Inelegant Decline
March 03, 2004 // Link
With at least one person having been smote while watching the movie The Passion Of The Christ, you probably think I won’t be able to resist making this week’s column into a gentle poke at religion.
And you’d be right.
Residents of Ohio, are you embarrassed? I think you should be. Recently you announced to the world (well, your State Board of Education announced on your behalf) that you’d be adding Intelligent Design to your high school curriculum.
For those who haven’t heard of it yet, Intelligent Design is the latest spin on Creationism. It’s the new boy on the “we didn’t evolve from no damn monkeys” block. Have you ever noticed that people who don’t believe in evolution seem to be living examples of their own arguments?
The basic difference between Intelligent Design and Creationism is this: Creationism says “The Christian God created the world in 6 days about 6,000 years ago” while Intelligent Design says “God—probably the Christian one but we’re not saying that or else you won’t let us teach this in schools but really we all know which God we mean wink wink—created the world, and since He’s a God it probably took oh let’s call it roughly a week, and maybe it was a little longer than 6,000 years ago but let’s just say for now that God did it and we’ll sneak the rest in later.”
And like the Creationists, the Intelligent Design proponents claim that this is science instead of religion. Why? Because, and be sure to pay close attention here because I’m about to take a running leap, they claim that “there must be intelligent design in the face of irreducible complexity.”
What does that mean? Simply this: since science cannot currently explain everything about how all life works, we must therefore conclude there is a God. Hey, I warned you I’d be leaping.
Let’s look at that again, shall we? Run run run run run...we cannot at the present time explain absolutely everything...run run run...about absolutely everything...run run run...to do with life in all forms...and JUM...so therefore God exists.
What kind of school board would seriously consider adding the idea that “if we don’t know it now, it can never be known” to a science curriculum? That’s not science. It’s not even remotely science. It doesn’t even get to visit science on alternate weekends.
So what is science? Well, a big part of it is “the application of theories that are falsifiable.” A theory that is not falsifiable is not a scientific theory by definition, because the most basic and essential process of science is the attempt to disprove theories.
Science requires that we supply means by which our theories may be disproved, and so if we want to include “God exists” as part of a theory we must supply a means by which God can be proven to not exist. If I cannot supply a means by which one could prove that God doesn’t exist, then “God exists” is simply not part of science. It doesn’t mean it’s true or false, it’s just outside of science. And things that are outside of science should stay outside of science classrooms.
And usually they do, unless you live in a state that elects a bunch of Creationists to your State Board of Education. Creationists who go on to Create a lesson plan that’s derived in part directly from the seminal text in Intelligent Design (Jonathan Wells’s Icons Of Evolution) while swearing up and down that the lesson plan doesn’t actually include Intelligent Design. And then after nobody believed them, do you know how they solved the problem?
They removed the Wells book from the bibliography.
Seriously. That’s it. They didn’t change the plan itself, oh no. They just deleted the Intelligent Design source book from the lesson plan’s bibliography. They left in the Intelligent Design material, and turned their own school lesson plan into a work of plagiarism.
If you can still read this article clearly, you’re not shaking your head in disgust nearly as hard as this deserves. Of course you’d probably have to wedge your noggin in a paint mixer to get the kind of shake this one calls for, but do your best.
I suspect the biggest stumbling block for some people to accept the fact of biological evolution (yes, it’s a demonstrable fact not a “theory” in the way the general public uses the term) is that most people don’t understand “evolution” as a scientific term. And that’s not their fault at all since the general public is presented with many, varied, and generally inaccurate definitions of what evolution is.
Most dictionaries and Fox television news reporters define evolution as “the gradual process by which plants and animals arose from earlier more primitive organisms.” Sounds about right, huh? If you went door to door and showed that definition to a hundred people, ninety-seven of them would agree that’s what evolution is. (Two of the others were out at a movie, and the third pretended not to be home when you knocked because Final Jeopardy was coming on.)
There’s only one problem with that definition, though: it’s totally inaccurate. That’s not what “evolution” means at all, at least not to scientists.
