I never though this would happen, but it has. I have finally found a reality show that goes beyond my comprehension. I mean this goes way, way, way beyond anything even the Japanese have ever cooked up. This makes Takeshi's Castle and Ninja Warrior or even Banzai look relatively sane.
And the winner is Storage Wars. It's show about a bunch of people who hold and participate in auctions of stuff found in abandoned storage lockers somewhere in America. No I am not making this up. This blows my mind on so many levels, first of all there is a group of people who make their living by buying stuff that other people once stored in storage room and later forgot about. All the stuff I have ever had in storage is the sort of thing that you haven't bothered to haul to the dump and everytime I move and have to haul this shit either to the basement or if unlucky to attic, I wonder what is this stuff, where did it all come from and what the fuck it is doing in my storage space. And somebody is making money by buying this kind of stuff and selling it on.
Second Mind Fuck of this show is that someone thought it would make interesting tv. So interesting in fact that they put the word WAR in to the title and you know when they do that its something radical and awesome. The cast also had cool title's like, The Gambler, The Young Gun or The Collector as if that would breath some character into three guys with sunglasses. Its a bunch of people in an auction where someone is selling other people's abandoned junk.
The third mind fuck is that this show made it into the second season. I could fathom how some studio executive was either temporarily insane, wasted off his/her ass, high on something, being controlled by wizard aliens or being blackmailed into putting this show on the air, but how in the hell this managed to make it to the second season. Apparently somewhere on this planet there is a bunch of people who found this crap interesting. I could barely make it through one episode. Even the best reality tv editor couldn't turn this into interesting or dramatic.
torstai 28. heinäkuuta 2011
tiistai 26. heinäkuuta 2011
Making sense of the tragedy at Utoya
Last Friday one of the most devastating killing sprees was commited on the island of Utoya.
The attack on Utoya was exceptionally well planned and executed. The sheer brilliance of this most savage attack amazes me. If you think of all the detail that went into it, its absolutely brilliant piece of terrorism, from the selection of the target to method of attack.
The outline of the plan was fairly complex and it goes far beyond the typical Modus Operandi of the typical spree killer.
1)Detonate a bomb at an administrative center to create chaos and to distract the police, as well as giving the disguised murderer access to the target area.
2)Inflitrate the target area disguised as a law enforcement officer.
3)Use the uniform to lure the victims into a mass where they are easy to slaughter.
The target area was brilliantly chosen. As an island it is a confined space isolated by water from the rest of the country. This had two effects, firstly it limited the space where the victims could hide or run to, given enough time and ammunition the killer could have easily massacred every person on the island by systematically going through the island. Secondly the water hindered the police response, as they had to wait for a boat to get to the island, this contributed to the high death toll.
Terrorism at is core is about getting a reaction. The success of an act of terror is not measured by the death toll or the level of mayhem caused, its meassured by how well the target society's reaction matches the reaction desired by the terrorist. Therefor the success or failure of an act of terror is in the hands of the victims, not the terrorist.
In this case the objective was to get attention to the killer's political ideology. Therefor the best reaction is convict this man as soon as possible, lock him up into a small cell and forget about him. Remember the victims, but forget him, he is not worth remembering. That's why I don't refer him by name in this text, let his very name be forgotten and that is the worst possible punishment for this man. Let him live the rest of his life alone and forgotten.
It however saddens me that a person has to resort to mass-murder to be heard. This one of the common feature among spree killers and school shooters, they feel that no one is listening to them. By doing this sort of thing they get the attention they crave so much.
The worst possible response to this attack is to start censoring the ideas that he was supporting or the people who might share them. There are already calls in Finland to add to the censorship of anti-immigrant or racist ideas. While I find these ideas repugnant, I still believe that in a free society ideas must be exchanged freely. By limiting the freedom of speech of the far right you make violence more attractive to these people, violence generates media buzz and gets attention to their ideas. I would rather have their ideas presented as a part of the everlasting discourse between ideas that is so fundamental to democracy and let them be judged on their merits. The anti-islamic ideas didn't pull the trigger at Utoya, a man who believed that mass-murder was the best way to promote them did.
