Category Archives: Reality Level

Supreme Court Did NOT Say That Kids Have Right To Violent Videogames

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That would be stupid. Yet some newscasters seemed to say it, and this columnist appears to believe it, though since she’s really just using that as a hook to argue for feeding kids, we’ll give her some slack. What it did was strike down a badly written law, in which a State tries to regulate the sale based on content of the game.

In fact, the Entertainment Software Industry already regulates sales of games to minors. Much like the Motion Picture Association, which rates movies and prohibits minors from watching certain ones, an industry association IS given the power to limit what kids can buy. Though there is not criminal or civil liability for violating the age-restrictions, studies show that it’s harder to buy a mature game than it is to get into an R rated movie.  The Supreme Court did not change that. One might hope they discouraged the writing of vague laws aimed at non-problems that they couldn’t possibly affect even if enforceable, but that seems unlikely.

What About the Pope?

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There is a big discussion going on about whether the Pope should be held responsible for a certain pedophile priest.  Apparently the (not-pope-at-the-time) knew something, had some administrative responsibility, and took some kind of action.  I don’t think we really know what he knew, when he knew it, or whether what he did constitutes a “cover-up”.  However, the debates have jumped way ahead of the information.  There are actually two different debates:

Those within the church are arguing about  justice and how this might affect the church as a whole.

There are those outside the church who are arguing about justice, crime, and cover-up.  But some have also taken it as a platform to debate the legitimacy and goodness/badness of the church itself.  I think they’re barking up the wrong tree.  I’m not Catholic.  By definition, I guess that means I don’t believe in the legitimacy of the church.  I also think, like any large institution that has dominated the last 2000 years of human history, it’s done a lot of harm and a lot of good.  Currently, I think they are actively working against third-world development with their policies on birth control.

But the Pope argument is completely unrelated.  Contrary to the beliefs of the mis-informed, the Pope is not infallible.  The only exception is when he speaks “ex cathedra”, which does not happen often.  Even if the Pope where infallible, that infallability would not logically extend backwards in time to decisions prior to becoming the Pope.  Also, what would infallability even mean?  That any decision made would be just and moral?  That it would lead to no possible bad outcome?  That it would be in accord with current human laws?  Or should all decisions lean more towards Church values, such as forgiveness and redemption?

The Pope did whatever he did.  Made some kind of decision about some level of information.  We don’t know what he really knew, but it’s natural for critics to apply all that we know now to someone who was described as knowing something at the time.  Even critics who keep claiming the crown of reason as something they own personally make this mistake.  But administrators make decisions all the time based on information they barely understand or can’t really trust.  And he was an administrator, looking at old information, on a topic that he may not have really understood the scope of.  Human beings tend to dismiss things we aren’t ready to deal with.  And administrators do that more than anyone.

Vaccines, Bad Parenting, and Risk

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I’m going to start lightly, but I end up talking about kids playing Russian roulette.

Me and High Blood Pressure

I don’t manage risk well.  If you give me a bunch of facts and stats and ask me to change my behavior, good luck.  For the past couple years of been treating my high blood pressure by inconsistent attempts at diet, sleeping better, and getting some exercise.  Anything but medication.  It’s a bad decision, and I know it pretty well because my job is health information outreach.  I’ve optimized articles on hypertension for the Web.

What did it take to get me back on medication?  I think my cardiologist actually threatened me.  Also, he woudn’t sign off on something else I needed, (ADD medication).  My sister had a similar experience.  She’s taking her high blood pressure meds because, as she says “I think the doctor said he was actually going to give me a stroke if I didn’t.”

Arguably, since I am only managing my own risk, I’m morally superior to the parents who won’t get their kids vaccinated.  But the moral element isn’t what I’m after today, it’s the thought process and how it might be changed.  My daytime job is basically health outreach.  Getting good information about health into the hands of people that need it.  Often I think we’re too timid.  We don’t want to offend anyone.  This keeps us from telling stories in a way that works.

Kids Dying in Swimming Pools

But first, let’s back up.  Swimming pools kill people.  So do guns.  If you let your kids play at a house a swimming pool you increase their risk.  If you let your kids play at a house where there are guns, you  also increase risk for your child.  Stasticaly, the swimming pool is FAR more dangerous.  But we feel more outraged by the guns.  Why?  We’ve accepted drownings as part of life.  Unfortunate accidents.  We think of them as something that happens passively.  An accidental shooting is active.  Someone DID something.  There is more guilt, some of which will always splash back on the parents.

Just imagine two headlines, without any other facts:

Child Dies in Swimming Pool (add sub-head about tragic unfortunate accident)

Child Killed While Playing With Gun (add sub-head about “could have been prevented” or “poor supervision” maybe “charges pending”)

Both could actually be prevented with about the same level of safeguards and attention, but one we process as passive and one as active.

