Category: goo brain

Christmas Fear

Last night I was watching Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, as I’m wont to do around this time of year, and I noticed something.

Here’s a modern representation of one of the show’s classic characters.
Yukon Cornelius FigureSure, everyone loves Yukon Cornelius, but something is missing.
Yukon Cornelius with friend
Figure it out?

Here’s the truth about Cornelius: the man packs heat.

We don’t allow the characters in children’s shows to carry guns anymore, as demonstrated by the infamous erasing of weaponry in ET, and, in a way, it’s a bit of a shame, as I think some of the magic we’ve lost in children’s films is due to the disconnect with reality.

When we attempt to create an excessively padded play-space, we may accidentally teach kids that there are no such things as knives – then, when they do encounter them, they have no respect for the gravitas of the situation, and they end up throwing them at each other.

Still, the reality is, if you came across a fellow carrying a knife, a hatchet, and a handgun, in the middle of a blizzard, you’d probably just let him go on rambling about the abominable snowman as you departed at top speed.
Abominable Snowman

Why We Need Annoying People Sometimes

LobsterI get a lot of guff for having a picky palette – largely due to my distaste for the insects of the sea – and I want to re-iterate a point I tried to make back in episode 037, Beef-pocalypse.

Variety in behavior isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. I may be picky, but that’s a survival trait that puts me in a certain statistical bracket where I’m unlikely to be poisoned by an ocean-born toxin. This spectrum is what makes us so resilient during wide-spread disasters, even if it comes across as an annoying refusal to eat at Red Lobster.

There are those amongst us who are the exotic mushroom tasters, just as there are those amongst us who fly experimental jets, and, although the one may not seem as romantic as the other, they’re both holding up the fight on one of humanity’s frontiers.

To those trailblazers: I applaud you – I just won’t dine with you.

How Not To Make Money (Newton Force)

Whatcha gonna do?
Everyone knows Sir Isaac Newton for his work on physics, but were you aware that he also did a lot in the field of criminal law?

All of this post’s quotes are selections from the Wikipedia:

As warden of the Royal Mint, Newton estimated that 20 percent of the coins taken in during The Great Recoinage were counterfeit. Counterfeiting was high treason, punishable by the felon’s being hanged, drawn and quartered. Despite this, convicting the most flagrant criminals could be extremely difficult. 

When I first heard this I assumed he was just a figurehead, or at least simply the creative mind behind certain measures. (For example, he had an inscription placed along the rim of British coins to stymy “clippers”, folks who would trim the edges of silver coins for the metal’s value.) Further reading proved this out somewhat – the title was intended as mostly ceremonial.

Gravity: It's the LawClick the image for an interesting side-trip into the history of The Gravity Poster

Still, something funny happened: Sir Isaac Newton didn’t take the position lightly, and instead decided to get his Steven Seagal on.

Disguised as a habitué of bars and taverns, he gathered much of that evidence himself. […] Newton had himself made a justice of the peace in all the home counties. Then he conducted more than 100 cross-examinations of witnesses, informers, and suspects between June 1698 and Christmas 1699. Newton successfully prosecuted 28 coiners. 

I love the idea of a bewigged Newton prowling from gin joint to bordello, his eyes on other men’s money. Did he carry some weapon for his own protection? A knife in the pocket, in case things should go sour? Was there some point where the father of modern physics was clutching at the hilt with a sweaty palm, ready for action, only to have the tension of the moment broken by his potential foe breaking into a smile and declaring he was “just kiddin'”?

It seems he even had an arch-nemesis of sorts:

One of Newton’s cases as the King’s attorney was against William Chaloner. […] Chaloner made himself rich enough to posture as a gentleman. Petitioning Parliament, Chaloner accused the Mint of providing tools to counterfeiters[…] He petitioned Parliament to adopt his plans for a coinage that could not be counterfeited, while at the same time striking false coins. 

Newton actually brought Chaloner to trial, but couldn’t make the charges stick after the counterfeiter’s connections pulled some strings.Newtonian LawIt was at this point in my reading that I realized Newton, like some high-sock wearing Dirty Harry, was not a fellow to be messed with.

Newton put him on trial a second time with conclusive evidence. Chaloner was convicted of high treason and hanged, drawn and quartered. 

Not Exactly Bumfights

From the film GladiatorI learned something new about gladiators last night – they were apparently rather rotund.

From archaeology.org:

Consuming a lot of simple carbohydrates, such as barley, and legumes, like beans, was designed for survival in the arena. Packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds.

So they’d be easier to see from the cheap seats?

No.

“Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat,” Grossschmidt explains. “A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight.” Not only would a lean gladiator have been dead meat, he would have made for a bad show. Surface wounds “look more spectacular,” says Grossschmidt. “If I get wounded but just in the fatty layer, I can fight on,” he adds. “It doesn’t hurt much, and it looks great for the spectators.”

