The Weather Outside is Frightful
April 23rd, 2008 - 12:33 pm
With oil around $120 a barrel and going up, how will we ever keep enough Hummers on the road to fight the global coolening?
My old Wrangler barely gets 15 MPG the way I drive it. What are you doing to protect the environment?
(Hat tip, GR.)
UPDATE: Speaking of future ice ages, did you happen to catch “Sunshine?” I thought it would be some fun, maybe creepy, science fiction. Turned out to be very, very smart sci-fi and the best thriller/horror flick since “The Machinist.” Rent’em both this weekend.
Oh, and “Sunshine” on Blu-Ray? Stunning. Jaw-droppingly stunning.
ANOTHER UPDATE: I talk scary movies, Ed Christie talks opera. I was hoping bringing him on would class up the joint.
Well my hobby is restoring 30 year old 2 stroke motorcycles. My least eccicient one is a 1972 350cc Kawasaki that gets about 12 MPG and puts out more hydrocarbons than a fleet of Kenworths. My neighbors call it “mosquito control” from all the smoke it belches. It’s a screaming little wheelie machine though.
Does that help?
From now on, no more ceiling fans. I’m just gonna leave open the refrigerator door.
Baloney. According to Goddard, 2007 was warmer than 2006 and tied for the second hottest year (after 2005) on record. Also, the Baghdad snow wasn’t in 2007. In short, Chapman is an idiot.
Clark,
I can’t help but notice you didn’t bother trying to dispute either the Christy Group or the decline in sunspot activity.
Did Chapman miss a couple things? Yeah. So did you, it seems.
The sad fact is, Chapman doesn’t know what’s going on — and neither do you. Neither do I. The evidence for or against global warming, manmade or not, is conflicted at best.
Which is why I make snarky comments from the sidelines, rather than picking sides when there’s no good side to pick. I’m not screaming the sky is falling — or that the sky is freezing, either.
Try it sometime.
Clark, you used to be an admirable — if sometimes wrongheaded (but who isn’t!) — libertarian.
Now you’re writing for Pat Buchanan?
Jeebus, I might be a useless snark, but I never sold my stuff to a Nazi-excusing troglodyte.
Sorry if that’s too personal… but Buchanan… I mean… freaking Buchanan. I’m waiting for him to start praising the Confederacy.
Oh, wait — the racist fuck already has.
I try. I have chickens, pigs, grow most of my own vegetables, heat my house with a wood burning cookstove,the feed for my animals has trippled in price in the last year beacuse of ethanol, and my truck only gets 8 miles per gallon pulling my horse trailer with 2 horses to Civil War reenactments from Pennsylvania to Alabama.
I ment to add, “Do my carbons offset”?
Oh, and by the way, Clark — lamest attempt to tie in the Iraq War, ever. As in: Lamest. Attempt. Ever. As in: When did you get so lame? As in: Lame. And lamey lame lame.
Then again, it’s now mid-evening and I’ve been drinking on an empty stomach. What’s your excuse?
There’s got to be a Godwin’s Law for that kind of thing. If not, we’ll call it the Tooksbury Rule.
Where have you been? I sold my first article to TAC five years ago and have published several articles and reviews there. You should pick up a copy some time. It has featured Jesse Walker, James Bovard, Bill Kauffman, Andrew Bacevich and other outstanding writers; plus a few that I don’t care for. All in all an excellent publication that goes well with beer or a good Tennessee Whiskey.
P.S. I you don’t think that you are taking sides on global warming, you should try blogging sober on occasion.
Yes, Clark, I’m sure it’s a very nice magazine. It only happens to be published by a Nazi-excusing, Confederacy-loving, racist, anti-semitic fucktard.
Me, I happen to care who signs my paycheck. But again, that’s just me.
I’ll take the fact that you dropped every single issue you came in here with as an “Oops, I did it again!”
As for blogging sober… I take the fact that you’ve become an apologist for a man who wouldn’t tolerate your existence if you weren’t writing for him, as a reason you ought to drink more, rather than a reason I should drink less.
Speaking of oopses, I almost used a different word other than “writing” in the sentence above. Although it did also start with a W. But that would have been too much, even for me.
Where’s your limit?
Are you going to take that, Clark?
This is usually the point where I would put in an emoticon of a smiley face chowing on popcorn.
Did you seriously just refer to Sunshine, possibly the only film ever made to be dumber than The Core, as a “smart” movie?
