Richard Wiseman Reads My Mind!

I recently purchased Richard Wiseman's book Paranormality: Why we see what isn't there. Dr. Wiseman was fantastic and funny and educationally entertaining at the TAM9 in Vegas a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to read his latest.

I started reading yesterday evening, and got only 3% into the book (darned Kindle! Give me page numbers!) before discovering that Dr. Wiseman has obviously read my mind with his paranormal skills. Even more magically, he was able to PREDICT what I would have in my mind this very morning, while writing the book, a year or more ago!

Almost immediately before I started reading, I had done a search to see if wet weather really affects my knee pain like I *think* it does. Each answer I saw gave various reasons why it really does make my pain worse: pressure within the knee joint, etc.

Then I began reading. Dr. Wiseman, very early in the book, cites a study on whether or not weather affects arthritis pain!

"WHAT?" I said, "Get out of my head, Richard Wiseman!"

"I can't," he replied [in my dreams], "It's my JOB!"

At any rate, the study showed that people fool themselves into thinking the weather affects their joint pain because we are good at noticing data that verify our prior beliefs, i.e. noticing our joint pain more when it's rainy because we expect the pain to be more noticible, while discounting or ignoring it when the data don't fit our preconception, i.e. all the days the pain was worse, but there was no rain.

Thank you Dr. Wiseman! If anyone reads this, I highly recommend his blog and his book. He gives a great presentation/talk as well, if anyone has the opportunity to see him in person!

Avatar (spoilers!)

So far, we have seen this one twice, once in 3-D, but never on an IMAX screen (some provincial states have NO IMAX theatres), although me mum recommends the IMAX experience highly. She lives in another bass-ackward state, but her city has five theatres with IMAX screens! Not fair!

The story is sort of an American Indian vs Colonists allegory with some Mother Gaia and Noble Savage stuff mixed in. I told Nigel it reminded me of a futuristic sf/fantasyish Dances With Wolves with a happy ending, except that the main protagonist isn't abandoned with the Native Americans by accident, but is deliberately placed within the native culture in order to infiltrate and provide information to those who want to exploit the planet's mineral resources. The science is questionable, but because it is more fantasy than sf, that doesn't ruin anything.

While the story seemed a bit shallow, it still kept me enthralled and I still loved this movie. The effects are fantastic and beautiful. The characters are easy to love or hate. The almost three hours went by very quickly. Nigel and I have been hissing at each other (oooo, I want some fangs!) when we're annoyed and saying, "I see you," when we're feeling lovey ever since our first viewing of the movie. It was moving and fun and I would see it again (and again).

Back In The USSA - Non-Kosher Edition

Upon our return, and having finally retrieved our pets and settled into our hotel, we first went to Fred Meyer, where we purchased several pounds of bacon, ham, and cheddar cheese.

We wallowed in bacon, ham, and cheese before making bacon-suits and ham-hats for ourselves, while munching on cheese covered pork chops.

Since then, we have made a point of eating meat, preferably pork, and dairy together at least once per day, with leavened bread products, since we arrived back just as Pessach began. Bacon cheddar burgers on fat buns! Ahhhh! It is good.

Movie Review: Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

The kids and I watched this movie, again, the other day. We have all three Spy Kids movies and have enjoyed them.

It is always gratifying to see strong female lead characters in kids' movies, and Carmen Cortez (Alexa Vega) fits the bill. Carmen is smart, funny, aggressive, self-confident, bad-to-the-bone and all the things I want my daughter to know SHE can be.

In these movies, Carmen works with her younger brother, Juni (Daryl Sabara), to save the world from various villians. She and her brother, while they bicker and often don't get along, just like siblings IRL, consistently end up complementing each other's skills and saving the day together. In Spy Kids 3-D, the story focuses mainly on Juni, but Carmen gets to exhibit her special brand of kick-ass in the last third.

The Cortez family is a family of spies, and one of the pivotal messages of the films is the strength of intergenerational family ties and friend networks.

Spy Kids focuses on both the conflict between Carmen and Juni as siblings and that between the two and their parents, very nicely played by Carla Gugino and Antonio Banderas. There is also an estranged uncle, Machete (Danny Trejo), who must be enlisted in the quest to save the day, and a bogus uncle (Cheech Marin), whom they must foil early on in order to search for their parents. Other actors who appear in the three films include Tony Shalhoub, Bill Paxton, Teri Hatcher, Alan Cumming, and one of my very, very favorite actors, Steve Buscemi.

In Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams, there is conflict between kids and parents, as well as conflict and competition between other spies within the network, but now we meet the grandparents (Ricardo Montalban - yay, Mr. Roarke -, and Holland Taylor, whom I remember mostly from her fantastic role as Ursula's mother in George of the Jungle), who have conflict with the parents, but everyone, including the other spy kids and outside supporters in the network of friends, has to work together to meet the final goal.

In Spy Kids 3-D, Juni enlists the help of his grandfather to save Carmen and the world from a diabolical video game designer, The Toymaker (Sylvester Stallone!). Again, family and friends must cooperate in order to defeat The Toymaker. There is a cute Moonstruck reference at the very end, when all of the characters whose work made it possible for the good guys to prevail put their hands together, saying, "To family!" Whether or not it was director Robert Rodriguez's intention is not clear, but like in Moonstruck, the last voice is that of Uncle Machete, who says the line in Spanish, similar to Moonstruck's Johnny Camareri saying the final line in Italian.

Our family has enjoyed all three of these films. The special features include some fun sections by director Rodriguez instructing kids on how to make their own home movies, complete with special effects and sound effects. He mostly uses his son to illustrate this, and it looks fun and entertaining. Unfortunately, my kids are not yet allowed to mess with our video camera, mostly due to the fact that our NEW camera replaced our OLD camera, which worked perfectly until one of the kids decided to use it.

Another special feature is a "making of" section, which, for Spy Kids 3-D especially, is fascinating in that most of the sets are simply green screens and the final product is computer generated. Our kids were amazed to see what this entailed and Rodriguez includes enough well-explained detail to make it clear to them how it was done. They were astounded to learn that Ricardo Montalban is wheelchair-bound IRL, not just as the grandpa character, and to see how Rodriguez used CG to allow the character full mobility and super-powers as well.

Now, to my caveat: Since I've become more aware of sexist crap, I notice little things more often that are, perhaps not deliberate, but still quite annoying. For example, in Spy Kids 3-D, there is a female character, Demetra, within the game (the kids are INSIDE the game, a la Tron) who teams up with Juni and some male characters to reach a certain level to find Carmen, who is trapped in the game. At the time they decide to team up, each character says what his particular strength is, a la Aragorn's "You have my sword," Legolas's "and MY bow," and Gimli's "and MY axe!"

Here are the statements of the Spy Kids 3-D characters:
Male 1: I will use my strength!
Male 2: I will use my intelligence!
Male 3: I will use my coolness! (or something to that effect)
Female: I will use my (pause) intuition?
WTF?

But this is not just an arbitrary thing. Later in the game, Juni is challenged by The Toymaker to defeat one of the comrades or be taken out permanently, ruining any chance he might have to find Carmen and foil The Toymaker. When it looks like Game Over for Juni, Demetra sacrifices herself so that Juni can continue. The male characters just look at him and shrug. WTF?

Later on, Demetra reappears and it is discovered that she is simply a construct, a tool of The Toymaker, sent to lead Juni astray. But with an electronic tear and an exhibition of remorse and love for Juni (oh, those darned feminine emotions!), she is able to overcome her programming and, AGAIN, sacrifice herself to further Juni's goal. WTF?

So, Demetra is The Self-sacrificing one. Natch. But she is also The Siren, The Jezebel, The Traitor Eve. Natch. But she redeems herself by ANOTHER self-sacrifice, (oh, she's a whore-with-a-heart-of-gold!) and is never seen again, leaving Juni to complete his mission and eventually return to his family and his true love-interest. Fucking natch!

Thank goodness for Carmen.

Sadly, though, for Carmen fans, there are three music videos in the special features starring Alexa Vega, the actor who plays Carmen. These videos were filmed in front of a live audience of mostly preteen kids and their parents at the film premier in Austin, TX. Ms Vega, a young woman with a nice voice, gyrates and shimmies and pole-dances-without-a-pole through three songs. Augh!

There are also a couple of instances of nerdism in this movie. Upon being caught using cheats in the game, Juni and Demetra are saved by Juni's grandpa, who exposes the "Designers", who are going to throw Juni and Demetra out of the game, by exposing their IRL selves. Oh, no! They are really Computer Nerds! Below contempt! They scramble away, chittering like little mice. Later, we see the male game-player characters IRL. Turns out they are regular guys, albeit with exaggerated myopia, pocket protectors, and slicked down hair. They confess that they are:
"Not really strong."
"Not really that smart."
"Not really cool."
And they disappear forever, not even getting to join the "To the Family!" cheer at the end, though they were pivotal in getting Juni where he needed to go.