Archaeology.org also has a glossary of gladiator terms, including:

Subligaculum: A traditional loincloth worn by gladiators

Not to be confused with “The Santa’s Beard”, my own, holiday-themed, traditional loincloth.

Women vs Pop Culture

The Ties That BindFound strangled to death, with his own tie, three days later.

After my recent post regarding the problems with older films, I got thinking about gender and popular culture.

I choose to believe this is sarcasm.

You mean a woman could shatter it over the edge
of a table and ram the jagged end into your condescending man-bits?

Locating examples of vintage chauvinistic advertising is depressingly easy.
Wrong

Hard to tell if this is any better than the original ad, which, instead of “wives”, said “black people.”

What’s frustrating, to me at least, is that there seems to be a general assumption that these are relics of some ancient past, and not, say, something our own parents would have commonly seen in magazines lying around the house.
To be fair, that man is happy just to kill ANYONE.

Is it always illegal to be drunk at work? Don’t ask Mr Hobo.

I’m sure glad we’ve moved beyond our chauvinistic past.
Which is more vomit inducing, the ad or the sandwich?Gang-rape is never funny.

The Dogs Of War

Airedale Terriers in gas-masks I recently heard that Chows (AKA Chow Chows or Chowdrens), were once used to de-throat injured enemy combatants on ancient Chinese battlefields. I rather suspect this is another bit of historical urban legend, especially as I can find no reference to such brutality on the internet, but it did remind me of the somewhat more heroic real-life tasks given to Airedale Terriers.

A sample, from the wikipedia:

“The Airedale was extensively used in World War I to carry messages to soldiers behind enemy lines and transport mail. They were also used by the Red Cross to find wounded soldiers on the battlefield. There are numerous tales of Airedales delivering their messages despite terrible injury. An Airedale named ‘Jack’ ran through half a mile of enemy fire, with a message attached within his collar. He arrived at headquarters with his jaw broken and one leg badly splintered, and right after he delivered the message, he dropped dead in front of its recipient.”

Canines, of course, have a long history with war – but did you know you can buy replica armour for your mutt?Replica Dog ArmourThis is based on a real Roman design, although I believe the original was made of metal and not felt, and is yours for the low price of $150 from Collars & Couture. My favourite part of the ad-copy?

Helm and Greaves also available.

A Cup Of The Clown's

While out and about this weekend, suffering the same store-based woes faced by many this season, I spent some time trapped in a McDonald’s with two eight year olds. It isn’t the first time I’ve tried my mouth at their coffee, but I’m hoping it will be the last. The reason I bring it up, however, is to discuss something I found odd about the way Ronald goes about dispensing his caffeine.

The fluid itself is terrible, or at least in my opinion, so we won’t bother debating the flavour merits. What IS interesting though, is the sheer level of design they’ve put into delivering their vile clown-juice. The cups are double walled, a feature that saves you from the two-cup or little-ring-thing techniques, and the lid, when compared to the lids offered by other coffee-chuckers, is perfection.

I’m not saying you should check out McD’s brew, but I am saying someone needs to trick a Starbucks executive into holding one of their receptacles.

Go Download Yourself

Deep Thought
The problem I have with the futurist idea of downloading your brain into a computer is the same problem Dr. McCoy had with using transporters on Star Trek.

His complaint was simple: despite the fact that a version of you pops out at the far end, the process dictates that the current you is destroyed, a blue print of your former body is sent to some distant point, then a new you is assembled.

Despite my great love for technology, and the possibilities it will be presenting us in the next hundred years, I do not believe the process of dumping your brain into a computer is ever going to catch on as anything more than a disturbingly precise last will and testament, or possibly as some sort of wisdom dispensing novelty that will drive Japanese ancestor worship into the stratosphere.
The Tron Laser
Imagine:

You’re sitting in a chair, an over-sized helmet held in place via a black chin strap, a tingling at your scalp. The process has taken three hours, but finally the technician who helped you into the rig comes back into the room and brightens the lighting.

“All done,” she says.

“That’s it?” you ask.

“That’s it,” she replies.

So you walk out, exiting the office with an awkward wave to the receptionist. Sure, there’s another you somewhere, a digital-you that may continue on for thousands of years with a little luck and a decent back up routine, but you’ve still got to get your left leg to stop being asleep after sitting so long in an awkward position, and there’s the drive home to consider.

You’ll never be that machine, and you’ll likely never think of it as anything more than an offshoot of yourself, a child that might have some sort of immortal superiority complex.Master Controller From Tron

An Odd Question

Dancers for Empire Of The Sun as photographed by B. MayerI was listening to a podcast the other day, and the host and his cohorts were discussing swimming with dolphins. The idea was presented that a lady pregnant with twins shouldn’t be allowed in the pool, as the animals will become confused by the dual-babies and attack the woman and her unborn.

Is this just an urban legend thats grown up around the insurance hazards of letting a pregnant person do something strenuous?

Google hasn’t provided an answer, and I’d be interested to hear if anyone has heard this before/might be able to shed some light on the situation.