Seven Military Lessons of Westeros

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

It was borderline cruel of the ASOIAF obsessives at Danger Room to present the seven military lessons of Westeros, when not all of us at the intersection of war nerds and fantasy geeks have finished reading the books (that are in print so far).

The lessons — without associated spoilers:

  1. Always retreat when you’re outmatched.
  2. Coalition warfare works.
  3. Audacity in pursuing gamechanging military tech is no vice.
  4. Only an idiot launches a premature attack.
  5. Ain’t nothing in the sea but the Drowned God.
  6. If you don’t hold territory and pair your military strategy with your political one, you lose.
  7. When in doubt, stick ‘em with the pointy end.

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Jon Stewart and the Burden of History

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

Tom Junod discusses Jon Stewart and the Burden of History in Esquire:

Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we are happy to have as our guest Jon Stewart. We all know Jon — he’s the comedian and media critic who for the last ten years has pretty much decided who’s a dick and who’s a douchebag in our politics and in our culture, all without ever himself coming across as a dick or a d —

Wait a second (hand to imaginary earpiece) — excuse me, folks. What’s that? What about the Chris Wallace interview?

Well, what about it? Okay, so a few months ago, Stewart went to Fox News and gave an interview to the Fredo of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, Chris Wallace. Of course he did. That’s why we love him — that’s why he’s been able to transform himself from late-night comedian to liberal conscience. He does what nobody else does. He goes into the lion’s den and does that thing — that Jon Stewart truth-to-power thing. He manages to be the voice of reason while still being funny, manages to be sharply critical while still being affable, manages to be…

Wait. He wasn’t funny? He wasn’t affable? He kind of spoke power to truth when Wallace dared to point out that Stewart seems to crave political influence? He sort of pulled rank on Wallace, and was smug and condescending without bothering to be funny at all? He even started saying, “Are you suggesting that you and I are the same?…” in the same tone he would have used if Wallace had gotten a little schmutz on Stewart’s shirt?

O-kay. Well, Stewart had his reasons, I’m sure. After all, he’s really not the same as Wallace, is he? I mean, Stewart’s the coolest guy in the room, any room, by definition, while Chris Wallace wouldn’t look cool next to the guys in hats riding little cars at a Shriner’s Convention. He’s the very embodiment of the self-important yet dim-witted — or is that dim-witted yet self-important? — media creature whom Stewart has made a living schooling over the last tumultuous decade. So if Jon Stewart can’t be smug and contemptuous and superior with Chris Wallace, who can he be smug and contemptuous and superior with? It’s not like he came right out and said he’s better than Chris Wallace…

Oh. Wait. He sorta did? He said, “What I do is much harder than what you do”? But just last year didn’t he tell Rachel Maddow that what he did was less honorable than what she did? Ah, well, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little talk-show hosts. It’s not like he started comparing himself to, like, Mark Twain or someone like that…

No! He did that too? He actually asked Wallace, “What am I at my highest aspiration? Who am I? Am I Edward R. Murrow or Mark Twain?” And then he told Wallace: “I’ve existed in this country forever. There have been people like me who have satirized the political process… I’ve existed forever. The box that I exist in has always been around.”

Come on! He did not say that! He’s Jon Stewart, for God’s sake. And Jon Stewart did not go on Fox News Sunday and say that He Is Music, and He Writes the Songs…

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Gentlemen, you’ve eaten well

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

When the bat flew through Bruce Wayne’s window and into his study, he had apparently just finished watching The Road Warrior, because, as this scene from Batman: Year One makes clear, he was inspired by both the bat and by the “warrior of the wasteland, the Lord Humungus, the ayatollah of rock-and-rollah”:

That’s Ben McKenzie, not Kevin Conroy — or Kjell Nilsson — as Batman.

