Gears of War 3

So today I was scrolling through the Google, and it revealed to me a pretty important piece of news if you follow the entertainment industry. It read, "Gears of War 3 trailer, release date announced on the Jimmy Fallon show". Now those of you who have known me for some time know how I must have reacted, with my extensive history with the Gears of War franchise and all. That reaction of course was, "Jimmy Fallon has his own show?!?!?"

Inconceivable!

This was very similar to my shock about three years ago when I found out Carson Daly had a late night show. I was surprised when I found out that he had not, in fact, been killed by the nineties.

Inconceivable!

I just don't understand why such a major video game announcement was made on the Jimmy Fallon Show. I mean the audience probably couldn't even hear the trailer over Jimmy Fallon giggling to himself. To think, Conan forced to wander into the realm of cable while Jimmy Fallon sits there laughing away at himself. The only word I can use to describe this travesty is,

Canadaland and the Kingdom of the Crystal Hockey Puck

"UUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuasdlkfjasdlfkjasdnkvbdfakfjsdlds..."

I'll be honest, I'm paraphrasing that last bit, but it was a lot unintelligible blather anyway. I ran as if a giant beast that could eat me and shit out a gold brick was chasing me. I ran that way because that was exactly what was happening. For something the size of the god damned pentagon, it was fast.

"Keel dee humon, ehhhhh."

Even the god damned Aurum Fecalis says eh. I hate this place so much. No amount of money was worth putting up with these pinkofrostbacks. I ran down the sewers, nearly slipping on the remains of some canucks poutine, I ran into that stinky cavernous horror hoping that the marines were at the other end with a black hawk. A black hawk with a towel and some soap, and perhaps a nuclear weapon to destroy this god forsaken excuse for a magical wonderland.

Well I didn't get that. Just as the Aurum Fecalis was about smelling distance away (and let me tell you, not a distance you want to be with in), Keanu Reeves came bursting around the corner dual wielding uzi's and let the Aurum Fecalis have a face full of lead.

"Woah, eh."

"What the flying fuck are you doing in a sewer and why are you dressed like Neo."

"Inaudible gibberish, eh."

Once again I paraphrased, but he has this amazing ability to make a whole sentence just sound like an extended woah. I stopped asking questions, an unspeakable move for a detective, but the use of logic was going to be useless here. I just nabbed an Uzi from the Woah-master and began to hunt for an exit. That didn't take long as soon the ceiling was lifted off of the place and several members of the Edmonton Oilers repelled in armed with sharpened hockey sticks. They grabbed Keanu and I and we were pulled to the surface. There we saw Tim Horton and a small contingent of Canucks waiting on the surface.

"Welcome back, eh?"

"I am not talking to you, this is all your fault you massive pile of douche. And how the hell did you lift the roof off down there?"

Timmy just pointed up. What I saw left my jaw a little slack.

"Since when did you enlist Paul motherfucking Bunyan?"

"Last week, eh."

"What are you guys doing?"

"We move on Quebec in the morning, eh. We're just waiting for our Navy to get here from Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, eh."

"Navy? You mean a couple of fishing boats with a potato gun glued on."

"Do not insult hundreds of years of Canadian Naval Tradition, eh! There are aboot seven on there way, eh!"

"Okay, 20 canucks, Keanu Reeves, Paul Bunyan and 7 barely modified fishing boats versus the rest of Canada."

"We also have a couple hunded Moostauros, eh."

"A couple hundred whats?"

A stampede of moose joined the party, except they weren't any kind of moose. They had a lumberjack for a head, a lumberjack dual wielding axes. I was left speechless, they were just so awesome. All of their axes were covered in blood, lots of blood. Their manly beards in combination with their flannel shirts running into the body of a fucking moose made them look like unstoppable killing machines.

"Okay, that'll be handy."

Suddenly the camp was ambushed by fifty French Canadians. They sprang from the bushes with baguettes held as if they were foils. Some of them even had emptied bottles of wine that were broken to make a sharp pointy bit. A battle was about to break out, of epic proportions. I'm talking like Kingdom of Heaven proportions, like Lord of the Rings proportions, like Pirate of the Caribbean 3 proportions if both sides hadn't pussied out so two ships in a whirlpool could kind of fight. Like seriously, what the hell? That scene had potential! It would have...

Long story short, Uzi's are effective weapons, and so far everyone was all prepared for hand to hand shit. Like, one magazine and they were all pretty dead. Like pretty damned dead. Like, baguettes do not block bullets very good.

