Nail, Meet Coffin: Toshiba Drops HD-DVD

Edit: It’s more official-er, Toshiba has issued a press release.

It’s finally official, Toshiba has dropped HD-DVD, so what happens next? Well, that’s a question many are asking. We’ll take a quick look at each aspect of the Toshiba HD-DVD industry to get a better idea of what’s to come.

Movies
If you own an HD-DVD player, then this is probably a pretty good scenario for you, despite how it sounds at first. There are hundreds of HD titles available, and within the coming months, they will hit rock bottom prices. In theory, you’ll be able to fill an entire movie library for $100.

PC
The internal PC high definition drive market really hasn’t been much of a format war. This is widely due to home theater enthusiasts not only requiring the expensive drive, but also an expensive video card capable of displaying high definition content. At which point, it makes far more sense to purchase a stand alone device.

The final nail in the PC coffin was the lack of any PC software requiring users to purchase the drives. Remember, CDROM drives weren’t sold based off the assumption that the emerging technology was “better” than floppy diskettes, they were sold because of Myst.

Don’t believe such software could push a product today? Microsoft Windows Vista’s sales increased after the release of Halo 2 for the PC. A game that required DirectX 10, which is only available under Vista. Funny, considering Halo 2 was an Xbox game, a DirectX 7 device.

Xbox 360
Microsoft has long been a strong supporter of the HD-DVD standard, arguably due to a nameless competitor using the rival format, Bluray. However, they never went so far as to embed the HD-DVD drive into their own system, only selling it as an accessory to home theater enthusiasts. This was a risky move by Microsoft that has definitely paid off.

Toshiba
The bottom line for Toshiba is a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. However, for a company with 200,000 employees this isn’t going to be a death rattle by any stretch. Toshiba’s sales are incredibly diversified, and the company is sure to bounce back strong. They have always been a consumer product and PC manufacturer, and will continue to do so well into the future.

Tackling the First Sentence

The importance of the first sentence in a body of work, whether a political blog or a novel, can not be overstated. However important, it is very easy to misunderstand the goal of the first sentence. Instead of going on and on about what you should and shouldn’t do, we will learn together by picking apart some of the first sentences of the world’s best storytellers.

Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
“The night before he went to London, Richard Mayhew was not enjoying himself.”

This sentence tells us about the setting, the main character and what to expect of the narrative. We know the story begins at night, within a half-days travel of London, the outlook of the main character, and that the narrative is in third person and past tense. This is a generic example, but it’s also a fine example of a developed world. Richard Mayhew and the world around him are alive.

Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron
“The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal.”

There are many things we don’t know about the story from this first sentence, and yet it tells us more than the previous example. We know it’s set in the future and in past tense, we don’t know who the main character is or what perspective the story is in. But the emphasis on how the world is equal “finally” gives us an idea of the story’s tone, narrative, plot and scope. All in one word.

Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler
“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler.”

Arguably, the most important goal of a first sentence is to hook the reader, which Italo Calvino does flawlessly. This story, at least in its first chapter, is in second person, and it is about you, the reader, attempting to finish the book. The book itself is infinitely complicated, but the first sentence contains enough information to tell the reader where the work is heading.

Give it a Shot
As a mental excercise, go grab a couple books. One that you have read and one that you don’t know much about. Write down the first sentence from each and see how much information you can glean from the narrative. Hopefully, you’ll have as much fun as I do when I pick up a book.

Keep Obscene Material Away from Children

Today’s youth are being bombarded with same-sex couples and erotica laced advertisements, but BOOKS are a culprit that have been dodging regulation for decades. If your priorities are arranged anything like mine, then you understand the importance of protecting the world’s children from the filth, obscenities and violence depicted throughout the modern media.

Warning: Explicit Content
Although many will complain that video game, music and movie rating systems aren’t doing enough, they will be hard pressed to find any system at all to prevent obscene books from reaching a child’s hands. Thanks to the unregulated nature of the First Amendment, any child has access to information that allows them to sell drugs, or themselves, on the street.

With this money in hand, they can walk into any bookstore and purchase even more mind-filth. As little Bobby or Suzie drops James Joyce or William Faulkner on the counter, the devil behind the counter won’t even go so far as to ask for ID before offering the defenseless child bargains on future pornography.

Public Pornographers
But it gets worse, not only are there no systems in place to prevent a child from purchasing this garbage, there are people who hand out this smut for free. These trash pushers, or libraries, only ask that the child give up their home address. We can only speculate for what reason, but it’s assumed to be for homosexual orgies/communist rallies/Ayn Rand.