Have to agree with Alsadius. After reading your comments, I checked out the synopsis at imdb.com, and they lost me in the first sentence when they said “re-igniting the sun, which has gone out.” Aaaaack!
First idiot-plot trick runner up: when a supposedly brilliant crewperson forgets a critical step; I guess those bozos never heard of checklists, eh?
…You know, Al, you’re right. Sunshine really is The Core in outer space. At least the latter movie was unintentionally funny; “You want me to hack the planet!?” Heh.
I enjoyed “Sunshine” as well, but then I’m capable of suspending disbelief to follow a story.
I have also heard rumors that Harry Potter’s magic is, get this, “made up!”
I’ve been working on my ability to suspend disbelief in hopes of becoming an Obama supporter since I really dig all this “change” and “together for the future” jazz.
Note: My reference to jazz in the context of Obama is not intended to have racial implications. I meant “jazz” in the purely Dave Brubeck sense.
Note 2: In mentioning Dave Brubeck I did not intend to ignore the significant contributions that African Americans have made to the only American art form. Please replace all previous Brubeck references with “Kermit T. Frog” — a musician who truly transcends race.
Andy, my rule isn’t reality, it’s internal consistency and plausibility. I’ll let you adopt rules of physics other than those in the real world(e.g., Harry Potter’s magic), but once you’ve created the world I expect you to stick within the bounds of it. Sunshine claims to be real-but-future, and then uses a conventional nuclear warhead to re-ignite the sun, when the actual effects of that would be impossible to notice without a telescope. That’s not consistent, that’s not plausible, that’s just a sign that the writers are too damn stupid to think of either a valid plot for that story, or a story worth writing.
Again, Alsadius, agreed.
And Andy (ok, enough alliteration) I have no problem with suspending disbelief. It’s when I have to hang by the neck until it’s dead, dead, dead, that I have a problem.
And, yes, I liked The Core. So did Rodger Ebert, and for the same reason. It’s just so magnificently over-the-top dumb that it’s fun in spite of itself.
And I might add that neither movie is truly science fiction, since real SF (what used to be called “hard” SF) actually follows the known laws of science, while adding certain mods, such as Battlestar Galactica’s jump drive. One could argue that their process follows that of electrons which have demonstrated a similar process. Then (as Alsadius said) the writers have to follow that assumption consistently.
This is why neither Star Trek nor Star Wars even remotely resemble true SF. BSG has pushed the envelop in that direction sometimes, but they focus more on human relationships and situations than “dylithium crystals,” “warp cores” or mythocondrians.
One thing real SF doesn’t do is violate the known laws of science. Bypass them in an intellectually respectable manner (such as a jump drive), but not violate them, as in Star Trek’s idiotic concept of storing things as a transporter “waveform,” then re-creating them later.
The Truman Show was good SF, as was Blade Runner. Yes, the latter had anti-gravity cars, but the rest of the science held up pretty well.
The first Robocop worked pretty well, while The Matrix is just pathetic with respect to “hard” SF requirements. The science in the original Jurassic Park was pretty consistent.
Another good hard SF movie is The Andromeda Strain.
I think the main reason there are so few genuine hard SF movies is that they take a lot of work to get it right.
“Sunshine” was a great film. Hard science fiction is very rare from Hollywood.
Global warmening, or whatever, is something to take seriously. However, we need a lot more information. In the meantime, I vow to stop taking my personal jet on weekend jaunts to Bali.
I will believe it is a crisis when the people who say it is a crisis start acting like it is a crisis.
Glenn Reynolds
Good sci-fi is about people. Sure, they make the scenario in the future. Or introduce some fantastic tech. But if the movie isn’t focused on the people in it, it’s bad sci-fi.
Sunshine did focus on the people. But they were so catty, annoying, or insane, that I really couldn’t connect. Holy hell people, you’re out SAVING THE WORLD. Stop acting like a bunch of surly teenagers.
It was a beautiful movie though. Only one piece of “Magic” sci-fi. And the song in the ending credits is fantastic. People are shocked when they hear it.
VP,
Just rented ‘em both. Loved them. Thanks for the tip.
I liked the fact that Ivan the big bald badass bruiser in The Machinist didn’t get violent at all with 120 lb Trevor. That wasn’t his MO. Nice touch.
Plus, the shrink on Icarus II and the captain of Icarus I both worshiped the same god (the Sun). Yet the former loved life, the latter loved death. Nice touch.