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Mike Hughes on Brian Enos’s Forums

Monday, September 19th, 2011

I mentioned that Top Shot season 3 competitor Cliff Walsh, the revolver expert, was discussing the show on Brian Enos’s Forums. Now Mike Hughes, inventor of the SIRT training pistol, has joined him:

Hi Friends. Just found this lead in this forum. Sorry for not participating sooner.

Next Show
This next week things heat up regarding the team dynamics, but more importantly, we get trained up by the great one, Jerry M. Even though this week is “trick shooting”, trick shooting taxes the fundamentals, usually isolating certain fundamentals.

As for myself (as shown in the previews!! no spoilers) I get taxed on natural point of aim which is premised on GRIP and STANCE…. blind fold shooting. Fun Stuff.

There will be some severe social dynamics (sic. drama) and in defense of Pilgrim, I finally get it, without human dynamics the show would fall flat. I noted some comments that the drama is induced or promoted, but honestly it is real. In some ways it is worse then they show on tv. Its like this, cock fighting is real, but contrived. The male roosters have their heads rubbed together, razor blades on their feet, female hens in the room….. the environment dictates behavior patterns. Well, I humbly say that we are no smarter than the roosters. Throw us away from our families, no phones, no laptop, no books?!, no external stimulus, no extensive training (more on that later)… just socializing day after day after day. It accelerates the “social dynamics”. Now add on that we throw each under under the bus (send to elimination) and things go volatile (or very ugly).

Cliff!
I see Cliff is active on here and I have to say I have the utmost respect for Cliff. He was a great addition to the house and I wish we were team mates.

Benefits of Top Shot to our Community
In closing, I love this show because it promotes firearms in a positive light. Its a competition, yes, not like USPSA, IDPA, Bulls Eye or what we are used to… we have to perform with limited training. In the big picture the viewers are grandpa and grandson, girlfriends, recreational shooters, even anti-gun folk watch this show and see firearms utilized in a positive manner, thats why I signed up. It touches a much larger audience. I truly believe Top Shot adds tremendous value to our shooting community (or at least thats what got me through the filming!! ). My objective was to positively represent the competitive shooting community.

Thanks all!

Mike Hughes

He continues:

Regarding competing in Elimination
Actually after 5 episodes and riding the pine on the revolver dice challenge, I am not kidding, I think I was kind of hitting a depression. Sounds wussy-ish but seriously, I felt clinically unproductive. After a week of doing very little ok, kind of like a vacation. After another week…not used to being that unproductive. So volunteering to elimination made the most sense. There is only one winner in the end anyway so lets figure it out early. I didn’t want to go home, but if Jarrett smoked me, so be it. It really could have gone either way.

Canon Insights
I don’t know if the behind the scenes details are interesting or not, but when I was practicing with the canon, that lanard took a lot of force to break the sear to send a round. So after 5 shots (of 7) I had some time so I was dry firing and when I yanked the lanyard once I noticed the whole canon moving like a 1/2 inch or so! Oh Crap…. You see part of the practice was sighting in the canon so I was chasing rounds that were flying everywhere possibly because I was not executing proper form on the lanyard (cord). The expert was a great guy, but he mentioned, ” I was a afraid of that” and instructed me to put more pretension on the lanyard before I wacked it with that wooden member. It was good advice, but honestly I was thinking, ‘ I could have really used that info 20 min ago!’. Anyhow, so I did some calculating for the last two rounds and figured my 9:00 adjustments may have been flawed and did the best corrections for the last two shots… I did NOT go into that challenge confident. Than goodneess I say my first round go 12:00 and demolish the hillside over that tower or I would have been totally screwed. I was aiming 6:00 in the competition. Fine line between success and failure. Jarrett is a great guy and great competitor. Tremendous athlete and shooter.

I recall the expert saying the shells were about $120 per. So 12 shots… Chalk up $1440 to Pilgrim Films!

Personally I think the technical details of the equipment, training, gear, what we saw during the competition with these crazy weapons are more entertaining then some of interview crap they put on the show. If you all want I can totally provide some of these details. TS3 was a very surreal experience. Lot of social dynamics down the pipe but some fantastic challenges and shooting ahead!