Now to the vaccines.  Injecting a child with something is active.  Infectious diseases are, like swimming pools, a passive threat.  They are an unfortunate reality.  Tragic, but it happens.  Dying from a vaccination is an active event.  No matter how “correct” the decision may have seemed, that death will feel like the fault of the parent.

But passive and active are constructive, like foreground and background.  It all depends on how the story is told.  Instead of timid recitations of facts, here is how I would do a campaign to encourage parents to vaccinate their children:

Parents Letting Kids Die

Two kids, sitting across the table from each other.  Between them, a gun.  Yes, they are playing Russian Roulette, and Yes, we do show them taking turns and putting the gun to their head, while the parents watch.  Finally, the gun goes off and the kid collapses with the symptoms of swine flu.

Final message? “Take the gun away, get your children vaccinated.”  See? We’ve now converted swine flu into an active risk, and responsibility splashes back on the parents.

If anyone steals this idea, I hope they put it to good use.

Jessica Biel and those NYC Skanks

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Not that they’re related in any way except for internet damage, but there you go.

A few months ago, a probable Skank by the name of Rosemary Port created an anonymous blog, in which she gave another probably Skank, Liskula Cohen an award for being the Skankiest Ho in NYC.  Among the some 1,700 viewers of this blog was the targeted maybe-skank, who got all offended.  Some damage had been done, but not very much.  A blog that gets 1,700 visitors is very, very low-impact.  And few of those visitors are likely to remember much.  Fewer still are likely to credit an anonymous source.  But, still, it was a nasty thing to say.  Maybe.  Even if it was true.

The real damage started when Cohen’s lawyer, Steve Wagner, decided to sue this anonymous blogger.  Instead of, say, 1,700 people thinking of this partying model as a “Skank-Ho”, now millions and millions of people are making that association.  As is Google.  Put in Skank, and the first picture you get is Liskula Cohen.  The first persons mentioned are Liskula Cohen and Rosemary Port.  Are they really skanks?  I don’t know, but who am I to argue with Google?  Can Liskula Cohen sue her lawyer?  After all, the damage done to her reputation by his lawsuit far, far exceeds that from the barely known anonymous blog.

And who could Jessica Biel sue?  Over 753 articles have headlined her as the “most dangerous celebrity in cyberspace” claiming that “Jessica Biel could give you a (PC) virus.”  Isn’t that a bit negative?  What did she do to earn this honor?  MacAfee created a list of celebrities who they claim are dangerous when searched for.  Naturally, they are selling something.    Can anyone double check their findings?  Seems to me that it’s just a pure press release play, using celebrity names to raise fear and drive people to buy more MacAfee.  Personally, I’ve never gotten a virus from Jessica Biel, or from any other online celebrity.

Virtuality: Pilot or Movie?

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Fox ran a “movie” called Virtuality tonight.  Produced by Ronald Moore, the genius who crafted Battlestar Galactica, I thought it would be worth a look.  It skitters dangerously close to rehashing things that have been done well already, but there is a core of original thought going on here.  In fact, if things evolve in directions different than the obvious, this could turn out to be great.  With Ronald Moore behind it, you have to allow for that possibility.

It does steal from some good movies.  The opening scene is an obvious reworking of the Outlaw Jose Wales.  Several scenes evoke 2001, and Solaris is also hanging over the whole thing.  The downside is, as several internet commentors pointed out, the Star Trek holodeck.  Almost every holodeck episodes was bad.  The pure invention of the holodeck was an acknowledgement that the writers were running out of ideas.  But, if virtual reality was introduced a different way, somehow making sense in the story, it worked even in Star Trek.  One of the best episodes had Kirk, Spock, McCoy and a couple others trapped in a replay of the OK corral.  Except they were on the losing side, and they knew it.

The thing about Virtuality is that it doesn’t work as a movie.  Most of the time is spent introducing characters, then introducing a couple plot elements, and staggering around one decision, which we always knew.  But it didn’t end, not really.  The official story is that it was written as a pilot, but Fox nixed the deal and aired it as a stand-alone.  But it’s not a stand-alone, even a Fox exec knows that.  Fox may be evil, but they specialize in satisfying television audiences.  This did not.

My theory is that Fox knows people will want more.  They want to buy the show, but to make it a success, they want to be pressured into it.  Create a fan-base, a buzz, a demanding group of outsiders.  They’re willing to be the bad guys, so that we can force them to do something in a way that makes them another pile of money.  And if it doesn’t work, they aren’t out much, just a Friday night movie that did okay.