While all of this is happening, our government is turning their back on us, with many public schools banning the most important book a child could ever read, the Bible. With the true word of God, as handed down to us by old men over the course of several editions, translations and hundreds of years, being kept away from these kids, how are they ever expected to turn into responsible adults?

Studies Prove It
The truth is they aren’t expected, with more and more research proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that exposure to violent, pornographic material as a youth leads to violent sex offenders. A University of Michigan study proved it. They have professors there, with degrees. In science. Probably.

More studies have shown that books may even be worse than The Internet. With 4.2 million pornographic sites online in the Internet’s 20 year history, we can assume that children have amassed over 273 million pornographic books since the beginning of early literature.

Fight For Your Right to Censor!
Don’t allow these pornographers like Mark Twain and Neil Gaiman to hide behind the constitution any longer, contact your legislators today about warning labels and a tiered rating system to prevent today’s youth from becoming tomorrow’s violent sex offenders!

Juggling 101: Routine

A routine is one of, if not the most, essential aspect of a live, juggling performance. Although knowing hundreds of technically difficult tricks will be of some assistance, flair is far from required. Although the task of building a routine from scratch may seem like pushing a boulder up a mountain, it can be broken down and completed before you know it.

Instead of looking at the blank slate, it is better to take a look at what you know. Take a few minutes now to write down the moves you can perform with confidence. This will give you a clear reference, so you won’t second guess if you’ve forgotten that really cool palmspin isolation you’ve practiced for months. After writing the list, write a letter next to each move.

Moves that I, Floyd, can confidently perform:

A: Butterfly
B: Squeeze Ups
C: Inner elbow stall
D: Halfpipe
E: Circles
F: Circle Toss Thingie
G: Back to Palm
H: Palm to Back
I: Edson’s Enigma
J: Floating Enigma
K: Three Finger Hold

The importance of assigning a letter is so that you can write your own routine string, which is a great way to write your routine down on paper for future reference. It’s also because I’m a geek and I like long running lists of characters. Sue me.

What you want to do now is to find two-letter combinations that flow well. You want to look closely, and examine how smooth the transition is from one move to the other.

An example of good flow would be HA, since the Palm-to-back ends with the ball at the back of the hand in the cradle, which is the beginning of the butterfly. It’s also important to understand that flow is fairly personal. I can’t gracefully flow through AB or KI, so I probably wouldn’t use that combination in a routine.

Now, after you find several two-letter combinations that flow well, it’s time to piece them together. Here are a few combinations that worked well for me.

CA BJ KE JI IK AK GC EH AG HA

If I were to begin with a routine with Squeeze Ups (B), then I could start with BJ. I only have one other combination that starts with J, so I would follow with JI, giving me BJI. I continue this process until I have BJIKEHAGCAK.

This is, essentially, the routine itself. I never have done all of those moves in order, but I know they flow well since I tested each transition individually. Sure, there are a few things left, such as practicing the routine and deciding on which creative commons music to use on your YouTube video, but you’ve pushed that boulder over the mountain. It’s all downhill from here.

Note: I’ll have a YouTube video of this routine up soon. Apparently, they have this “SuperBowl” thing that distracts males like myself around this time each year.

New Job and Site Updates

If you have been keeping track of this site the past week, you may have noticed there weren’t any updates. Well, there is good news. I started a new job last Monday, and I wanted to focus all of my attention into it for the week.

A new article will be up for Monday, but I may post it Sunday (tomorrow) if things go well enough, fast enough. It’s going to be about forming your own juggling routine, but it can easily be about doing anything in your life. Treat juggling as a metaphor for any complicated task, if you want.

After that, things will return the normally scheduled programming, with updates on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

FOXNews Fact Checking: Part Deux

I swear FOXNews isn’t even trying to be legitimate news source.

UFO Story from the AP? Throw it up on the main page.

Asteroid nearly hitting the earth? Better alert the masses.

Strange Lights
First up is the widely reported UFO Sighting over Stephenville, Texas. The information in the article is fairly straightforward.

The Air Force admits to doing test flights of up to 10 F-16s in the area. Even the title of the article claims the mystery to be solved. Why then, FOXNews, are you allowing an article to run where only 9% of the content relates to it being F-16 flight training, and the other 91% pertains to “UFOs sighted over Texas, Government Denies it?”

They even have a cute artist’s conception of a UFO printed with the article. Here’s a little concept drawing I did to show what they really saw.

Apocalypse, now!
Second, we have the Asteroid 2007 TU24 that is being so widely misreported that Phil Plait had to make a video so he could stop writing about it! FOXNews still seems to believe it’s a threat, however.

