I can safely say that I do, in fact, like Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

I agree that it is highly derivative of previous Star Wars movies (I will not say which above the fold), but that doesn't really hurt it. This movie has the character development and dialogue that we truly love from the episodes IV-VI. It has action, but not pointless action.

Don't get me wrong: it could be better. The plot doesn't have blatant plot holes, but there are certainly plenty of open questions (which is okay if sequels fill them seamlessly).

Spoiler free, I am not disappointed that I payed to see it in theaters twice. I may even do it again. If you still haven't seen it, go away.

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Just a Rifle

Yet again, there's a dubious photo meme going around on Facebook.

Just a Rifle

I'm not going to try to make a case that you should not be allowed to purchase an AR-15 rifle like the one at the bottom of the image. I just want to point out that this whole "just a rifle" argument is disingenous. Rifles have different designs for different purposes, and terminology has adapted to describe those purposes. Not all rifles are made equal.

According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, an "assault rifle" is a "military firearm that is chambered for ammunition of reduced size or propellant charge and that has the capacity to switch between semiautomatic and fully automatic fire." By design, they are easy to carry, have a high rate of fire, carry a large amount of ammunition in the magazine, and reload quickly by changing the mazagine. The only distinction that the civilian model at the bottom has from a military weapon is that the civilian weapon is not capable of fully automatic fire.

The first (top) rifle in the image is a lever-action rifle. Today, they are designed mostly for hunting at moderate range. Looking at online advertisements, they are available in a wide range of calibers. The magazine typically seems to hold about 10 rounds of ammunition, which would have to be loaded into the weapon individually. The weapon must be cocked by lowering and raising the lever before every shot, which will limit its rate of fire, but if you went on a crazy shooting spree with this weapon, you could probably shoot ten people before you had to stop and reload, allowing potential victims to either escape or attack you.

The second is a bolt-action rifle, also typically used for hunting these days, although military sniper rifles are also frequently bolt-action rifles. Generally used with a scope, they are accurate at long ranges. The World War 2 era rifle that I own myself holds 5 rounds in the magazine; these can be loaded individually or loaded all at once using a "stripper clip" that holds all five rounds together in the right orientation for loading. These rifles typically use a powerful cartridge like the .30-06 round (7.62 mm). The bolt-action must be manually worked before every shot. If this was your weapon on a shooting spree, you could potentially hit from a large distance, but you would still probably only be able to hit a few people before your victims scrambled for cover.

And finally, the third weapon, which is also "just a rifle". The design is military, although the fully automatic fire capability is removed for the civilian market. For the military, it is intended to fire a lot of bullets in a short time at moderate range. As far as I know, civilians typically buy such weapons for home defense, plus just liking the idea of owning such a weapon. The AR-15 fires .223 caliber ammunition (5.56 mm): a small but fast bullet. The civilian model is semi-automatic, loading a fresh round into the chamber after every shot, allowing you to fire as quickly as you can aim and pull the trigger. I found online ads for AR-15 magazines holding anywhere from 10 to 40 rounds of ammunition. By design, the magazine can be detached when empty and quickly replaced with a full one. If this was your weapon on a shooting spree, and you had practiced with it, you could reasonably expect to shoot dozens of people.

I am not against gun ownership. As I said, I have a rifle myself. In it's time, my Mosin-Nagant was a military combat rifle.

I am against bad arguments for anything. Pretending that there is no difference between the three rifles in that picture is dishonest. You don't need 40 rounds of .223 semi-automatic fire for deer hunting; a weapon like the AR-15 is meant to kill people.

Sure, "assault" is an action, but it is also a design specification.

A Gun for Home Defense

A popular argument against gun regulation is that "good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns" and "we need guns to protect our homes".

According to a study conducted by Emory University, a gun in the house is over 20 times more likely to be used to harm a resident than to fight off an intruder.

Not Exactly Gumbo

This one consists of onions and garlic sauteed in olive oil, sausage, shrimp, cheese tortellini, additional pasta, and chicken broth.

One chopped onion goes into the pan first, along with some salt, pepper, dried thyme, basil, and oregano.  They cook over medium heat until the onions are translucent, then a chopped clove of garlic goes in for a bit.

The sausage is half a link of a spicy sausage I got at the European Market & Deli, diced up and added to the pan for another few minutes.

The shrimp were frozen, so I put them in the pan, covered it, and let it cook for a couple of minutes to thoroughly thaw them.

Finally, I added frozen tortellini and a couple of shaped pastas, then added about a quart of chicken broth to cover everything. I brought up the heat to high until it was boiling, then dropped to low and covered it for ten minutes.

Turned out really good.

Death Star Conspiracy

A new conspiracy theory has emerged on Facebook.