I just looked back at Timmy. Keanu was standing next to him, gun on the ground. He was going to try and do Kung fu to them!

"Seriously. You guys never thought to use a gun. It was really easy."

There was just silence. Finally Timmy simply just said, "Huh, eh."

A Green Revolution (Fueled by Christian Morals and the Wachowski Bros.)

The following is a modest proposal for green energy.

In spite of my current religious beliefs of science and FNORD, I do come from a Catholic upbringing. I remember reading about the exploits of Jesus H. Christ as he used his magnificent God powers to make zombies and mass produce the ingredients for tuna fish sandwiches. I read them all in my Bible Picture Book, which had few words and just a lot of pictures of Jesus doing his thing. The thing is, Jesus always seemed to be all glowy. This was always very distracting to me when I was younger. Jesus and many of the saints always seemed to have a light bulb for a head. As a scientist I begin to wonder if they are sick or irradiated, maybe Jesus stumbled into one of the Roman Empire's notorious toxic waste dumps and there gained his super powers.

After discussing the phenomena with colleagues, we came to the conclusion that he was emitting pure, purity. Then I began to wonder if there was someway to harness pureness. Comparing the luminosity exuding from the head of Jesus Christ, it is approximately equivalent to the light output of a standard 100 watt light bulb. So if we had a spare Jesus kicking around, we could potentially draw 100 watts of power from pureness output. Unfortunately we don't have a spare Jesus, and I hear we still have a bit of a wait before he comes back to say howdy.

Sup guys?

So, where does one get purity in this impure age. All of us are plagued by sin thanks to modern society and the internet. There is only one true source of purity in this day and age, devoid of original and all them other sins. Recently baptized babies. Now considering they are not Jesus, we should probably expect about a half a Jesus worth of power output. There is also the problem that moments after baptism the baby is bound to offend the Lord by pooping in his pants or accidentally yelling a curse word they learned from their parents to the church.

Science has provided us with a solution to this inevitable purity reduction anomaly, hydrogen sulfide. Scientists have been working with hydrogen sulfide as a means of putting human beings into a metabolically inert state. This means that if we can develop a process of injecting the recently baptized young with hydrogen sulfide, we could have religiously fueled power output that will not diminish and will not require feeding. They will be trapped in a permanently pure state for as long as we need to hold them there. And since the babies won't need to breathe, we could have limitless power with a carbon footprint of zero.

Now unfortunately, here in the United States, we have a rather annoying sense of morality that could prevent this fantastic technology from taking off. But I think that there is one nation that could fulfill the dream of Pure Power Conversion Processes, China. With their major steps in population control and belief in the idea of the greater good overriding the rights and happiness of the individual, they are a remarkable candidate for this technology. Also they are the worlds second highest consumer of electricity, at 3,640,000,000 MW*h/yr.

So how to implement it. Well at half a Jesus worth of output, we'll need over 9000 recently baptized Megababies (1 Megababy = 1,000 babies) to produce the power needed to fuel China. So if China makes an exclusive deal with the Powerthirst Corporation, they only need about 22,500 Catholic couples to produce the necessary number of babies to be baptized and then plugged into the Glorious National Power Grid of the People. Once the other nations of the world begin to see the wonderful benefits of this system, many more will follow in Chinas footsteps.

A Loss of Essence

Last November I posted about the 2010 ballot situation. There were a lot of very scary measures in circulation and I am glad to say the worst of them didn't seem to get the signatures. Just in case you forgot though,

Michael S.Heath

70 Sewall Street

Augusta, ME 04330

(H) (207) 445-4929 (W) 622-7634

That is the address of Hitler. My Discordian fellows know what to do.

So, what's left of that mess? The two measures currently in circulation involve fluoridation of water and a casinos in Oxford county. I find the fluoridation of water measure very funny thanks to Dr. Strangelove. I decided to send a letter of approval to Jacqueline.

For Glorious Man Night

As many of you know, I am a huge proponent of nights of manly excess. During my tenure at the Maine School of Sleep-deprivation and Malnutrition, I ran a series of Man Nights, where manly men engaged in gross displays of carnivorous feasting whilst watching films of a generally explosive and plotless nature. Knowing this I was very interested when Mr. Victor Tardiff introduced me to The Expendables.