Finally I wish to say that we must never surrender to fear, if we do the terrorists will win everytime. Against a man like this, who is intelligent and absolutely commited to commiting acts like this, very free society has limited defenses. The police do their best to prevent these tragedies from happening, we can have systems that control access to firearms or chemicals needed to make bombs, but ultimately they will only slow people like this, not stop them. Unless we have the ability to police peoples minds there is no fool proof way of preventing terrorism and even if we had the ability to do so, I am not at all convinced that we should. We must live free with knowledge that there are vicious people out there who use the freedoms we love so much to harm us and that is the true price freedom.
The attack on Utoya was exceptionally well planned and executed. The sheer brilliance of this most savage attack amazes me. If you think of all the detail that went into it, its absolutely brilliant piece of terrorism, from the selection of the target to method of attack.
The outline of the plan was fairly complex and it goes far beyond the typical Modus Operandi of the typical spree killer.
1)Detonate a bomb at an administrative center to create chaos and to distract the police, as well as giving the disguised murderer access to the target area.
2)Inflitrate the target area disguised as a law enforcement officer.
3)Use the uniform to lure the victims into a mass where they are easy to slaughter.
The target area was brilliantly chosen. As an island it is a confined space isolated by water from the rest of the country. This had two effects, firstly it limited the space where the victims could hide or run to, given enough time and ammunition the killer could have easily massacred every person on the island by systematically going through the island. Secondly the water hindered the police response, as they had to wait for a boat to get to the island, this contributed to the high death toll.
Terrorism at is core is about getting a reaction. The success of an act of terror is not measured by the death toll or the level of mayhem caused, its meassured by how well the target society's reaction matches the reaction desired by the terrorist. Therefor the success or failure of an act of terror is in the hands of the victims, not the terrorist.
In this case the objective was to get attention to the killer's political ideology. Therefor the best reaction is convict this man as soon as possible, lock him up into a small cell and forget about him. Remember the victims, but forget him, he is not worth remembering. That's why I don't refer him by name in this text, let his very name be forgotten and that is the worst possible punishment for this man. Let him live the rest of his life alone and forgotten.
It however saddens me that a person has to resort to mass-murder to be heard. This one of the common feature among spree killers and school shooters, they feel that no one is listening to them. By doing this sort of thing they get the attention they crave so much.
The worst possible response to this attack is to start censoring the ideas that he was supporting or the people who might share them. There are already calls in Finland to add to the censorship of anti-immigrant or racist ideas. While I find these ideas repugnant, I still believe that in a free society ideas must be exchanged freely. By limiting the freedom of speech of the far right you make violence more attractive to these people, violence generates media buzz and gets attention to their ideas. I would rather have their ideas presented as a part of the everlasting discourse between ideas that is so fundamental to democracy and let them be judged on their merits. The anti-islamic ideas didn't pull the trigger at Utoya, a man who believed that mass-murder was the best way to promote them did.
Finally I wish to say that we must never surrender to fear, if we do the terrorists will win everytime. Against a man like this, who is intelligent and absolutely commited to commiting acts like this, very free society has limited defenses. The police do their best to prevent these tragedies from happening, we can have systems that control access to firearms or chemicals needed to make bombs, but ultimately they will only slow people like this, not stop them. Unless we have the ability to police peoples minds there is no fool proof way of preventing terrorism and even if we had the ability to do so, I am not at all convinced that we should. We must live free with knowledge that there are vicious people out there who use the freedoms we love so much to harm us and that is the true price freedom.
sunnuntai 17. heinäkuuta 2011
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows part 2
So I went to see the part two of the last Harry Potter film and I must say it was a bit disappointing again, but atleast it wasn't borring like the last one. Again SPOILER WARNING, as we will again descent into the festering pile shit that is the ending to this film.
