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Things 25: Dead Fantasy, People Bucket, Oh No Pigeons

(Originally sent August 2008)

This week’s film
Clone Wars was terrible as a film, but it could be okay when it comes out as a kids’ TV series this autumn.

Next Week’s film
I keep going to American comedies and regretting it, but I think there may be something in Get Smart. I particularly like the ‘neither of us is dead’ bit from the start of the trailer:
Trailer: http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=YJIAdF8SY2M
Imdb: 7.3
Rotten Tomatoes: 52%

A Puzzle
You would expect the abilities of humans to remain about the same over 100 years, and Olympic records to be broken at an ever slower rate. But this is not the case – it seems as if the athletes of one decade are generally better than those of the previous. Why is this?

Last week’s puzzle came from here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041127085423/http://fermat.ma.rhul.ac.uk/laurence/puzzles.html
(Dug out from the archive because it used to be hosted on a secret machine we had hidden in the maths department to act as a file sharing facilitator, which was eventually rumbled)

[Now mirrored here – T.M. 18/10/10]

A video (highlight of this week’s things!)
I like extreme things, things people have created where they haven’t let themselves be burdened by what’s been done before, or what people expect, or what makes sense. This is why I like films like Speed Racer and Day Watch.

And things like “Dead Fantasy I”, where one guy has used his favourite female character models from the games Final Fantasy and Dead or Alive and choreographed the most insane battle royale imaginable. Watch nice quality version over on Game Trailers, or just see this YouTube version if you’re impatient:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5v0_TjBxY8 (both links died, try this link instead – T.M. 17/5/22)

If you liked that, look for “Dead Fantasy II” which, somewhat unbelievably, is even more extreme.

A link
‘People bucket‘ is a silly fun little game in which you throw people into a bucket, found on one of the sites that is linking people to Talking pets.

A quote
Julia, earlier this week: “I believe in doing everything in moderation. Except cigarettes or alcohol.”

A picture
A comic from ‘Pictures for sad children’, for anyone that has ever been saddened by seeing one pigeon hassling another (mirrored here if that link breaks).

(You can now buy the t-shirt).

I also recommend the sequence on “how nerds destroy the world”, which begins here. (For context, the main guy is a ghost who has regrets and is destroying the technological gadgets he feel he wasted his life on)

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Things 24: 5 Easy Pieces, Clever Fountain, Innate Hypocrisy

(Originally sent August 2008)

This week’s film
Actually, I managed to resist seeing Space Chimps.

Next Week’s films
The Clone Wars. As I forecast many years ago, Star Wars is moving into TV series, but they realised they could release a feature-length pilot episode of the CG series in cinemas. I’m not expecting much. The live-action TV series, still a few years away, seems more promising to me.
Trailer: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zPI48Ti548c
Imdb: Not yet rated
Rotten Tomatoes: 27%

If I’m feeling mad I may also go to see ‘You Don’t Mess With Zohan’ purely because I like the character trope of a nice peace-loving guy that happens to be totally badass and can catch bullets in mid-air :
Trailer: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BzPlTvdkEvA
Imdb: 5.7
RT: 34%

A Puzzle
A stripper hands you a perfectly square piece of paper and a scisors. She tells you to divide it into 5 pieces of equal area without using a ruler or a compass. Can it be done? If so, how? If not, why?

Bonus puzzle
Where did I get the above puzzle from? (This is very difficult, but I just thought I’d throw it out there as it is at least theoretically knowable. The spelling of ‘scisors’ is in the original.) [No longer as hard as it used to be – T.M. 18/10/10]

A video
As with all great ideas, it seems obvious in retrospect. How clever can a fountain be?
(Video is rather long and you don’t miss too much if you skip through it a bit).

A link
A fantastic experiment that demonstrates how hypocrisy is innate to human beings – make sure you read the bit where they introduce wrist-bands towards the end as that is the most important result.

A bunch of related quotes
Arther C. Clarke said:

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

My friend Laurence said:

“Any technology that is distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.”