Evolution is actually just the process that results in heritable changes in a population over multiple generations. Or as Curtis and Barnes put it in Biology: “In fact, evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next.” But that doesn’t roll of the tongue too easily, does it? It’s so much easier to say “gradual changes from monkey to man.”
But biological evolution has nothing to do with a “gradual” process. It is, on the other hand, a straightforward and easily demonstrated one. It is a theory, but it is also a fact. In science, facts are the observable data we collect about the world, theories are collections of statements to explain and interpret those facts, and nerds are the people who do the collecting. Wait, scratch that last one. What I meant to say was that biological evolution is a fact in that we can observe it in action today and its historical evidence is overwhelming.
There is another aspect, the theory of evolution, which takes the fact of biological evolution and theorizes the specific mechanisms by which it operates. Creationists love to pounce on the word “theory” and claim that even scientists themselves are unsure about the existence of evolution. Naughty naughty word-twisting Creationists. Tsk tsk.
The truth is, biological evolution has been accepted as a fact by all non-bigoted scientists for well over a century. Darwin himself always took pains to separate his two accomplishments: one, discovering the fact of biological evolution, and two, proposing natural selection as a theory to explain the specific mechanisms of that fact. He always separated the two, and this was a guy who didn’t even separate his cottons from his delicates when he did the laundry.
Gravity is a fact. We know this because things fall down. Things like apples and Humpty Dumpty. But gravity is also a theory which explains why things fall down (because all the cool apples were doing it, and because he was drunk, respectively). Newton’s theory of gravitation was replaced by Einstein’s, but while the new textbooks were being printed at no point did things stop falling down. Not even a little bit. Just ask all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, who will tell you I’m correct right after they finish their omelets. The fact of gravity was not affected by improvements to the theory of gravitation any more than the fact of evolution is affected by improvements to the theory of evolution. Saying you don’t believe in evolution is like saying you don’t believe in gravity or you don’t believe that Avril Lavigne can’t sing. Scientists might debate precisely how evolution works or how gravity works or how to best stop that Napanee warbler, but they agree about the facts.
God and evolution are not contradictory things. Evolution is how organisms change between generations, and so if there is one or more gods pulling our strings then He or She or It or They set up our world to work this way. I simply don’t understand why anybody but the most close-minded, dogmatic fundamentalists would be afraid of teaching rational methodology and observation in school.
I’m more concerned about the theory that some almighty being created and buried millions of dinosaur fossils just to feck with our heads. Now that’s something to keep you up at night.
Attack Of The 50’ Melanie Griffith
March 10, 2004 // Link
I’d heard about a romantic comedy called Milk & Money. The plot synopsis made it sound quirky and fun. So while I was at a DVD shop I frequent I added it to the list of movies I was ordering. I didn’t know anything else about the movie except the basic plot, but I was in an impulsive shopping mood.
The film ordering process went something like this:
“Oh, and I’d like the film Milk & Money.”
“Milk Money, okay.”
“No, not Milk Money. Not that terrible Melanie Griffith film. I want the movie Milk AND Money.”
“Oh, right. No problem.”
Within a couple of days, I was back at the shop picking up my order...but they’d brought in Milk Money instead. I explained that it was the wrong film:
“This is the wrong film. I wanted the movie Milk & Money.”
“That is Milk Money.”
“Right. This is Milk Money. I want the movie Milk AND Money.”
“Oh, right. No problem.”
The next week I was back to pick it up. It’s about an hour’s drive up to this store, but the prices are amazing so I’m up there every week anyway. But in the meantime, I’d decided to look up more about this film because I still didn’t know anything much about this thing I was buying. Its IMDB rating was only 5.1 out of 10...not a good sign. Not a good sign at all. In fact, if it was a sign it would be something like “stop” or “do not enter” or maybe “hey Carrington, don’t order that movie.”
But the synopsis was quirky and I’d already gone through a hassle to order it, so I let the order stand. When I went to pick it up, the conversation went something like this:
“Here’s your movie.”
“This is Milk Money.”
“Right.”
At this point, I didn’t say anything so you have to imagine my facial expression instead. It was a pretty good one.
Eventually she asked, “So this isn’t the movie you want?”