The biggest disappoint I had was the climax. It was the most anti-climactic climax I have seen in a while. Harry Potter gets chased by Voldemort through the ruins of Hogwarts, they have a flying wrestling match, then the magic penis meassuring contest begins and then Voldemort gets a bad case of dry skin and turns to dust. Fight over. This was what the 7 movie build up lead to, it wasn't any different from every other fight HP and V had before. Here are a few examples how epic final battles should be done.
Luke vs Darth Vader
The final battle in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Bill vs the Bride
The movie also continued with the theme of forgetting everyone else besides Harry. Jesus, Harry Potter has one of the richest universes and atleast in this film that got almost completely wasted. The thread of Voldemort's dominion and its effects on the World of Wizards that was started in the last film was left abandoned. How are we supposed to give a rats fuck about the heroe's sacrifice if we don't know what it is at stake?
The Siege of Hogwarts scene was a bit mixed. While it was awesome to see the Hogwarts turn into the Battle of Stalingrad, there were some issues that really annoyed me. The first one was the magic shield, it looked like something out of Star Trek, I was sort of expecting Worf to pop up and report "Shields are down to 30% Captain" But more annoying was the fact was how Hogwarts was defended. The whole point of being in a castle is that you are in a place where the enemy has a problem of shooting at you while you have the opportunity shoot at the uncovered enemy with impunity. When The Dark Horde of Doom starts shooting at your castle its generally a smart idea to FUCKING SHOOT BACK.
But the most hilarious scene was when Harry dies, yes he dies, I told you there were spoilers. He goes into a white train station, has a talk with Dumbledore and he sees the skinned featus of Voldemort. Yes, he sees the skinned featus of Voldemort. I am not making this up. But no worries Harry apparently had a guest lecture from Jeesus on how to beat death and he comes back from death.
Other than that there were some pretty good 3D effects and overall it was entertaining but couldn't really live up to be the movie to crown the epic 8 movie saga.
The biggest disappoint I had was the climax. It was the most anti-climactic climax I have seen in a while. Harry Potter gets chased by Voldemort through the ruins of Hogwarts, they have a flying wrestling match, then the magic penis meassuring contest begins and then Voldemort gets a bad case of dry skin and turns to dust. Fight over. This was what the 7 movie build up lead to, it wasn't any different from every other fight HP and V had before. Here are a few examples how epic final battles should be done.
Luke vs Darth Vader
The final battle in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Bill vs the Bride
The movie also continued with the theme of forgetting everyone else besides Harry. Jesus, Harry Potter has one of the richest universes and atleast in this film that got almost completely wasted. The thread of Voldemort's dominion and its effects on the World of Wizards that was started in the last film was left abandoned. How are we supposed to give a rats fuck about the heroe's sacrifice if we don't know what it is at stake?
The Siege of Hogwarts scene was a bit mixed. While it was awesome to see the Hogwarts turn into the Battle of Stalingrad, there were some issues that really annoyed me. The first one was the magic shield, it looked like something out of Star Trek, I was sort of expecting Worf to pop up and report "Shields are down to 30% Captain" But more annoying was the fact was how Hogwarts was defended. The whole point of being in a castle is that you are in a place where the enemy has a problem of shooting at you while you have the opportunity shoot at the uncovered enemy with impunity. When The Dark Horde of Doom starts shooting at your castle its generally a smart idea to FUCKING SHOOT BACK.
But the most hilarious scene was when Harry dies, yes he dies, I told you there were spoilers. He goes into a white train station, has a talk with Dumbledore and he sees the skinned featus of Voldemort. Yes, he sees the skinned featus of Voldemort. I am not making this up. But no worries Harry apparently had a guest lecture from Jeesus on how to beat death and he comes back from death.
Other than that there were some pretty good 3D effects and overall it was entertaining but couldn't really live up to be the movie to crown the epic 8 movie saga.
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