So, as long as I can keep my kids out of the Alexa Vega music videos, and can keep the focus on the Carmen character instead of the Demetra character, and can instill in my kids a strong respect for nerds, we will continue to watch these movies and enjoy the fun, the effects, and the family.

I Won! I Won!

I found out this morning that my "Take the Fairy out of the Fairy-Tale" contest entry, which is posted here, won the contest!

I will soon be the proud owner of an 18 month Skepchick calendar, which you can purchase here. Just think - 18 months of Skepchick fineness!

Skepchick Contest "Take the Fairy Out of the Fairy Tale" Entry

WARNING: VERY LONG POST

I entered this tale in the May Skepchick Contest. They have some fun contests. You should all enter them.

Beauty And The Beast

Once upon a time, a beautiful young woman named Arugula lived with her father, Fettucine, in a small village in the countryside. Arugula and her father were both polymath scientists and researchers who had made many exciting discoveries in several fields. Their home was filled with books, lab equipment of all types, and prototypes of various inventions they were working on.

One day, Arugula’s father decided to travel out into the countryside to find a mineral he had read about in an ancient text, and which was said to be common in ore form nearby.

Unfortunately, being so interested in the many fine examples of evolution by natural selection which were exhibited in the area, he lost track of time and night fell. Not expecting to be so late, he had neglected to include in his pack Arugula’s latest invention: a device which would display the best route to any given point. Fettucine was lost!

Fettucine saw lights ahead of him and began walking toward them. He soon arrived at a castle he recognized as that of the nominal “ruler” of their area, who had never been seen in public. Knocking on the door, Fettucine was surprised to find the door opened by a mechanical butler, who ushered him in. After a brief wait, the sitting room door opened and a figure entered the room whose visage filled Fettucine with horror and dismay!

“Who are you and why do you disturb me?” boomed the voice of the creature.

In a shrinking voice, Fettucine answered, “Uh, hi, I’m Fettucine. I forgot to bring my locator and got lost down the road a bit while I was investigating a mineral I want to do some experiments with. Thought you might have some way to let my daughter know where I am so she can come get me.”

“Locator?!” the creature roared, “Experiments?! You are a scientist!”

“Yeah,” Fettucine said, producing what he hoped was a self-deprecatory grin and a shrug, “Except I’d forget my head if it weren’t screwed on. Thus, here I am!”

“You will stay here,” said his host menacingly, “You will work in my laboratory to discover a way to remove the curse which was placed upon me when I was born. I wish to be a man like other men!”

“Curse? But I am more expert in the non-organic sciences,” said Fettucine, backing away slowly toward toward the door, “Now, my daughter, Arugula, is great with biology and organic things. If you’ll let me go, I can bring her here to take a look.”

Of course, Fettucine had no intention of bringing his lovely Arugula to be enslaved by this, uh, person.

“You will go nowhere,” said the creature, “ALFRED!”

The mechanical butler appeared from behind a door and came forward, bowing jerkily and obsequiously.

“Send two of my tin soldiers into town to bring this woman, Arugula, back to me. Be sure it is done quietly,” instructed his liege lord. Alfred bowed again and left, creaking a bit as he moved away.

Horrified, Fettucine tried to run to the door himself, but the castle’s owner was faster and grabbed Fettucine, tossing him unceremoniously into a corner.

“You will stay right there until your daughter arrives. I will have Alfred bring food and drink for you as soon as he has dispatched my soldiers to fetch her. You may sleep on the couch. I suggest you get some rest. Good night.”
The creature swept from the room.

*****

As the sun began to peek into the tall windows of the castle, a huge ruckus could be heard outside the castle. Fettucine sat up, sore from sleeping on the too-small couch, stretched, and rubbed his tired eyes. He saw Alfred in the corner and asked, “What’s going on? What time is it? Is Arugula here?”

Alfred creaked over toward him and made a movement that might have been a shrug, but was impeded by his obviously corroded and unmaintained joints.

“Oh, you poor thing!” exclaimed Fettucine, “I must fix you!”