Hanlon’s Razor states:

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

Someone on Wikipedia says:

“Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. [citation needed]”

A picture
Eric Poulton’s entry for the Last Man Standing competition at ConceptArt.org; click through to his site to view the full fantastically deep image, with convenient ‘flip’ button in the bottom right. (If link breaks, I’ve mirrored the image here).

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Things 23: Google Trends, Talking Pets, Growing Beard

(Originally sent August 2008)

This week’s colon-heavy sequels
X-Files: I Want To Believe: Only for hard-core X-Files continuity-followers, does not warrant a big screen.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army: Great example of how to do a ridiculous and silly film that leaves the audience smiling.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor: Great example of how to do a ridiculous and silly film that leaves an audience feeling they wasted their time and money.

Next Week’s films
Next week I may take myself to see Space Chimps, purely because I heard that the second half goes crazy psychedelic and makes no sense, which is often a good sign.

IMDb: 3.7/10, RT: 34%.

Er… perhaps not then.

A Puzzle
Google Trends shows search volume over time, which is often fascinating. For example, we can see that in the eternal battle between pirate and ninja, 2004 was a key turning point.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=pirate%2C+ninja&ctab=0&geo=GB&geor=all&date=all&sort=0

You can also use it to track the popularity of different things rather well. For example, the decline of the wrist watch as mobile phones render them redundant:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=wrist+watch&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Given all this, how do you explain the following apparent decline?

http://www.google.com/trends?q=mobile+phone&ctab=0&geo=GB&date=all&sort=0

Quote
As Yasmin is leaving, here’s a line I remember from her that I would love to get into a screenplay some day:
Yasmin: “Oh, I’m not looking for a man to marry. I just want a man to… buy me dinner.”

Link
This week it has to be Talking Pets!
http://www.talkingpets.org/

Video
Nursery rhymes performed by modern artists (just audio really, the visuals are cobbled together by someone with MS Paint):

Picture
Me growing a beard.

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Old

Things 22: Transplant Problem, Fantastic Contraption, Profile Pictures

(Originally sent August 2008)

This week’s… thing
Didn’t end up seeing any films last week, but I did end up getting my thesis bound for submission.

Next Week’s films
I’ll be watching the new X-Files movie.   6.8/10 | 32%

I’ll be trying to get a ticket for the preview of Hellboy II.   7.9/10 | 88%

I’ll be seeing The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.   unrated | 11%

Woohoo!

Puzzle
Last week we considered the ‘trolley problem’. If the people concerned are indistinguishable, then the vast majority of people choose to divert the trolley and kill one to save the many. (The few that disagree with this generally consider the action of diverting the trolley makes you culpable for the death, whereas not doing anything leaves you inculpable even though more people die).

This week it’s time for the follow up!

A brilliant transplant surgeon has five patients, each in need of a different organ, each of whom will die without that organ. Unfortunately, there are no organs available to perform any of these five transplant operations. A healthy young traveller, just passing through the city the doctor works in, comes in for a routine checkup. In the course of doing the checkup, the doctor discovers that his organs are compatible with all five of his dying patients. Suppose further that if the young man were to disappear, no one would suspect the doctor.

In the doctor’s place, would you kill the young man to save the five, or spare him and let the five die?

Quote
Overheard conversation as I got on the tube the other day:

Man: “Go on then, what did you do that was really evil.”
Woman: “Well, I killed my daughter.”
Man: “Yeah, I guess that is pretty evil.”
[slightly awkward pause]
Woman: “I also killed two other main characters.”

Link
A brilliant game to test your inventiveness:

http://fantasticcontraption.com/

Video
Usually I filter out the things that I know will only really appeal to me and are unlikely to be of interest to anyone else. But I enjoyed this video so much I had to share it anyway.

It’s a great example of today’s collaborative culture – the videogame music from Final Fantasy 4 was originally composed by one guy, then some other (Japanese) nutters remade it with lyrics for the bad guys that the music was the theme for, then some artist made a video version using their illustrations to illustrate the song, then someone else took that and added English subtitles! Copyright law has a lot of catching up to do.

A picture
PhD comics came up with this insightful segmentation of profile pictures.