Like conspiracy theories typically are, this one is full of holes:

• Darth Vader was not in command of the Death Star; Grand Moff Tarkin was.
• Darth Vader didn't build R2-D2; that droid was built before he was born.
• There is no record of Darth Vader having children.
• The exhaust port was not two feet wide: it was two meters wide; there are kids on Tatooine who can hit a target that size from a skyhopper.

These conspiracy nuts clearly don't want to acknowledge the very simple failures that lead to the loss of the Death Star.

• If the Imperial intelligence services had been doing their jobs properly, the schematics for the station would never have fallen into rebel hands in the first place.
• If every single gun turret on the station hadn't been designed to shoot at cruisers with no regard to the possible threat of fighters, the rebel attack would have been quickly repelled.
• If the exhaust port had been fully shielded instead of just ray-shielded, there would have been no rebel attack at all.

This is yet another smear campaign aimed at Darth Vader simply because he was the sole survivor of the Death Star, when logs of the battle show that he was the only one who took action when it became apparent that the station's gun turrets could not rotate quickly enough to target starfighters. He ordered his squadron of fighters to repel the attack, placing himself at risk to lead the defense.

We should be glad he survived instead of trying to blame the Death Star fiasco on him.

Classics, of course

The Wolf Man

Psycho

And there are always flying monkeys to worry about.

Dracula



White Zombie, in its entirety.

Better Shoot Straight

I'm Not Going Into That Cavity

Once More With Feeling

Porcelain

A short piece made by an SCA friend of mine.


And I'm adding this bit of disturbia that I found on Facebook this morning.

Posted by Secretcha Phet Cha on Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Shelob

And something less likely to creep out the arachnophobes.

Hall of Mirrors

Quite possibly the most ridiculous fight scene ever. Certainly a contender.

Big Hero 6

Of course, it could have been so much simpler.

Know Who to Call

Alien Invasion!

Night, Night, Nancy

The Hidden

Classic sci-fi horror from the 80's. Plus Claudia Christian!

Exiting the Asylum

Amy's Torch

Selfies

Okay, no more selfies for me.. Trending NowTag your friend that takes too many selfies!
Posted by Trending Now on Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Slimed

White Apes

I think John Carter was underrated.

Walk in the Park

Age of Tinman

That was too short to be the only post of the day.


And as long as we're on the Avengers.

Predator: Dark Ages

Nicely done short film.

Cookie Rage!

This one is probably more gruesome than you're expecting. Also uses adult language.

Fancy Dancing

Force vs Magic

We've had Star Wars. We've had Harry Potter. Time for both at once!

Black Magic

This situation really could have been avoided.


The worst ones tell you that you deserve it.

TIE Fighter

Rewarded for Rocking the Boat

As you may have heard, two scientists received the Nobel Prize in Physics for showing that a widely accepted theory had some flaws.

I bring this up because some climate change deniers or evolution deniers say scientists are just following the party line on things like climate and biology. You don't get a Nobel Prize for following the party line: you get a Nobel Prize for making an important discovery.

According to the widely accepted Standard Model of particle physics, neutrinos are mass-less particles, like photons. Despite the predictions of this well-established model, Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald -- working independently -- were able to show that neutrinos behaved in ways that were only possible if they did have mass. They showed that the Standard Model was not entirely correct (although it certainly still does work in most cases).

So the idea that scientists can't get funded or published if their claims contradict the establishment is absurd. Contradicting the establishment is exactly what gets a scientist recognition. The thing is, they have to produce the evidence to show that their contradictory claim is correct.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Halloween videos.

Voila! The ZF-1!

Til Death Do Us Part

A suggestion from Brandy.

If you're not a country music fan...

Time of the Great Pumpkin

Lights Out

A suggestion from Nena.

Bad to the "Bone"

Today's theme is music.

And I suppose I should have at least one shark-themed video this year, so...

Physics

This one seems to take a surprisingly long time to queue up, but it's funny.


A Tale of Momentum & Inertia from HouseSpecial on Vimeo.

Pro Life

Donating bone marrow is something that most people can do to save lives. The procedure is done in a hospital and requires the donor to be placed under general anesthesia. Needles are inserted through both sides of the back of the pelvic bone to extract liquid marrow. This liquid is then sent to the patient who requires it. Common side effects include back or hip pain, fatigue, throat pain, muscle pain, insomnia, headache, dizziness, loss of appetite, and nausea. They are generally gone within two days of the procedure. The median time to full recovery for a marrow donation is 20 days, although it can take up to a year. Due to the life-saving benefits and minimal risks of the procedure, donation is mandatory. Effective immediately, all adults shall be required to donate bone marrow as often as possible, unless they have a medical exemption.

Platelet donation is a procedure that can be performed in the offices of a blood donation organization such as the Red Cross. Platelets are often needed for patients undergoing chemotherapy or organ transplants. During the procedure, blood is extracted from the donor, platelets are separated from the other blood components, and the rest of the blood (with some supplementary fluid) is returned to the patient. An anticoagulant is also administered to aid in the collection process. The procedure typically takes about two hours, after which the donor can typically resume normal activity, although they should avoid heavy lifting for the rest of the day. Effective immediately, all adults are required to donate platelets as often as possible unless they are making other tissue donations that would prohibit platelet donations or are medically ineligible to donate.

