The Dark Knight Rises

I made a post a while back about my concerns over the movie, The Dark Knight Rises. I just got back from watching the film, so here's my take on it. So, here's the warning: Spoilers ahead. I will discuss most of the major plot points and twists, so if you have not seen it yet, do not read this post beyond the break.

I will say I liked it. I was okay with the movie; it set wrong with me, though, and below the break, I'll elaborate on why. However, I do recommend seeing it, because it really is a well directed movie. So, without further ado, let's dive in.

Scattered Thoughts

It's been a while since I posted, and while I don't have anything of any real substance today (I've been trying to disentangle to novel ideas in my head and it's not working because they're so similar, but so incredibly different, which is where most of my time and effort has gone), I do have some scattered thoughts to share regarding some interesting stories that have come down my way.

Judeo-Christian Mystery Religion

This has been making its rounds on the Internet for a sometime now, and I've been waiting until I got a free moment before I comment on it.

Texas has a new Republican platform. And it's everything we've come to know and love from these motherfucking shit-for-brain idiots on the right. If you thought the Iowa platform was bad, boy howdy, you ain't seen nothing yet...

With this, the Republicans have finally struck a blow at the reality and in the process, created a gaping singularity of stupid that is slowly draining the collective IQ nationwide.

Happy Higgs Day!

Today is the 4th of July. It's also 108 degrees outside with head index factored in. I hate this holiday, because this is twice now this day has screwed me out of money; when I first started working summer, I worked Saturdays. Well, what day was the 4th of July last year? A Saturday. I lost 6 hours. So I told myself that wasn't happening again, so I piled most of my hours in the week in the summer term. I didn't work Saturdays this term. Guess what day the 4th fell on? That's right, and I lost 7.5 hours this time around. When you're only working 30 hours a week, that shit hurts. Paid holidays? What the hell are those? I work part time, I don't have or "deserve" any workers rights or paid time off. I don't even get sick leave; I just have to miss work and not get paid for it. As far as I'm concerned, this isn't a holiday. This is a day that screws me out of making money that I need to survive, and as such, this day can just FOAD (made worse by the fact I'm not going to see a paycheck for the entire month of October, so I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to make it through; the last pay check I get is in the middle of September, the next is on Halloween). I'd be happier if we never celebrated it. The birthday of this country means exactly nothing to me; this country doesn't care about me, so I don't give a damn about it. I'd rather be a British citizen. At least then I'd be partially taken care of and know I wouldn't have to shell out almost 140 dollars a month for crappy healthcare because ADHD is a "preexisting condition".

Anyway, more importantly than that, though, today is also the day that CERN discovered what might well complete the standard particle theory model. For the longest, the model that predicts electrons, neutrons, and other particles and their behavior, has been incomplete. We've been missing piece. The piece that we've been missing is the thing that gives particles their mass. That particle is called the Higgs boson.

Today, CERN/ATLAS announced that they may have found the Higgs boson.

For once, I'm not behind the curve in science news. That's a feat, trust me.

Now, they're not sure whether or not this is the Higgs boson. It might, in fact, be something all together different. However, it has all of the Higgs' traits, and matches the particle closely (they're almost certain it's a boson, at least, because it decayed into two photons, like bosons usually do). Part of me is pretty sure they've found the Higgs. However, part of me wants to believe they found something else. Finding something else might act as a major shakeup in the standard particle model, sort of like what happened with the Laws of Optics when metamaterials were discovered. We've got a ways to go first, but this is definitely a break through in physics, so keep an eye out for more information in the future months...

Root For Her Like You Would A Male Character

This is probably the most frustrating thing about being genderfluid. I identify as a guy when I'm not identifying as a woman or something in between, and identifying everything from X -10 to X +10 with a little bit of Y and in some cases, Z, thrown in, I don't like to think I have a wider perception than most people. It's not that hard to understand people. You shut up and listen. That's how this works. Guys have an irritating tendency to dominate the conversation anyway (of course, if you've ever met me in person, you know I have a tendency to dominate the conversation, too - partially because I don't like silence and can't stand it. I'm also a bit of a motormouth and can talk really fast if I get a good enough cadence going). I will listen, though.

It boggles my mind why so many guys don't understand this. Shut up for just one second and listen. This is not rocket science. And maybe, if you listen to women talk and hear what they have to say, and learn that they're not all one large group of people, stuff like this can stop happening.

Laura Croft attempted rape will make players want to "protect her".

I don't know about you, but this is incredibly offensive to me. So offensive, in fact, let me count the ways:

Physics of the Impossible

I haven't finished reading through the book yet, but I need to make a pitch for this book. It was published in 2008 (I've mentioned I'm behind the curve, right?) by Michio Kaku, and it's called Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration Into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel. This book might as well be called The Science Fiction Author's Guide to Making Impossible Technology Plausible. Kaku writes in a very clear and very easy to read tone, and there's not a lot of intimidating equations inside of the book (clearly, he took a lesson from Hawking: Hawking was told by his publisher that each equation reduces book sales, so he only included one equation - Einstein's famous equation), and Kaku makes understanding how these science fiction tools and tropes interact with the diverse world of theoretical physics easy it understand (as easy to understand given the subject matter can be, anyway).

This is a good book. I'm going to have to recommend this to anyone interested in understand how real science interacts with the world of science fiction.

The Unbearable Status of "Technological Stagnation"

Transhumanism post - I know I haven't done of these in a while, but I've been flagging in inspiration. Today, though, I found an article that frustrated the hell out of me, so here we go.

I was reading over at H+ magazine and I ran across this article by Dale Carrico. Carrico is (according to the comments, anyway; I don't know this for a fact) a leftist and a critic of transhumanism and futurism all together, leaving me to wonder if this man has even been awake for the last 30 years. In his article, The Unbearable Stasis of "Accelerating Change", Dale levels quite a few accusations against the transhumanist (and, by extension, science fiction) community. There's a lot of fair criticisms to be leveled to the community; criticisms are and constructive criticism is always helpful because it helps you improve. Very little of what is said here are accurate criticisms. Rather, this is a variation of the "futurehype" argument. I haven't seen the futurehype argument employed before this, so this is my first shot at tackling it.