Now, not only does FOXNews fall for all of this craziness, they even have an artist’s concept up of an asteroid grazing the earth. Even better, 33% of the article doesn’t even inform the masses about what an extraordinary astronomical event this is. Rather, they discuss a What-if scenario of Armageddon.

These are NOT freak occurrences among their articles. On the contrary, it’s a perfect example of standard flair over at FOXNews. If they were to really live up to their slogan they wouldn’t have made exaggerated claims and hyped up events so mundane as a rock floating through space, they would just report the facts and not decide to sensationalize everything.

Confusing Fantasy with Reality

Like the mythical Bat-Signal of yesteryear, Christopher Grant’s “Keighley Takes on Fox News’ SEXbox Sexpose” was a call to arms. In the embedded video, you’ll see Cooper Lawrence, a talk-radio psycholgist that loves to take aim at video games.

Reasoning
I’m not writing this article to repeat what Grant has already said; I’m writing it to criticize Lawrence’s clear misunderstanding of scientific studies and research. In the embedded video you will see her make the claim that a “recent” University of Maryland study showed that “boys that play video games can not tell the difference between video games and the real world if they don’t have real life experience.”

As a male skeptic that enjoys video games I found this a bit of a stretch. Would a University really try to make this outrageous claim?

Absolutely Not.

What Study?
The study she is referring to is one that was organized and handled by the Professor of Human Development at the University of Maryland, Melanie Killen. I’m still waiting for a response from Professor Killen on the subject, but I will assume good faith in that her study was performed to the best of her ability.

This study didn’t involve thousands of young children. It didn’t even involve “real life experience” or even if they knew the difference between real life and fantasy. The Washington Post, in their story Students See Video Games As Harmless, Study Finds is more accurate, but not much more. The post still sensationalizes the issue by claiming that 14-year olds, who are filled with wrath, consider themselves “immune to mayhem.”

Process
Here’s how the study took place:
Professor Melanie Killen and two student researchers asked 100 University of Maryland students to participate in a study involving video games. Over the course of 45 minutes, these students were shown images from fake video games that bore a striking similarity to real games.

• Image 1: Scantily clad women and brutish men playing violent games of golf. (Outlaw Golf?)
• Image 2: A first person shooter where the enemies are terrorists. (America’s Army?)
• Image 3: A sport surfing simulator. (Kelly Slator’s Pro Surfing?)

Afterwards, they were asked to answer a short list of questions, including their experience with gaming, whether the games depicted negative themes and harmful stereotypes, and whether the content could harm them or result in a negative consequence.

Results
Not suprisingly, participants that had played games prior to the experiment claimed “it’s just like fantasy.”

The key to remember here is that the study was neither a large or a diverse sample. 100 college students is just that, only 100 college students. The same college students that probably did this study so they could fulfill an Intro to Psychology requirement or to earn extra credit. The same who sell their textbooks at the end of the semester for drinking money.

Final Word
For Fox News, Cooper Lawrence or Daniel de Vise of the Washington Post to claim that this study finds that a child’s view of reality is altered by playing video games is absolutely ludicrous. All the study said, was that people who play video games are more likely to believe the stereotypes in them aren’t harmful. Young boys aren’t confusing fantasy with reality, sensationalist journalists and radio talk show hosts are.

Do More Than Dream

It’s Martin Luther King Jr Day, but do any of us really understand what that means? Sure, classes are out so you have plenty of time to read this, and the library and post office are closed so I have plenty of time to write this, but what does it really mean to any liberal college student?

No Class
The holiday itself was signed into law in 1983 by Ronald Reagan, fifteen years after the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner’s unfortunate assassination. Ronald Reagan vehemently opposed the holiday, only signing because it was passed with such an overwhelming majority that it was veto proof.

Arizona, South Carolina and Jesse Helms all opposed the holiday. South Carolina even offering three Confederate holidays that federal employees could celebrate instead of MLKJr Day. In fact, to this day you can still visit Virginia today and celebrate Lee-Jackson Day, which commemorates the life of the Civil Rights leader alongside the leader of the romanticized Confederate General.

Aftermath
When King was shot on his hotel room balcony, the switchboard operator couldn’t be found to make the emergency phone call. They had suffered a fatal heart attack at the news of King’s death. There were over 60 citywide riots throughout the country after the news hit the press.

What could be so unsettling about a federal holiday? What’s so important about this baptist minister and his words?

We’ve all heard excerpts from his I Have a Dream speech, equally famous for its social commentary as its rhetoric, but many still don’t recognize the basic importance of this great man.