A bit more:

Remember every episode has 3 days of living of 10+ people that is crammed into 44 min. The editors do a good job of grabbing relevant content to paint a picture. I did not know Marreli had such propensity to let his mouth write checks his body couldn’t cash until I watched the show and seen his interviews.

One on one I got along with Jake and when we were having meetings and such, he did add value. I don’t have an ego where I have to lead, Jarrett and I didn’t care. I did have some producer interview questions thrown at me like, “Mike you started a company, NextLevelTraining.com, bla bla, how do you feel if Jake drives a meeting?” I generally answered, “…look if he is taking the initiative and adding value, I am supportive. It is not easy to drive a meeting and put some agenda together. Jake is a college coach so he has skill sets in that arena.” However, the key element is add value. I said it in interviews, straight to Jake and will say it here, Jake simply needs a coping mechanism to deal with criticism. Without that, things go to DEFCON 2.

By the way, the Pilgrim Films he mentions puts together a number of popular reality shows, including The Ultimate Fighter and Dirty Jobs.

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Spoilers Don’t Spoil Stories

Monday, September 19th, 2011

Nicholas Christenfeld and Jonathan Leavitt of UCSD’s psychology department recently found that — spoiler alert! — spoilers don’t spoil stories:

Christenfeld and Leavitt ran three experiments with a total of 12 short stories. Three types of stories were studied: ironic-twist, mystery and literary. Each story — classics by the likes of John Updike, Roald Dahl, Anton Chekhov, Agatha Christie and Raymond Carver — was presented as-is (without a spoiler), with a prefatory spoiler paragraph or with that same paragraph incorporated into the story as though it were a part of it. Each version of each story was read by at least 30 subjects. Data from subjects who had read the stories previously were excluded.

Subjects significantly preferred the spoiled versions of ironic-twist stories, where, for example, it was revealed before reading that a condemned man’s daring escape is all a fantasy before the noose snaps tight around his neck.

The same held true for mysteries. Knowing ahead of time that Poirot will discover that the apparent target of attempted murder is, in fact, the perpetrator not only didn’t hurt enjoyment of the story but actually improved it.

Subjects liked the literary, evocative stories least overall, but still preferred the spoiled versions over the unspoiled ones.

One possible explanation is that plot is overrated. Another is that it’s simply easier to read a story when you know the ending.

I suspect that there’s a sweet spot, where a story is just challenging enough for the reader. If the reader is a typical American college student, then giving away the ending makes the story easy enough to enjoy.

The other side of the coin is illustrated by screenwriter William Goldman’s observation that most TV shows become more entertaining if you miss the first half and have to figure out what’s going on. Otherwise they’re too straightforward and predictable.

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Too Big for TV

Sunday, September 18th, 2011

George R.R. Martin discusses the challenges of writing screenplays on a budget based on a novel he originally wrote to be too big for television:

Which episode of Game of Thrones are you writing next season?

The Battle of the Blackwater, God help me. David and Dan must hate me.

That’s the one where you have to be most conscious of budgetary decisions.

It’s very tough because we don’t have the budget to do the battle in the book. We just don’t.

Well, they have to be able to show the ships and what happens to them, right?

I hope so. We’ll see. I’m writing it. I’m cutting certain things. We’ll see once I turn it in if we can do it. When you look HBO’s Rome–

Loved Rome.

I loved it too, but what about the battles?

We see Caesar leave the tent to go to war, then he comes back and falls asleep.

Caesar leaves the tent. Pompey leaves the tent. Then we see Pompey’s banner in the mud. And Caesar comes back to the tent. The next episode, Pompey describes the battle to Pullo and Vorenus drawing it in the dirt with a stick to explain what happened. For the Battle of Actium, they open with Mark Anthony floating on a piece of wood — and Rome had a bigger budget than we do. I’ve been trying to tell the fans that. On some level they’re expecting the Battle of Pelennor Fields [from Peter Jackson's The Return of the King].