Religion as genre

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Just because I don’t attend church doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate religions.  I like religions.  I like spirituality, and for most people the best place to find that is in church.  (or equivalent).  What I don’t like is the “one true” mentality.  The Bible clearly says that God wants everyone to make it.  (see parable of the shepherd, among others).  If this is true, why would God act like a bad D & D dungeon master, creating one safe door and a bunch of doors that lead to certain doom?  With no way for an average person to decide which one is correct?

Face it, most people choose the religion they get from their parents.  And some people, naturally, try to find the exact opposite.  A few go adrift, then wander into some church led by friends or potential romance.  Nobody actually sits down and does comparison shopping, using analytic tools to ascertain the one true religion.  People who claim to have done so inevitably either decided on the church they were raised in, or the one with the prettiest girls.   Presumably God knows this is what would happen, so judging people on their failure to do this makes no sense.  Therefore, every religion that makes this claim is wrong, at least to that extent.

I also used to believe that religions had really fundamental differences.  Christianity was the “only” religion that allowed for salvation through mercy.  Islam had five pillars, including total service to God.  Buddhaism is the only religion that really understands the denial of the self.  Etc.  But now I think that any story about the relationship between God and man can be told within any religion.  The differences have more to do with temperment and culture.

Movie genres behave the same way.  You can tell a story about guilt and redemption as a romantic comedy (Wedding Crashers), an action movie (The Untouchables), a horror movie (The Exorcist), or as a Western (The Searchers).  Each genre has its own symbols, conventions, and appeals to a far different crowd, but central human themes are available in each.  And, naturally, there are some people who feel that one genre is the one, true means of expression.  Having said this, I reserve the right to bash the idea of Romantic Comedy at any point in the future.

Fake Imax? Is it worth the money? (also, Star Trek)

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What good is building a classy brand if you can’t whore it out for big bucks?  Clothing manufacturers do it,  chefs add their names to canned soups.  Why not Imax?  The latest controversy is that “Imax” movies are being shown on relatively small screens, for full price.  The Imax experience used to mean one thing.  Giant screens, up close, with amazing picture quality.  But now they’re selling some of us something much less.  Something like [insert designer label] Express.  But the trick is, they don’t tell you which screens are the real Imax, and which are fake.  The story was reported back in October, but didn’t get much traction, then.  But Star Trek happened.  When you have a super-geeky, detail-obsessed audience paying extra for something, their going to look at their reciepts.  They noticed, and they don’t stay quiet.  Word spread through the blogosphere, and on Twitter.

I went to see Star Trek, for the second time, at the AMC Hoffman in Alexandria.  We went there because we wanted to see the movie on an Imax screen.  Sadly, the AMC Hoffman offers Fake Imax.  Now, it wasn’t a complete rip-off.  Fake Imax still looks better than the digital projection screen we’d seen it on the first time.  But it was a long ways from being a real Imax experience.

The movie itself holds up magnificently.  There is one long section, beginning from Kirk’s exit from the Enterprise, and going at least until he meets Scotty, that is just painfully bad.  A mish-mash of un-motivated action, stunning coincidence, and exceptionally bad physics/astronomy, I just had to bite my tongue and wait it out.  When the movie gets it’s feet back underneath it, the awesomeness returns.

Who Cares? The Carrie Prejean Tempest

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Once again, a beauty pageant model is brought to task for “bad behavior” and nude photos.  This time, the woman is Carrie Prejean, a Miss California, and target of Perez Hilton.  The photos exist, but we’ll probably never see them, because she was 17 when they were taken.  Big deal.  I’m going back and forth on who I don’t like and who I just don’t care about:

1) Perez Hilton is an annoying idiot who suddenly claims some kind of political relevancy?

2) Some 21 year old bimbo can’t walk a political tight-rope?

3) Beauty contest are basically displaying and rating female flesh, with a patina of respectability, and yet trashing the ones who’ve shown a millimeter more flesh?

I want to say, lay off the girl.  And I would, if she had gone back home, quietly stating that she didn’t think her beliefs should matter in a beauty contest.  But she didn’t, she signed on with “National Organization for Marraige”.  National Organization for Marraige is the worst kind of hate group, it goes all emo over people disagreeing with it.  Hating minorities and disempowered groups is a long-standing tradition in this country.  Probably in any country.  Our high schools are still permeated with it.  But the bullies used to at least have the guts to be consistent.  NOM is part of a new movement among conservatives.  They spew hate.  When they get a negative reaction, they act injured.  Victimized.  It’s pathetic.

So at least I have one bad guy in the mix.  I hate NOM.  Not for being bullies, not for perverting religion to their own hate, but for being all emo.  And I can give up my sympathy for Carrie Prejean because she signed on with them.  But still, digging up nude pictures from when she was seventeen?  Sure, it proves she isn’t absolutely morally pure, but that has never been the position the evangelicals take.  They all flirt with with sin, and if they get caught over the line, they repent.  It’s practically required.