By Comparison
I’m twenty-three years old as I write this, and I’ll be twenty-four this October. Martin Luther King Jr earned his Doctorate in Philosophy at Boston University when he was 24. Later that same year, he became a minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. At 26, he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott that brought Rosa Parks, Civil Disobedience and Segregation into the national spotlight. At 35, he was the youngest person to ever receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Integrity and Credibility
Dr King never admitted to being perfect. In the 80s it was discovered that he had plagiarized over a third of his doctoral dissertation. Boston University still found his paper to be of such great scholarly importance to not revoke his doctoral status. Had things gone differently, we’d still call him Doctor King. He had received over 20 honorary doctorates in his 13 year struggle for civil rights.

Departing Words
At his funeral, Dr King gave his own eulogy, the Drum Major Instinct Sermon. In the sermon, he said that he wanted to love and serve humanity, to clothe the naked, to visit prisoners, to be right about war, to feed the hungry and to try and love somebody.

A Loud Bible Thumper
His faith in God was phenomenal, and a case can easily be made saying that without faith, the world would never have had a MLK. But it was an exposure to a different culture entirely that shaped his civil rights strategy. When he visited India, he was able to meet with the Gandhi family. This is summarized best, by his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, “In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”

Dr King wasn’t just a case of a prominent black figure being in the right place at the right time. He saw injustices in the world, and he set out to correct them. But, by no means did he accomplish this alone; his voice and message empowered millions around the globe.

This Is Where You Come In
It’s a little late for any of us to do anything in the name of the holiday, but at this point you should understand that a day off is not what the holiday is about.

• It’s about NOT sitting back and allowing things to continue.
• It’s about making a difference using the voice God/Evolution gave you.
• It’s about peace for everybody, not just liberal college students or rich, old, white men.

Find something you want to do with your life, anything at all. Give yourself an adequate timespan to do it. Find out all the little tasks and subgoals that make up the larger one. Then, and most importantly, do them.

Personally, I’m giving myself a year to clean up my drug problem.
(Why not end on a joke?)

Looking for Truth: The Moon, Jesus, 9/11 and Taxes

I contact juggle throughout most of the day, this isn’t a surprise to many of you. Here is a typical dialogue:

Q: “What is that?”
F: “A ball.”
Q: “No, I mean, what is it your doing.”
F: “It’s called contact juggling, it involves-”
Q: “Are you using magnets?”
F: “No, it’s really just a matter of balan-”
Q: “Or strings…”

Would you say Q is skeptical or denying the facts?

The point I’m trying to illustrate with this banter is that skeptics do not refute reality in the face of evidence, deniers do. Lately I’ve found an alarming amount of popular material purported as skeptical of common events. I’m going to highlight a few of these and hopefully give you the facts you need to battle this sort of absurdity.

Moon Landing
This classic is being shot down first because it’s relatively simple and most people will agree outright that Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon on July 12th, 1969.

This illustrates my first point: You were lied to.

Not that the moon landing didn’t happen, it did. It happened on the 20th of July in 1969, not the 12th. If you were reading this, however, you probably didn’t second guess me when I said the 12th, because I presented it as fact and I’m reasonably well written (spoken?). Presentation is what make the vast majority of conspiracy theories believable.

For the sake of the article consistency:

Claim: The moon landing was a US government orchestrated hoax to win the cold war.

There weren’t any stars in any of the photos.

• The photos were shot during the daytime, which means it was too bright for any stars to be seen. Take a camera and take a picture of the sky during the day, light doesn’t act any differently on the moon than on earth.

The flag can be seen waving in the photos, despite being in a vacuum.

• Of course air wasn’t moving the flag, but the astronaut moving the pole around.

If you would like to read more about the Moon Hoax, check out Phil Plait’s blog over at Bad Astronomy.

Claim: The Federal Reserve Bank is a private entity and the Income Tax is Voluntary.

• Absolutely not. It’s an independent bank within the US Government that doesn’t make profit. I could explain more, but their own website really clarifies this more than I ever could. I honestly don’t know how this load of garbage gets around.
  http://www.federalreserve.gov/generalinfo/faq/faqfrs.htm#5
• Taxes Voluntary? Tell that to tax protesters who deal with fines and imprisonment. Straight from the horses(IRS) mouth:”Some [people] assert that they are not required to file federal tax returns because the filing of a tax return is voluntary. Proponents point to the fact that the IRS itself tells taxpayers in the Form 1040 instruction book that the tax system is voluntary. Additionally, the Supreme Court’s opinion in Flora v. United States, 362 U.S. 145, 176 (1960), is often quoted for the proposition that “our system of taxation is based upon voluntary assessment and payment, not upon distraint.”The Law: The word “voluntary,” as used in Flora and in IRS publications, refers to our system of allowing taxpayers to determine the correct amount of tax and complete the appropriate returns, rather than have the government determine tax for them. The requirement to file an income tax return is not voluntary and is clearly set forth in Internal Revenue Code §§ 6011(a) , 6012(a) , et seq., and 6072(a). See also Treas. Reg. § 1.6011-1(a).”