Fans don’t distinguish as much between mediums now.

They don’t. And television has set that up by being increasingly good. Back in the 1960s or ’70s, you could tell TV show from a movie in three frames just way it was shot and lit. But you can’t these days.

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Bizarre Love Triangle

Sunday, September 18th, 2011

Speaking of bizarre love triangles, New Order‘s 1986 “hit” song of the same name never broke the Top 40 in either the US or UK — but it was ranked number 201 in Rolling Stone’s “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

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SpongeBob Hurts Your Brain

Friday, September 16th, 2011

Watching it may give adults a headache, but watching SpongeBob actually impairs children’s thinking — or, more specifically, their executive function:

Angeline Lillard and Jennifer Peterson, both of the University of Virginia’s department of psychology, wanted to see whether watching fast-paced television had an immediate influence on kids’ executive function — skills including attention, working memory, problem solving and delay of gratification that are associated with success in school.

Television’s negative effect on executive function over the long term has been established, the researchers wrote Monday in the journal Pediatrics, but less is known about its immediate effects.

To test what those might be, Lillard and Peterson randomly assigned 60 4-year-olds to three groups: one that watched nine minutes of a fast-paced, “very popular fantastical cartoon about an animated sponge that lives under the sea;” one that watched nine minutes of slower-paced programming from a PBS show “about a typical U.S. preschool-aged boy;” and a third group that was asked to draw for nine minutes with markers and crayons.

Immediately after their viewing and drawing tasks were complete, the kids were asked to perform four tests to assess executive function. Unfortunately for the denizens of Bikini Bottom, the kids who watched nine minutes of the frenetic high jinks of the “animated sponge” scored significantly worse than the other kids.

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Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana

Sunday, September 11th, 2011

Carl Orff‘s Carmina Burana — particularly the O Fortuna movement — holds quite a place in popular culture.

It’s often tempting to see Classical Music as sepia-hued etchings from the past, Borepatch says, but this misses the fact that the people involved were human — quite human:

And so with Carl Orff.

He was a very modern classical composer, who wrote what we would describe as classically classical music. Music that was praised by the Nazis in his native Germany. The music is great — you’ve heard it. His weakness was common — you’ve seen this sort of thing yourself, although almost certainly on a lesser scale.

You see, Orff had a life long friend, who got involved with an anti-Nazi resistance movement. When his friend was arrested, his friend’s wife begged Orff to use his influence to save him. Orff refused, fearing arrest himself. That all too common weakness haunted him for the rest of his life.

Orff’s fame came from his 1937 composition, Carmina Burana, which he based on a medieval manuscript of the same name. Lost in the Monastery library, the manuscript was found in the early nineteenth century. The fame is justified, and survives to this day. As I said earlier, you’ve heard this before.

This piece describes the goddess Fortuna, and her wheel. Some people are rising in stature and fortune, some are falling. I wonder if Orff thought of his friend in these terms, with his star rising, and his friend’s falling, ultimately towards the firing squad.

Bruce Charlton brings up Carmina Burana, his favorite piece of 20th-century music, while addressing the question of whether the Middle Ages were merry or miserable:

Any past era was “miserable” for most people in the sense that (compared with the past several decades) there was a lot of starvation, disease, warfare, torture, discomfort and dirt.

But in eras of great Christian devoutness — other-worldly eras — these factors carried much, much less weight than they do or would for us.

An interesting test case is Carmina Burana (songs from the Beuern, a monastery), which is a collection of essentially secular lyrics, a selection from which was set to music in a dramatized cantata by Carl Orff during the paganistic era of National Socialism — in other words a modern and non-Christian angle on medievalism.

Orff’s Carmina Burana represents just about the “merriest” version of the medieval era that is possible minus Christianity — and (yet) it is (taken in total) a terrifying vision of life.