I started out being mad at Perez Hilton.  That’s easy, because I’ve never liked him.  He can be funny, but mostly he’s cruel in a kind of “I can say whatever I want and then act harmless” way.  And, what kind of person tries to trip up beauty queens with complex moral questions?  That’s like Kramer beating up the third-grade Karate class.  But then I asked myself: Who picked him as a judge?  The same person who thought Roseanne Barr should sing the National Anthem?  What, exactly, did they expect?

I guess what I really hate is the politico-entertainment-industrial-complex.  It’s this machine that delivers something like Carrie Prejean through talk shows, commentators, entertainment shows, and the internet as if she can really be the focus of an important national debate.  These are the people who filled our living room with Joe the Plumber.  And the problem is, they guys on my side are as in on it, as guilty as the guys on the other side.  Bill O’Rielly, Keith Olberman, both eat this stuff up.  Each from his own moral high ground, but they both let a 21-year-old bimbo become the focus of their respective wrath/understanding.

Colossus: The Forbin Project

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If literature tells us anything, it’s that as soon as Google achieves sentience, it will destroy us.  The theme has been pretty well explored, from 2001, A Space Odyssy, to Battlestart Galactica.  We create something intelligent, and it rises up and destroys us.  This summer, Skynet will take another shot.  Maybe Mary Shelley thought of this first.  If you can adjust to the writing style, it’s still one of the best tellings of the story — second only to Battlestar Galactica.

One version of the story was the movie, Colossus, that came out in 1970.  Steeped in both cold war paranoia and 50s-style scientist-hero myth, this could have been done as a Twilight Zone episode.  A really good episode.  This is not an action movie, or an atmospheric horror piece.  It’s more of a deconstruction of the confident, proud scientist soldier, holding up under the pressure of a creation gone bad.

Colossus is a giant computer, designed to take over control of all the country’s strategic missiles.  Thus, there would be a precise, objective response to any attack.  Viewers may instantly think this is a bad idea, but the confidence of the scientists seems very reassuring.  Even though we know things will go wrong, we sort of believe they did the right thing.  They figured it out, and they have excellent vision.  But Colossus finds a buddy, the Soviets have built one also.

The progress of bad things is done without the usual pyrotechnics, but feels real and inexorable.  After nuking one town in Russia, the computers can order humans to do pretty much anything.  How the good looking, super-smart scientist tries to fight this takeover is a fairly well-grounded game between humans and computers.  No “24″ style plot-magic here, almost every move and counter-move sounds like what people would really do.

The direction this movie takes at the end raises it to a higher level.  This is a movie that pulls no punches, and may reflect our relationship with many of the great technologies we’ve created, then become dependent upon.  Twilight Zone had some pretty damn good stories, stories that didn’t just scare us, but looked a bit closer at our relationship to the world around us.  This movie, though not a big-budget masterpiece like 2001, really gets to the relationship between creator and created, much like Mary Shelley did.

McDonald’s Versus Long John Silver

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Once again I’ve got “Give me back my little fish” stuck in my head.  I’m not sure that’s the actual lyric, but it doesn’t matter.  You know it, the McDonald’s fish song.  Long John Silver tried to bust out with a new series of commercials that pretty much attack the McDonald’s Fillet O’ Fish sandwich.  The commercials went product to product, using the best line-that-should-have-worked: “Is that even fish?”

We’ll set aside for a moment the one astonishingly bad idea, the theme of splashing the customer with water.  Everything else about the commercial should have completely sold us on how much better and tastier the LJS product is.  More fish-like.

But with fast food, the actual substance rarely matters.  McDonald’s isn’t selling us fish.  If you want fish, go to a sea-food restaurant.  McDonald’s is selling a combination of magic and crave-satisfaction.  Setting the actual food product aside, would rather get splashed with a bucket of water while holding a tray full of food?  Or would you rather eat something, with obvious satisfaction, while the magical fish sings to you?  And, to top it off, your friend comes in and watches you with envy?  Because he’s not in the secret magic-singing-fish club.

McDonald’s wins with the most important fast-food demographics:

  • Kids love magic.  They don’t care if what they eat is closer to real food, as long as it’s breaded, salty, and reminds them of a magical singing fish who wants part of its body back.
  • Stoners need satisfaction.  Late-night stoners and drunks want something that will give them that sense of satisfaction you see on the guy’s face, as he stares down the singing fish.
  • Parents want their kids to shut up.  See point #1
  • Cubicle rats want something they can take back to their desk.  Something that doesn’t seem too messy.  The fillet o’ fish may not be food, but it looks tidy.  LJS splashes you and your food with a bucket of water.