Effective immediately, all citizens are organ and tissue donors. Upon death, all viable organs and tissues will be collected and sent to waiting patients. Everyone will need to be pretested for organ matching to expedite the process, which will help save people in need of life-saving donations. Participation is mandatory.

When everyone is okay with all of these pro-life policies, we can talk about outlawing abortion. If we are going to require women to donate nine months of their lives to save a fetus while taking the risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth, everyone can take lesser risks to make donations that will save the lives of people who have already been born.

Cracked Facts

I'm now pretty sure that the lists of "facts" that go up on Cracked.com and get shared all over Facebook and other social media are not checked to be sure they're factual. Case in point:

I find that hard to believe, since Harrison Ford starred in American Graffiti, a successful George Lucas movie that came out four years before Star Wars.

In other news, lately I seem to be especially snarky about (dis)information shared over social media.

No License Required

At least that's what "Todd Foster" (if that's his real name) claims.

I'm more than a little dubious about his claim. He bases his argument mostly on legal statements that go back to the mid-nineteenth century, well before motorized vehicles were commonplace. If you can't come up with a precedent from the age of automobiles, I don't think you have much of a case.

He says there's no law against driving without a license for personal, non-commercial travel, but I took the liberty of looking up Tennessee law on the subject and found the following:

TN Code section 55-50-301: No person, except those expressly exempted in this section, shall drive any motor vehicle upon a highway in this state unless the person has a valid driver license under the provisions of this chapter for the type or class of vehicle being driven.

So it would appear that it is at least illegal to drive without a license on a "highway".

Foster's video strikes me as the sort of thing which is likely to get some gullible citizen arrested or fined (or killed, given recent police excesses) because they unquestioningly accept his claim. It's libertarian nonsense, based on quote mines of case law that probably isn't applicable or has at least been superseded by subsequent law and court precedent.

Of course, I'm not a legal expert, so I can't say with certainty that his claims are complete BS, but I don't think I'm the one making an extraordinary claim here. Besides, he can prove his claims quite easily.

He can let his license expire (assuming he has one, which I bet he does), and then publicly announce that he is going to go on a cross-country drive (or even just a long intrastate drive, like Miami to Pensacola in his home state of Florida). In the announcement, dare the state police to arrest him for driving without a license, giving them his plate number, vehicle description, planned route, and date(s) of travel. When they do, all he needs to do is use his cited precedents to challenge the arrest in court and win.

Until then, I'll keep my license current.

Circulating Nonsense

The disinformation super-highway has done it again.

People are circulating an article with the headline "Civil War museum closed, Confederate artifacts burned" in complete seriousness. The first line of the article, visible in the Facebook post, is:

"On the heels of the Confederate flag controversy, the City Council of Harrisburg voted to permanently close the doors of the Civil War Museum last week."

Some of the comments from the thread on Facebook where I saw it include the following:

• "And all those other times when people decided to burn / erase history and artifacts from the past: How did that turn out? Did it ever turn out good?"
• "In the tradition of the Taliban, ISIS, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and the Red Chinese Cultural Revolution to just go back 90 years or so... and just to name a few... statists are insane."
• "Rewriting history is classic Soviet behavior."
• "Go authoritarian fascism"

When I looked at the headline, I immediately suspected that the article was a hoax. Do people really swallow such an absurd headline with no checking at all?

It took me less than ten seconds to find the website of the The National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, PA. Apparently the article has been getting shared a lot, because they had this statement on the home page.

In light of the situation in the current press, The National Civil War Museum has issued the following statement:
The Board of Directors of The National Civil War Museum have no intentions of closing the museum and we will be conducting business as usual.

The post links to a site called "The People's Cube" which looks like a troll site. Seriously, just look at it for a second and it's obvious.

How foolish have we become that we accept such a blatant troll article at face value?

To the Rescue!

This showed up in my office email:

Greetings to you, how are you doing today and i hope you are up and strong, am very sorry to write you at this moment cos its late to tell you that i made an urgent successful trip to Phillipines MANILA with my fam. On the way coming back, got mugged at gun point and all fund and valuable items including all our phones. The worst scenario is that, i am owing the hotel right now and i must pay all bills to get out of here. $ 2,750 USD is urgently needed right now to pay the hotel bills, promise to pay back ASAP we made it home.

Kindly get back to me ASAP you receive this mail, cos i hope on you.

Sincerely, [Friend's name]

The "From" address is my friend's Yahoo email address. I have no reason to suspect that this friend is anywhere near Manila, so I'm quite sure that it's a trick to get some money. I did notify them via Facebook that I think their Yahoo account has been hacked.