Wolverine...in 30 seconds

(via Metafilter)

Altruism

From here:

"Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy as Mr Gore. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes."

Halloween Special - Zombies

A possible future?

The shambling undead with an insatiable appetite for braaains, blue-grey corpses coming to life to wreak vengeance on the living, mindless automatons that usually overwhelmingly outnumber small pockets of survivors, these are the setups for your average zombie-flick. The ‘first’ zombie film was George Romero’s 1968 “Night of the Living Dead”, where the shambling un-dead were metaphors for “for homosexual repression, the civil rights movement, feminism, the counterculture, or an unwinnable war in Vietnam” (source)

The zombies have also been made proxies for corporate greed and consumerism
(Resident Evil 1(2002) , Land of the Dead (2005)), class warfare (Day of the Dead (1985)), genetic engineering and worldwide virus pandemics (All the Resident Evils, 28 Days Later (2002) and 28 Weeks Later (2007)), environmental catastrophe (Silent Hill (2006)) and pretty much any other issue you can think of...oh yeah and death.

It is therefore unsurprising that ‘serious’ scientists and professors have begun to use zombies and the zombie apocalypse for theories in their respective disciplines. First up, a research paper published in Infectious Disease Modeling Research Progress (2009) entitled “When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modeling of an outbreak of Zombie infection” (available here).

A "zombie" with the "rage virus" (from "28 days later")

Due to the sheer variety of zombies out there, these professors felt it necessary to define the type of zombie they were dealing with:

“The model zombie is of the classical pop-culture zombie: slow moving, cannibalistic and undead. There are other ‘types’ of zombies, characterised by some movies like 28 Days Later [9] and the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead [10]. These ‘zombies’ can move faster, are more independent and much smarter than their classical counterparts.”

And what these scientists have inadvertently stumbled on is the great debate amongst zombie-aficionados, the recent evolution of the fast zombie. Quoting the zombie master par excellence, Simon Pegg of Shaun of the Dead (2004) in a column for The Guardian:

“You cannot kill a vampire with an MDF stake; werewolves can't fly; zombies do not run.”

Back to the research paper, the scientists used the zombies as a model for any virus outbreak, and using the characteristics of zombies (susceptibility, infectiousness, etc...) they came to some pretty grim conclusions for any surviving humans in the event of the zombie apocalypse.

At this point, Professor of International Politics, Donald W. Drezner published an article for Foreign Policy magazine, “Theory of International Politics and Zombies”, who details various political schools of thought and exactly what they would do in the event of a global zombie pandemic.

For example:

“A structural realist would argue that, because of the uneven distribution of capabilities, some governments will be better placed to repulse the zombies than others.”

or that social constructivists

“would posit that the zombie problem is what we make of it. That is to say, there are a number of possible emergent norms in response to zombies.”

The article is funny and well worth the read. And regardless of your own feelings towards the undead, clearly some serious people are giving it some thought.

Happy Halloween!!!!

A vegetarian zombie - most
likely a social constructivist

Running People

A disturbing, mesmerizing, repellant yet utterly engrossing, comical and totally weird video of…people..running…in slow motion. (via Metafilter...I think)

Sushi without Japanese

This is unintentionally funny. In brief, US cities that are commonly held up as role models of ideal "progressive" cities to live in appear to be mostly white.

Using whatever socio-economic indicators to measure these things, amongst the top ten cities in the USA to live in are Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon. So one enterprising "opinion-leading urban success strategist and writer" has looked at the statistics, and found a remarkable correlation between the 'whiteness' of a city and it's consistently high rankings in the top cities to live in in the US of A. The #1 Role Model in environmental and sustainable policies is Portland.

The disconnect between reality and aspirations of Portland has been noted before, here in a 2008 article in the New York Times:

“I’ve been really upset by what I perceive to be Portland’s blind spot in its progressivism,” said Khaela Maricich, a local artist and musician. “They think they live in the best city in the country, but it’s all about saving the environment and things like that. It’s not really about social issues. It’s upper-middle-class progressivism, really.”

I would argue that the "sushi without japanese" phenomena of Portland is exactly what "upper-middle-class progressivism" is all about, and this idea that 'diversity' should be pursued simply because diversity=Good, is a form of insincere self-righteous preening that is the exclusive purview of certain vegetarians, Toyota Prius drivers and Obama voters ("I voted for Obama so I can't be racist")

The strangest thing I came across whilst researching this was that I found Americans openly rank cities based on progressiveness where progressiveness is defined by the proportion of people who voted Green or for the Democrats, and the city council's policies on the environment and global warming, and all the usual feel-good/do almost nothing measures that inevitably follow. I find it very strange that you would choose a city based on conformity of views..."Yeah I was going to move to Sydney but they vote so Labour that I decided on Cairns instead".

And in proving that real-life does not lack humour, here is a screenshot of the Oregonian
viewed at 11:04am (AEST) 27/10/09. No racist stereotypes here, no sir....

Afghanistan

Some amazing photojournalism from Afghanistan. Link here.

Genocide 4 Gaia

To prove the anti-human motive behind the hoax formerly known as Global Warming, an editorial in the Guardian states:

The worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children.

From amorality to barking mad:

As Rachel Baird, who works on climate change for Christian Aid, says: "Often in the countries where the birth rate is highest, emissions are so low that they are not even measurable. Look at Burkina Faso." So why ask them to pay in unborn children for our profligacy?

Yeah why not? Lets get the Burkino Fasolians to offset our babies. Because of the environmental utopia that is Burkino Faso has only a little bit of "ethnic conflict" despite the presence of more than 9,000 UN forces (source CIA World Factbook)

Back to the Guardian:

Could children perhaps become part of an adult's personal carbon allowance?

It was only just recently that they banned incandescent light bulbs. A few short years from light bulbs to children. And just in case you think this crazy man is talking about 'others':

By today's standards, a cull of Australians or Americans would be at least 60 times as productive as one of Bangladeshis.

A cull of Australians or Americans?!!? Another word for a "cull" of any group of humans defined by race, ethnicity or nationality is..."genocide". It used to be that genocide was not something you mentioned in polite company. Now it is being advocated as a 'cure' to the Warming. One hopes common sense will prevail before the developed world goes too far down the rabbit hole.

Another take down by Mark Steyn.