“No. I don’t want Milk Money. I don’t want a Melanie Griffith movie. Nobody ever wants a Melanie Griffith movie. Well, except for Cecil B. DeMented. Oh, and I guess RKO 281. But nothing else. Not Working Girl. Not Bonfire Of The Vanities. Not...oh, I guess Cherry 2000 is a classic. But nothing else. Certainly not Milk Money. Never Milk Money. I wanted Milk AND Money.”
The clerk looked the order up on the computer. Typing typing typing. It took her ages.
“So, you didn’t order this?” she asked, still typing. “The computer thinks you did.”
I resisted explaining that the computer was not sentient. I’m calm like that.
“No, I didn’t order it. I want Milk & Money, a different movie. Milk AND Money.”
“I can order that for you.”
Remember that expression I’d made? I gave her a variant with just a hint of twitch.
“Can you really order it?” I ask.
“Of course.”
“No, check the computer. It’s called Milk AND Money, not Milk Money. It’s from 1997, not 1994. It does NOT have Melanie Griffith in it. It doesn’t even have a little bit of Melanie Griffith in it. The name of the movie I want is: Milk. And. Money. Three words. Milkandmoney.”
“Oh, right. No problem.”
Twitch twitch.
The next week I was back once again to pick it up. But in the meantime, I found out even more about the movie. It might not have had Melanie Griffith in it, but it did have Calista Flockhart. Was that a trade up or down? Who knows? And it didn’t star Calista Flockhart, even though it was her bony mug on the cover. Nope, this was one of those films with a later-famous actor in a minor role, so the movie was dug up and released on a slapped together DVD to piggyback on her fame. But while I’d never heard of any of the leads in the film, it also had Peter Boyle and Olympia Dukakis in it so I figured it couldn’t be that bad. (The other famous actor in it was Robert Vaughn, but judging from the crap he’s been in he acts for food.) The rest of the cast was unknown to me, but I love indie films and won’t fault a movie for having beginners in it.
In the end, I decided to let my order stand because I’m obstinate and I’d already gone through too much to try to get my hands on this film that I didn’t even want to see any more. When I went to pick it up, the conversation went something like this:
“Here are your movies,” said the clerk.
She reached back to the customer holds shelf and pulled a little pile of movies strapped together with an elastic band. Tucked under the elastic band was a scrap of paper with my name on it. Well, almost my name. They then (and now) had my first and last names mixed up so it said “Mr. Carrington.” I lifted the DVDs off the stack one by one, revealing in order: Working Girl; Bonfire Of The Vanities; Cecil B. DeMented; RKO 281; and Milk Money.
I would like to point out that I did not at this time kill everyone in the store.
“I didn’t order these.”
“Which one?”
“Any of them. All of them. I did not order this Melanie Griffith surprise pack. Besides, you already sold me Cecil B. DeMented months ago.”
The clerk took away the Cecil B. DeMented box. She wrapped it up in the same elastic band, tucked the same Mr. Carrington note under the band, and put it back on the shelf in the same place. I suspected I’d see that movie again.
“And this last one. This is Milk Money.”
“Right.”
I might have imagined it, but I swear the clerk almost laughed when she said that.
“I didn’t order this movie.”
“The computer thinks you did.”
“No it doesn’t. If your computer could think, it wouldn’t keep ordering the same wrong movie over and over. Unless it can think and for some reason it hates me. Is that it? Is that what you’re saying? Are you saying your computer is alive and it’s out to get me? Is it? Is that what you’re saying? ARE YOU TELLING ME TO BE AFRAID OF YOUR COMPUTER?”
Now it was her turn to have a special expression.
“So...this isn’t the movie you wanted?”
“No, I wanted a movie called Milk & Money. Note the ampersand between the word Milk and the word Money. It’s Milk AND Money. There’s an and. An and. Andandandandand. It’s from 1997. It’s a romantic comedy. It’s about a guy who blows up a video store using a bomb shaped like Melanie Griffith.”
“Oh, right. No problem.”
“No! Don’t order it. Don’t order anything.”
“You want me to cancel the other movie too?”
“What other movie?”
“Cherry 2000.”
“I, uh...damn. No, I’ll take that one. But don’t order anything else.”