I was reminded of this movie again today when Hijinks Ensue covered it. It's true, the movie has a fuck load of actors. Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke. Arnold Schwartzenager is in it, in spite his gubernatorialness. Brittany Murphy is supposedly in it even though shes been dead for like a fucking year. I am sad Segull and Van Damme turned it down. The idea of one big grandiose tribute to all that is manly and bad ass would be beautiful. At this point I'm waiting for them to announce that Bruce Lee and John Wayne are going to be digitally rendered into the cast and that Chuck Norris is going to fight Mr. T, I mean it's getting close to that in the ridiculously over the top nature of this casting roster.

With this and the A-Team movie (seriously, fucking tank-parachute), this is going to be a good summer for men.

Canadaland Revolutions

If your just catching up, this is part 3. Part one is here.

I want to start writing this part of my tale by saying this. I really, really, really hate communists. I am so glad I got that off my chest.

"Timmy."

"Yes, Mr. McClane, eh?"

"I quit."

I started walking away from the waffle stick town. I'm a private detective, I get hired to find a missing cat or look into adulterous couples or be a comic relief for Mel Gibson. That is the job of the private detective. Nowhere does it say that I have to fight my way through the French-communist wasteland of Quebec to fight William Shatner. Although I'm almost certain I could kick his ass I needed to get back a place where everybody hates your guts and where everyone has grown plenty of a gut to hate. The good ol' U S of A.

"We have an agreement, eh. You find my kingdom, I give you one hundred thousand American dollars, eh?"

"How many times do I have to tell you, you frenchfuck. I do not take monopoly money. Besides, the moneys been circulating in Canada. It was probably used in your socialist plots! Like water fluoridation or socialized medicine. I don't want your dirty pinko-mon..."

At that point I tripped on one of the many syrup puddles and fell down a hill. At the bottom my arm hit a maple tree and I heard a loud snap. Now seeing as the tree wasn't falling over and didn't seem to be screaming in agony, unlike myself, I came to the conclusion the snapping sound had come from me.

Instantly, and I mean instantly, like Δt = 0 seconds instantly. Like the amount of time Stephen Hawking has spent as a mountaineering tour guide. I'm talking about the amount of time it takes for a photon to stay in the same fucking spot. Zero seconds after my injury a helicopter was in the sky. I knew what it was, I had learned the smell it emits long ago. It was the smell of dirty communist doctors, flying their helicopter fueled by sunshine and farts, lightly diluted with ethanol and twigs.

"No you bastards! I am a god damned patriot and I will suffer due to my lack of insurance! I will not ride with you! I will go home and wrap this up with duct tape as Uncle Sam and Jesus intended it when they wrote the Bill of Rights!"

"You just relax, eh."

I don't really know what happened next. These commie hosers drugged me up and loaded me into their pinkocopter and flew me straight to the nearest St. Comrades Glorious Health Center of the People. It flew me right into the waiting room where I spent the next 3 agonizing days reading the same copy of Highlights magazine. Then I was moved to triage where I was injected, inspected, detected, infected and neglected by an android nurse hooked to the complicated matrix of information at the Canadian Department of Life and Communist Affairs. Then, using money from who knows where, they patched me up, drugged me up and put a cast on made of recycled fabric. They even printed a joke on it,

Q: How do you stop bacon from curling in the frying pan?

A: Take away their brooms!

I didn't get it. Do these people use brooms to fry bacon? I didn't have long to ponder it though as my frostback doctor came in.

"It seems you had a bit of a spill there, eh?"

"Why the fuck would you use a broom to fry bacon?"

"Eh?"

"And for that matter, how are wafflesticks considered decent lumber? While we're asking questions, who the hell is the payer in a single payer system?"

The doctor suddenly lost the perpetually friendly complexion that plagued everyone in this winter horrorland. "That is a question best left alone, eh?"

"No. I'm on to something, I'm a detective, I see when there is something you don't want me to know. Who pays for this?"

"You ask too many questions, eh." He reached for a large lever and pulled it. My bed fell into the abyss. And by the abyss, I mean the sewage system. I floated down this horrible river of unmentionables on my bedyacht until I reached a coliseum sized room. There I saw it. A man stood on a pulpit and yelled.

"THERE STANDS A CHALLENGER TO THE AURUM FECALIS, EH!"

I got off my bedyacht and stood before the beast. I was given a hockey stick to defend myself. Of course, it all makes sense now. The only way this single payer system could work. They've got a god damn 200 ton troll that eats refuse and shits gold!

It just sat there on top of a pile of gold the size of the god damned Pyramids of god damned Giza. Then it roared at me and began to charge. It was then, that I bravely ran away.

"FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...."

TO BE CONTINUED

Live Blogging from Intro Psychology.