As he spoke, the doors were flung open. The cursed man rushed in, followed by two mechanical men struggling to carry a wrapped bundle. The struggle was made more difficult by the fact that one man was missing an arm and half of a leg while the other had no head to speak of. Apparently, Arugula’s martial arts classes had been a good investment.

As the bundle was untied, a very angry, spitting woman came flying out, instantly assuming a threatening pose. As soon as she saw Fettucine, however, she ran to his side, keeping a squinted eye on the room’s other inhabitants.

“Dad! What the hell?” she said, “These freaks came in while I was sleeping and grabbed me before I could defend myself. I had left the door unlocked ‘cause I saw you had left your key on the hook, and I thought you’d be back soon.”

“Oh, sweetie, I’m such a dork. I didn’t know I’d left my key,” Fettucine said with slouched shoulders, “Anyway, this guy needs you to help him get rid of a curse. I would help, but you know I’m better with the physics and the engineering stuff. You can do everything!”

Arugula replied, still tense and prepared to respond with violence to any attempt to get near, “Curse? Please come closer so I can take a better look at you. I suspect it is something else entirely! What kind of idiot believes in curses? Who are you, anyway? We thought the tales of someone really living here were just legends. We’ve been running things ourselves for quite a while.”

She planned to subdue her captor as soon as he got within reach, grab her father, and get the heck out of there as fast as they could run.

“My name is Bob,” said the creature. “My mom and dad ruled this area during their lifetimes, but when they saw that they had cursed me with the curse that has plagued our families for generations, they shut up our palace to hide me from the world. I have been served by the automatons commissioned from their artificers many years ago by my parents before their deaths.”

“I would like to meet these artificers,” said Fettucine. “They have done fine work if your butler is any example.”

“CAN WE FOCUS ON MY PROBLEM?” shrieked Bob, coming suddenly into the light.

“AAAAAH!” Fettucine recoiled, throwing his hand up over his face. Looking through his fingers a second later, he lowered his hand to see Arugula looking intently at Bob, whose entire body was covered with wiry, light-brown hair.

“Wait a minute! It is as I suspected!” she exclaimed excitedly, “You have not been cursed, only inbred! You say this ‘curse’ has plagued your family?”

“Yes,” said Bob, “but there was hope that it had been overcome, since no hideous children had been born since my great-grandfathers’ generations.”

“Generations, you say,” mused Arugula.

“Yes,” Bob answered, “when no more like me had been born in two generations, the families of my parents decided the curse was destroyed and began again to exclusively intermarry. You know, to keep our royal blood from being tainted.”

“Yes, well, hmmmm, tainted, hmmm,” hmmmed Arugula with distaste. “Let me tell you a little story, Bob, if that’s your real name, about something called hypertrichosis and then you can decide what it means to be ‘tainted’.”

*****

A few hours later, deep in the night, the three sat close to the dying fire. Bob was sobbing in a chair, his face buried in his hands. Arugula and Fettucine watched him closely. Arugula still wanted to get away, but with the remaining unharmed tin soldiers blocking the only way out, she knew she stood little chance of escape, especially with her father in tow.

Eventually, Bob took a deep breath and sat up, wiping his face with a lacy hankie he had drawn from his sleeve.

“So, you say my family cursed themselves through interbreeding,” he sighed, “Is there anything to be done? Can these things you call ‘genes’ be changed?”

Arugula looked at her father, who was always hurting for money to fund his experiments and his inventions. She thought of the decrepit lab equipment they used at home and her plans for future research.

“Well…..” she began…

*****

Five years later…

Work was proceeding apace at Fettucine’s March to the Future Physics and Engineering Project headquarters. The castle swarmed with employees and well-maintained mechanical lab assistants, led by Alfred, who no longer clanked and squeaked. Inventions to save labor and time were distributed to the public regularly. Fettucine had never been happier.

Meanwhile, at Bob’s Biotech, Arugula supervised dozens of teams of investigators, experimenting with various methods of gene manipulation and stem cell therapy to help individuals who were adversely affected by genetic anomalies.

Bob had long since accepted his hypertrichosis, with the help of Arugula and Fettucine and lots of therapy. As he became more and more involved in the local community, helping to set up farmer’s markets and coops all over the county, as well as moderating arguments regarding the best uses for Fettucine’s inventions, he was honored for his even-handedness and became more and more loved by the local populace. His castle was given to the public and was constantly buzzing with people bringing suggestions and ideas for improving the lives of everyone in the community. Life was good!