I left the shop, defeated and deflated but hell bent on getting that awful sounding Milk & Money movie for spite if nothing else.
I ordered it on Amazon.ca (the tiny Canadian branch of Amazon.com that operates out of a basement apartment) which informed me it “Usually ships within 3 to 5 weeks.” Okay. Fine. I’d wait. At least this time I knew the right movie got ordered.
Over two months later, Amazon.ca told me it couldn’t fill my order. It didn’t give a reason. I assumed their computer “thought” I should shop elsewhere.
So I checked Amazon.com. They said it’d ship in 24 hours, plus outrageously high shipping costs to get it into Canada (plus I’d get nailed with duty costs when it crossed the border). But Amazon.com poured on the sales pressure with the phrase “Only 1 left in stock—order soon” in red letters. I’d come this for so how could I resist? I couldn’t, that’s how.
That’s when I noticed they’d had one of those “better together” suggestions where you can buy a pair of related DVDs for the exact same price as ordering them separately. (Did you think it was a discount? Nope—check it out next time and see.) And what was their suggested bonus movie?
Milk Money.
I bet their computer “thought” that was pretty damn funny. I shook my head and ordered Milk & Money from Amazon.com. And no, I didn’t take the Better Together offer.
I looked forward to my movie shipping “in 24 hours.”
Eight days later (that’s 192 hours to me, but maybe Amazon.com’s servers are on a planet with a different spin speed) I got a note from Amazon.com telling me they couldn’t fill my order. At least they, unlike Amazon.ca, were willing to give me a reason. The reason was that the product was available from Amazon.ca and so I should order from them instead.
I would like to point out that I did not at this time kill everyone in the world.
What I did instead was give up. I just resigned myself to never seeing the crappy film I didn’t want to see anyway. Which of course means I found it. Here’s how:
A couple of days ago I noticed that the big Sam The Record Man store in downtown Toronto had started selling DVDs again. Their prices were notably higher than everyone else’s, including the shops surrounding them, but they had a good selection of horror and sci-fi movies. They also had their movies divided up by genre, which made for easier browsing.
And while I was browsing, I was surprised to see they had Milk & Money sitting on a shelf—right there in front of me like some grainy, rectangular Calista Flockhart mirage. They wanted $30 for it, but at this point they really could have asked whatever price they wanted and I was going to buy it.
So I bought the movie and I rushed home. Huzzah! Victory! And huzzah again! I’d finally gotten my hands on the damn movie I’d tried so hard to buy for so very long. I would finally be able to watch this quirky, offbeat romantic comedy made by a first time writer/director and starring a plucky group of unknown actors.
And you know what?
It sucks.
Sedna The Clowns
March 17, 2004 // Link
Astronomers at CalTech’s Palomar Observatory have found what might be our solar system’s most distant object, and they’ve named it Sedna after an Inuit goddess whose public relations firm claims she created the sea creatures of the Arctic.
Sedna could not immediately be reached for comment.
There are those who’d argue that this newfound ball of rock and ice is a planet. Then again, there are those who eat their own boogers. There are more than an average number of both among astronomers.
What kind of choice is Sedna for a name? Isn’t there some sort of baby name book issued to astronomers who stumble across orbiting rubble? Can it really be true that the best they could come up with was a half-fish lady with dubious claims to aquatic creation?
The name Sedna is pretty high up on the Big List Of Worst Names For A (So-Called) Planet. It’s wedged between #37, Matt LeBlanc, and #39, any other Friends cast member. Essentially, Sedna is worse than naming it after a sitcom actor, but not quite as bad as naming it after a sitcom actor who also makes monkey movies.
Why did we have to stick with the convention of naming planets after gods anyway? We’re already stuck with god-based names for the other planets and for so many other things, such as the days of the week: we got Tuesday from Tyr, the Steel Belted God; Odin the All Father, or God Of The Rhythm Method, gave us Wednesday; we got Thursday from Thor, a character from a Douglas Adams novel and thus one of the last days to get named (before the early 90’s Wednesday was just really long); Frida, AKA Frigga, gave us Friday, and she was the god they used to thank when they’d say “thank god it’s Friday because that Wednesday seemed to last forever”; we got Saturday from Saturn, the god of fixed price automobiles; and the gods of the sun and the moon (Helios/Apollo and Artemis/Diana) happened to give us Sunday and Monday, but by a staggering coincidence that was just a staggering coincidence.