3:30 - Just got back my paper. 30/40 at the bottom, but all the criteria above it total to 35/40. Not losing twelve and a half points to bad math.

3:45 - Talking about how only psychologists ask questions about how things work, the physicist inside of me disagrees.

3:50 - She just said Darwin founded gravity.

3:51 - Oh dear, she is trying to use Spock as an example.

4:12 - I believe she just had us all doing awesome face.

4:16 - Ahhhh, break.

4:28 - Teacher still not back. Masses have resorted to playing with thermostat and make it go psssshhhh.'

4:45 - Fun candid camera video. No idea how it is relevant, at all.

5:02 - Out early!

The Eleventh Hour Review

First of all I'm not here to cry out that "Matt Smith is the Doctor!" as several UK sources are screaming into the sky. I was impressed and he did far better than I had imagined. I will say this, Steven Moffat is the writer. I am a long time fan of Moffat's work, his Doctor Who episodes in the first four seasons are all in my top ten and his nineties spoof, Doctor Who and the Curse of the Fatal Death was hilarious. Ashley recently introduced me to his show Coupling and it was also fantastic and very funny.

When he was announced to take over for Russell T. Davies as head writer, I was ecstatic. I can't think of anyone better than him. Of course, at the time of that announcement, Tennant was still going to be the Doctor. When he announced his departure, I became very worried. But then I remembered, Moffat controlled his destiny. I became a bit more at ease.

So here we are in a whole new Doctor's world. New TARDIS, new companion, new screwdriver, new production team and new Doctor. That is a whole lot of new to get used to at once. This first episode was crucial and if I were in Steven's position, I would've crumbled. The point is, he had the monumental task of taking all of these Doctor Who fans who believe David Tennant was the greatest Doctor since Tom Baker, and making them believe that Matt Smith wasn't horrible. A hard task considering most came in to this series hating Smith because of the fact that he wasn't David Tennant. Moffat had one episode to convince everyone that it would be alright. One episode to convince the masses that the Doctor was still alive and kicking. In that respect, I believe he has done his job.

This isn't so much a review as it is a vote of confidence in this new crew. I miss David, I think we'll all miss him, but this new show is still the same old fun and adventure we expect. I believe Matt Smith is full of potential and I quite like his take on the Doctor. That and I love the new TARDIS. It's a strange mix of old series and new series with a lot of steampunk splashed on for good measure. Kudos to the people who designed that set, I've already gotten used to and fallen in love with it.

All that praise being said, please get the intro music fixed for next season.

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light!"

Abridged version of my Utopian Literature paper (2008).

My Utopia is not on a small island; it does not follow any specific form of government and its structure is unknown to me. It is not a place, but rather it is a time. My Utopia is quite simply the future. I am not talking about the future of a hundred years from now, but rather the future of billions of years from now. Imagine the most distant future you have ever even attempted to conceive, and then go further, much further. Look past our galactic collision with Andromeda, past the destruction of the sun, past so many things that we figure to be beyond the scope of humanity. It is a time when diverse beings of profound intelligence roam the galaxies, beings descended from us. The beauty of the future as a Utopia is that it is so very possible. To bring forth this divine future, all we must do is survive and contribute constructively to progress of humanity.

The basic principle of the future as a Utopia was outlined in an essay by Martin Seligman, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. The essay was titled The First Coming, and opened with the sentence, “I am optimistic that God may come in the end”. There are two things that are very provocative about this sentence. The first of these is that God does not come in the beginning as the creator, but rather at the end of time. The second and most important point however, is that this sentence was written by an atheist. Seligman is not referencing the Judeo-Christian God, he is instead referencing “an alternative notion of God relevant to the secular community”. The first point he makes is to abandon the idea of God as the original creator of the universe, for this is what makes God so hard to accept for the secular community. He asks us to forget the creation aspect of God and to “let the mystery of creation be consigned to the branch of physics called cosmology”.

Without the aspect of creation, that leaves us with three characteristics of what makes God, omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence. Seligman asks the question, “Does this God exist?”. If God is to be defined as a being that is omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent, it would seem impossible, with the science and technology of today, that this God could develop naturally. Then we must consider the astronomically immense future that awaits us if we have the persistence to meet it. Over this extensive period of time, biological and cultural evolution is always progressing towards greater complexity. Billions of years ago our ancestors were bacteria. So we can assume that billions of years from now, our ancestors will be as different from us as we are from bacteria. As our technology, knowledge, and positive institutions expand, we become more and more powerful. Seligman looks at this immense future and then references the list of the characteristics of God. “A process that selects for more complexity is ultimately aimed at nothing less than omniscience, omnipotence and goodness. Omniscience is arguably the ultimate end product of science. Omnipotence is arguably the ultimate end product of technology. Goodness is arguably the ultimate end product of positive institutions…So in the very longest run, we have a God who is not supernatural but who has acquired omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence through natural processes”. Simply put into mathematical terms, as the limit of humanity approaches the end of time, we constantly approach divinity.