Bob’s only failure, in his opinion, was his lack of love. Oh, Fettucine and Arugula loved him, but after Arugula had laughed hysterically a couple of years earlier when he had proposed marriage, saying she planned never to marry, he despaired of finding a life-companion. Arugula said she was too wrapped up in her research to be a decent mate and that, besides, she was perfectly satisfied with her relationship with Pokeweed, her co-researcher and a beautiful and intelligent woman in her own right.

One day, though, at a meeting of the local weavers and clothing manufacturers, Bob met Frieda. When they first saw each other, they couldn’t stop staring: she, because she found his hair beautiful and fantastic; he, because there was not a single hair to prevent his admiration of her dark and shining skin. Her family had a gene for alopecia. It was truly one of those rare cases of love at first sight. Still, they dated for several years before deciding to marry, with Fettucine as best man and Arugula giving the bride away.

Eventually, but sadly not in their lifetimes, scientists at Bob’s Biotech and Fettucine’s March to the Future developed methods to adjust for genetic “defects” such as hypertrichosis and alopecia. But because of the love between Bob and Frieda and the love of the community for them, neither extreme hairiness nor complete baldness were considered strange or ugly ever again. That is the legacy of Beauty and the Beast.

The End

How to Help Iraqi Women's Rights Activists Escape

Previously, I posted about the double tragedies of Rand Abdel-Qader and her mother, Leila Hussein.

Today, I found out that Jezebel's Moe contacted the Guardian reporter who has been working on these stories and put it upon herself to allow the public to contribute to a fund to get threatened women's rights activists out of danger.

Just in from Skepchick, specific instructions to donate. From this post:

If you’d like to help, and I hope you do, you can use PayPal to send a donation in any amount to Moe, who will collect and then wire the money to the Guardian journalist, who is currently in Iraq and able to deliver the money to the women. The info you need to donate is Moe’s full name: Maureen Tkacik, and her e-mail: tips@jezebel.com.

Be sure to put a note that the funds are for this purpose.

$1700.00 has been collected as of today. Let's make it much more!

Senator Obama

I had an opportunity this morning to watch/listen to Barack Obama's speech last night in St. Paul at youtube and by golly, it's just fantastic. You can skip past the first 12 minutes (just a bunch of thank you's and platitudes), but then he starts to talk about McCain, and policies, and things that need fixin', and it just gets more beautiful as he goes on. Too bad about Sen. Clinton, but Sen. Obama looks pretty damned good to me.

I also saw that he recently said that "one of the first things he wants to do is ensure the constitutionality of all the laws and executive orders passed while Republican President George W. Bush has been in office." (From Alternet)

Awesome!

So, I hadn't come out in support of any particular candidate until now, but I'm throwing my Maleficent staff in behind Senator Obama as of right now.

Helping Those Who Tried to Help Leila Hussein

In THIS post, I wrote about the murder of Leila Hussein, the mother of Rand Abdel-Qader, who was beaten to death recently by her father with the help of her brothers.

There is a call going around the intertubes for a way to contribute funds to help the women's rights activists who were trying to help Leila escape Iraq because of threats against her life to escape Iraq themselves because of threats to their lives.

So far, nothing has been established, however, by monitoring THIS post at the Skepchick blog, hopefully we will soon find a way to help these people get to somewhere safe. Let's get 'em out! Let's get 'em ALL out!

National Day of Reason - Donate Your Organs!

Tomorrow, May 1, 2008, is the 5th annual National Day of Reason. At the website, there are listings of local events going on around the US. Sadly, I notice that there are few events. However, many secular groups are unofficially encouraging such activities as giving blood or plasma on this day. Even if you do this individually, not as a group, giving blood is always a great thing to do. I have been unable to give blood the last three times I've gone for my appointments due to the fact that my heart rate is over 100 each time! I don't know if I've developed a "freak-out" about it or what, since I never had that problem before. So, I'm pushing another option:

BECOME AN ORGAN DONOR!

If you are not already an organ donor, May 1 would be a good day to fill out that paperwork and start informing your loved ones that you would like to be one. Organ donation is something that can potentially help anyone. Ironically, since mandatory seatbelt laws were passed in the US, and motorcycle helmet laws passed in some states, there has been a dearth of donors (not as many folks flying through windshields, destroying brains, but leaving organs intact)*, which makes individual action on this issue even more urgent. For information about donation, visit OrganDonor.gov.

*source here.