So god names are all around us, but we have a great excuse for that: they were named after Roman/Greek gods because the Romans and the Greeks believed the objects in the night sky were their gods, and that in turn was because the Romans and the Greeks were superstitious nitwits. Today, we can employ these planetary names and feel smug and superior and evolved. But how can we feel more evolved than the silly planet namers of the past when the naming took place mere weeks ago?
(An aside: Uranus, Neptune, and Mercury weren’t observed by the Romans and the Greeks, but that’s only because they were at war so often that whenever anybody took a break to look up and count the planets they’d never get past five before being stabbed in the chest by some mindless juggernaut of a Spartan. Unfortunately, modern astronomy is held back by that same difficulty at most university campuses in the midwest even today. End of aside.)
(Another aside: Percy Lowell had searched for a ninth planet, which he called Planet X because although he was a great astronomer he was very bad with roman numerals. He did manage to record images of the new planet but then he died in 1916 without realizing it—making him doubly famous not only as a successful astronomer but as the first undead one. Pluto was then rediscovered by Clyde Tombaugh, who wanted to name it Clyde Tombaugh’s Planet Of Large Breasted Women. The planet’s final name was instead supplied by an eleven year old schoolgirl in Oxford, England, who, while obviously a fan of cartoon dogs, clearly did not have a knack for marketing the benefits of investing in manned space missions the way that Tombaugh did. In the end, though, the world came to realize too late that Planet X will always remain the coolest name we could have ever given to a planet. I for one advocate changing the Earth’s name to that at once, if only because we’d eventually get to greet space aliens with the phrase “Welcome to Planet X!” They’d think we were the coolest people in the galaxy. End of aside.)
If we must adhere to the god-naming tradition, why not pick a cooler one than a half-fish lady? Why settle for a touchy-feely politically correct deity choice like a flippered Inuit god instead of sticking with the hack and slash types that have served us so well in the past? Isn’t it a little late in the game to try to ensure everyone’s god gets some ice time?
Of course, it could have been worse. If we’d discovered this planet during the dot com boom our solar system could have been Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Pets.com.
Speaking of which, wasn’t this planet naming a huge missed opportunity for funding space agencies? They could have raffled off the name to the highest bidding sect. If churches can afford to buy their parishioners thousands of tickets to The Passion Of The Christ they could certainly pool their funds to bid on a planet named after ol’ Number One.
Or we could have donated the name to a religion for the betterment of all mankind, along with a note that read “If we name this planet after your god, do you promise to stop blowing people up in his name?”
Probably too much to ask.
Of course, the whole subject is moot because Sedna is not a planet anyway. It’s far too far, and it’s far too small.
Sedna is too far to be a planet because it is 90 times farther from the sun than the Earth is, and twice as far from the sun as anything else we even consider to be part of the solar system. Sedna is so far out that it takes 10,500 years to orbit the sun. Calling Sedna a planet is like saying you’ve discovered a new Chicago suburb...in Egypt.
Sedna is too small to be a planet because it’s less than half the size of our moon. If we ever colonize this thing, what kind of travel slogan are we going to have? “Come to Sedna, where everything is walking distance!” Nothing should be a planet if it’s small enough to be misplaced.
I’ve never even been fully sold on the idea that Pluto is a planet, and that ex Planet X is much larger than this fish-woman planetoid. Astronomers continue to debate the definition of what a planet is, with many arguing for “an object which is more massive than the total mass of all the other bodies in a similar orbit” (which rules out Pluto). I prefer to be guided by the concept of “an object which is more massive than the total mass of Cagney and Lacey” (which also rules out Mercury).
So in the end it doesn’t matter that this distant pebble has been given the unfortunate handle of Sedna because it’s not a planet anyway. It’s clearly not a planet, and nothing that anybody says or does here on Earth will ever convince me to agree that Sedna is a planet.
Except renaming it after me.