This is similar to the Isaac Asimov short story, The Last Question, which helped inspire Seligman’s essay. In it, humanity has designed a supercomputer known as Multivac, which answers any question given to it. Multivac gives humanity the plans to directly power all of Earth with the sun. Some technicians at Multivac begin to discuss this. One of them makes the claim that humanity can run off of the Sun’s energy forever. The other reminds him that in a few billion years, the sun will burn out. He reminds the technician, “Entropy has to increase to maximum, that's all”. So they ask Multivac if entropy can be reversed, to which Multivac responds “INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER”. The story progresses until after humans have used up the sun, and the computer gives the same response, this is repeated once humans have used up all the space in the galaxy and again when humanity has spread to every galaxy in the Universe. Then entropy continues to progress and the universe begins to burn out, the computer continues to give the same response. Then humanity fuses itself into the computer, which is now built outside of space and time and works to figure out the answer to the question, “Can entropy ever be reversed?”. Finally they arrive at an answer and this being which was created by humanity and sitting outside of time says, “LET THERE BE LIGHT!” after which Asimov writes, “and there was light”. Asimov portrays humans and their technology as a God through their ability to reverse entropy, which creates a new universe.

This belief of humanity infinitely approaching divinity makes every human being very important, because we are all building blocks towards a better future. As Seligman put it, “I am optimistic that this is the door through which meaning can enter our lives…that as individuals we can be a tiny part of this process, which has at its ultimate end the bringing of a God who is omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent”. But to reach this dream, to approach the limit, we first must survive to see it. Survival is a game of problem solving on our part, but it is also a problem of probability. I tend to lean towards Sagan’s philosophy of survival, which lies in decreasing the probability of annihilation by expanding human civilization into space. In his book The Pale Blue Dot, Sagan suggest that "if we were up there among the planets, if there were self-sufficient human communities on many worlds... then the safer the human species will be”. It is our duty to survive so that the intelligent species who descend from us can continue the journey towards omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent beings.

The dangers of our extinction are more prevalent now than ever, especially as we are now entering a century when our self-destruction is becoming more practical than ever. Sir Martin Rees talks about this in his book Our Final Century in which he predicts that we have a 50% chance of surviving the 21^st century. Rees believes that “in this century not only will our world be changing faster than ever, but in new and different ways”. He goes on to discuss how technology is going to speed up our evolution. He notes that through AI and genetic enhancement, “human beings, their physique and character, have not changed for thousands of years, it may change this century”. We have great challenges ahead; for, as our world becomes more connected, a computer virus begins to have the ability to cause disaster, “indeed catastrophe could arise simply from technical misadventure, error rather than terror”.

Humanity has a lot of challenges to face if it is going to survive to see the distant future, but humans are up to the task. Humans are not ones for lying down and accepting death. “The brain stem and amygdala will always do their job of struggling to preserve life at any cost”. When catastrophe strikes, we will fight for the preservation our species and we are intelligent enough to succeed. Sir Martin Rees, although predicting a low probability of survival, believes that we are more than capable of making it. Rees recognizes that “whatever happens in this uniquely crucial century will resonate into the remote future and perhaps far beyond the Earth”. Carl Sagan knows that the next few decades will be a challenge, but he also is confident in humanity because “we humans also have a history of making long-lasting social change that nearly everyone thought impossible”.

We humans tend to think in the short term, and have a hard time imagining many thousands of years, let alone billions. I’m sure many people will look at this and think that the notion of the intelligent beings of the Universe becoming God as blasphemous or impossible. For those who see it as blasphemy, that is their religious view and I can respect that. For those who think it impossible, they are underestimating the grand scale of the future. There is plenty enough future left for an intelligent species to evolve and constantly approach a definition of God. Such beings would hold so much power in the Universe, that they could mold the entirety of space into their own personal Utopia. This is an important idea for us, because being alive in the twenty-first century means that we will be some of the most crucial building blocks to bringing about this future. It is time to take the first steps towards the future by insuring our survival. This is a fight we must begin here and spread into the cosmos, or as Dylan Thomas writes, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light!"