Claim: 9/11 was an orchestrated hoax so that ____ could ____

Before linking to facts, I want you to say this line aloud:

“I firmly believe that thousands of government officials are a part of a well orchestrated conspiracy to cover up the truth about the events that happened on September 11th, 2001 that is so bulletproof that only a couple kids on Youtube can uncover it.”

Now say:

“I firmly believe that 19 terrorists hijacked planes and intentionally crashed them into three buildings that was witnessed by millions of people all around the world and by hundreds of media outlets.”

Then read: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html

Claim: That all religions are sun-god worship attempts to control society.

I’m about to make Christian friends. I’m not going to say God is fake. I’m saying that this conspiracy theory about Jesus is easily debunked.

As a sun god: Sure, Christianity has a lot of holdovers from pagan religions. Anyone who took a Religion course in high school or college can tell you that, but is Jesus Christ really a Sun God Myth used to control the masses? No.

Proper Skepticism
I’m not going to sit here and tell you to question everything, to trust no one and to further this X-Files bullshit. I’m wanting everyone to actually listen to the information they are hearing when watching movies like Zeitgeist or Loose Change and ask themselves questions when they come up.

Here are a few short examples of why I raised eyebrows at these myths, and then proceeded to do my own research into the matter.

My favorite argument used to further the 9/11 hoax in Loose Change is “But a plane couldn’t fly that low to the ground” in reference to the pentagon attack being a missile. Of course a plane can’t fly that low, It would crash.

The red flag for Zeitgeist was, for me, the equating of Jesus Christ to Bacchus Dionysus. I know next to nothing about biblical history, but I did study Latin pretty extensively in high school, which told me that this -1- important fact in the first 10 minutes of the movie was absolutely bullshit. I did a quick google search on the other deities mentioned and realized that the video had a stunning 0% credibility, despite “citing references” on its web page.

I raised my eyebrows at the moon landing hoax in the same way that I do for Holocaust Deniers. Bullshit absolutely reaks.

Signed,
Floyd Zamarrripa
Skeptic

Stranger than Nonfiction

“Can you prove that [the Rapture] is fictional? What if I am correct? Could it be possible?”

An appeal to ignorance is when you expect to not argue your standing by your opponent’s inability to disprove your argument. You need to prove your point, not shift the burden onto your opponent.

• Example: The moon landing was a hoax, and you haven’t provided any evidence that proves otherwise.

Rapture
Assuming the rapture is prophesied in biblical literature as an event occurring at the end of times involving Kirk Cameron, I assert that proving it wrong is impossible.”What?” you say.
“No, really,” I say.

However, I do assert that all prophecies are crap. Prophecy, clairvoyance, and ESP are crap because they all require large amounts of self deception. If you predict enough, people will see positives in the flood of negatives. This is called confirmation bias. This sort of selective thinking is why Nostradamus and the Bible Code are popular. I would like to make an example.

Monkeys that left the earth at the Dawn of Man shall return from space and rule with an iron fist. Prove me wrong.
While we are at it, prove the following wrong:

• The final battle between the Aesir and the Jotnar which destroys the universe. (Norse)
• The purifying of the world by a White Buffalo Calf Woman (Lakota Tribe)
• Kali Yuga, the final stage of Kalpa (Hindu)

What you seem to believe, is that if you can’t prove any of them wrong, then all of them are possible outcomes, including the space monkey theory.

Now, I fully expect to hear, “Space Monkeys are not mentioned in the bible, which is the word of God, and is therefore true.” Which puts the burden of proof back onto you (heads up, it’s an appeal to authority). Either prove the rapture or prove the existence of a god (any will do), but stop pushing the burden onto others.

Just for Fun
I’m going to make vague predictions about the Thanksgiving Holiday. If any of these come true for anyone, please tell me.

I’m generally not too great at this, as I’m new to cold reading and the like. Things may not be too clear. I’m going to just say things as I see them, which will probably be unimportant to me, but mean a lot to you.

I see a girl, she’s not related and seems insecure about something, a problem with a man or a father figure of some type.

I’m feeling warm and kind glow off of a man, he’s older, but I’m also feeling anger around the holiday.

This person I’m seeing, they feel they have a great weakness, and they are overly critical of themselves because of it, but they also have unlimited potential inside themselves.