I’ve Got Three Thumbs Up Already
March 24, 2004 // Link
As I sit here downloading some Rush tunes (I don’t want them, but Canadian content laws dictate that I must illegally download one Canadian song for every ten other songs I illegally download) I’ve been trying to decide which movie to go see. As usual, I’ve been using online movie listings to find out what’s playing where. And as usual, I’m voyeuristically drawn to the movie reviews posted by my fellow film fans.
Thanks to the atomic space magic of the Internet, there are many chances for you to make your opinion of movies well known. Most movie listing sites let you add your own reviews, as do film discussion sites like Overly Ripe Tomatoes (pronounced “tow my toes”) and Ain’t It Trans Fat (also pronounced “tow my toes”).
In my endless quest to be That Helpful Guy Who’s Good To Know, I’m happy to present: That Helpful Guy Who’s Good To Know’s Guide To Reviewing Movies On The Internet, or Everything I Learned About Movie Reviews I Learned By Trolling AICN. As Bill Cosby would say, be careful or you might learn something. Or was it be careful or you might eat pudding? I think both are equally apt.
The first step in reviewing a movie on the Internet is to see the movie. Clearly, this step is optional. In fact, it would appear to be actively discouraged.
Now that you’ve seen (or hopefully haven’t seen) a movie, give some thought to how you’d summarize your feelings about its direction, story, acting, camera work, and so forth. By “some thought” I mean “no thought.” By “no thought” I mean “are you done yet?”
It’s important to remember that every movie is either the best movie you’ve ever seen or the worst movie you’ve ever seen. Feel free to call it the best or worst movie of all time—or better yet, both!—but only if you’re under 14 years old and thus have a keen grasp of what “all time” means.
Ask yourself, aloud, if there was a cute girl or boy in the film? If so, your review should mention the actor and the fact that she or he is attractive. This is called “cinematography.” Let your reader know whether or not you’d like to go out with this actor; this is important information that many beginning movie reviewers forget to include. Be specific when you describe the hotness of the actor by varying the number of Os, Ts and exclamation points in “SOOOOO HOTTT!!”
If you did not enjoy the movie, it’s important to keep in mind the fact that the director and/or lead actors have wronged you in an intentional and vindictive way. Comment on their characters—not the roles they play, but their persona and individual traits. Leave their acting out of it. This time it’s personal.
Be sure to type the word “**SPOILERS**” if you include even the most minor detail about the film, such as its genre or the fact that it exists. In fact, you should include a spoiler warning in all cases aside from when you give away a major plot twist. In such a case, the phrase “As everyone knows” works better as a lead in.
There might be a place to type a subject for you post. Don’t be fooled: the “subject” line is used exclusively for the first few words of the post itself. Try your best to ensure this results in a nonsensical and obscure subject, and that snipping these words off the front of your post will make it nigh impossible to wrestle any meaning out of your opening sentence. That’s Internet gold!
Before you finish up your review, glance at earlier reviews to see if anyone has disagreed with you in the least way. If so, be sure to draw the world’s attention to the fact that the other reviewer is mentally deficient and sexually unequipped. I think you’ll find “re-re assninja” is a handy catch phrase.
You’ll probably have a chance to rate the film, perhaps out of five or ten or thumbs. There are only two valid choices: the lowest possible rating, or the highest possible rating. Online review sites could save a lot of bandwidth by simply presenting a pop-up menu with 0 and 10 as the only two choices. Pick either the highest or the lowest rating at random.
Now that you’ve written your review, it’s time to spell check it. To make this step more convenient, I’ve created a handy Internet Spell Checker for you. Just print out the following line and keep it nearby:
N0 SPE11ING ERR0RS.
Now, whenever you want to spell check something for posting on the Internet, simply look at that page and feel assured that your diction and syntax are perfect. I know, I know: that’s a lot more effort than most of you are used to putting into spelling for Internet posts. Baby steps.
Now post your message.
Now post it again. And again. And one more time for good measure. Oh what the heck, post it again.
Now post a new message about how you didn’t mean to multiple post. Now post that again, too.
Voila, you’re an internet movie reviewer! If you follow these steps you’ll be thumbing-up or down with the best of them because this is the best movie reviewing guide of all time!!! And if you disagree with that, you are a re-re assninja.