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Top Shot Season 3 Mike Hughes Train Up Video Journal

Saturday, September 10th, 2011

I get the impression that Top Shot season 3 competitor Mike Hughes trained up a bit more than most:

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Freddie Mercury Google Doodle

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

Today’s Freddie Mercury Google Doodle, celebrating what would have been his 65th birthday, really pulls out all the stops — like Freddie himself, I suppose:

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Geordie Shore

Sunday, September 4th, 2011

The UK is producing its own Jersey Shore, called Geordie Shore, about chavs from Northeast England:

England’s always had a fine-grained taxonomy of working-class sub-cultures. Geordies — a term for people from the Tyneside region of Northeast England — may not have always existed in their current form, but the regional nickname stretches at least all the way back to the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, and certainly was in current usage by 1793. The stereotype Geordie Shore exploits is, as MSN TV Editor Lorna Cooper puts it in an email, that “all Geordies are thick, drink brown ale, say ‘why-aye-man’, have women that look like brick houses.”

Of course, this has driven Geordies who aren’t on TV crazy. Part of the problem, Cooper says, is that the show and its audience have conflated a regional stereotype with a class one: While “Geordie” refers to the many residents of a geographic area, the Geordie Shore stars are all working class people who engage in all sorts of hard-partying anti-social behavior. They’re considered chavs.

“Ordinary working class people abhor both the moniker and the association,” Cooper says. “For us, chavs are akin to a level of underclass we look down on; the type of people that go on The Jeremy Kyle Show (think a British equivalent of Maury) for DNA testing to discover who’s the father.”

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The Explorigator

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

Coming across Harry Grant Dart for the first time, I simply had to find more examples of his art, and lo and behold, I found that he created a sumptuous comic strip, The Explorigator, as a competitor to Windsor McCay‘s famous Little Nemo:

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How Pulp Science Fiction Cover Art Got Its Sense of Wonder

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

Natalie Baaklini looks at how pulp science fiction cover art got its sense of wonder, starting with a science-nonfiction magazine cover from well before the so-called pulp era:

This cover art for The All-Story magazine by Harry Grant Dart really captures the spirit of the early years of aviation — which seems so very, very steampunk today:

Elsewhere I found another Harry Grant Dart piece, this one from Harper’s Weekly in 1908, titled “A Look into the Future” — which, in the tradition of science-fiction, means a look into the future of war:

I definitely prefer the genteel, older style to this garish Hugo Gernsback-era Amazing Stories cover by Frank R. Paul

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Cliff Walsh on Top Shot Season 3

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Top Shot season 3 competitor Cliff Walsh — the revolver champion — explains to the other serious shooters on Brian Enos’s forums how there is not time to show everything that happened:

Each show is filmed over 3 days. Day 1: team practice. One team goes in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Day 2: Team challenge in the morning then nomination range in the afternoon. Day 3: elimination practice and then the challenge in the afternoon. A show is about 45 minutes long so all that had to be cut down to fit. Taran was making his usual jokes but they didn’t show much of practice.

I am surprised at some things they did not show. During the cannonball run, I fumbled a reload and launched a mag into the air right about the middle of the shoot. It landed on the ground in front of the platform. I grabbed another mag, got the gun running, and went back to work but I lost 3 or 4 balls before I was back on track. I would think that would have made it more dramatic to see me fumble and then try to catch back up but there was no sign of it. When I fall off the log in the 1st show, Gary is standing behind the log. He tries to help me and gives me a push but nobody is on the other side and he throws me off balance and I roll off the log. In out meeting, the first thing we discuss is me falling off the log, Gary says that it was not my fault he pushed me and this is not a lumberjack competition and we move on. It would have been nice to include that 30 seconds in the show so I don’t have to take so much crap about it. The first time, I did fall all by myself though. In the second show, there were some misfires with AK47 that were cut out. I would really like to see uncut footage of all the challenges form start to finish. Maybe they will put in the DVDs.

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