Have you seen this robot?

Why Man Creates

One of my all-time favorites -- the edifice sequence from Saul Bass' "Why Man Creates."

In the Greek philosophy sequence, somebody asks the question "Who shall rule the state?" People pop out with various answers. Then a chorus says, "The people." Some guy asks "You mean, all the people?" at 1:24, some other guy stabs him.

Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps

Oliver Stone is still a titan of a filmmaker. Wall Street 2 rocks. It's a sprawling story, but it held my interest. The Gordan Gekko character screw people over, but finds redemption in the end. That's OK by me. If villains eternally stay villains, it's not a story, it's an allegory. As Anthony Burgess once said, people change. Novels are based on that fact. (And movies too, as I once said.)

Stone's movie puts in a serious plug for fusion power. The LA Times ripped this as an "informercial," but screw them. Fusion needs good press. The last movie that mentioned it was Spider Man II -- as the megalomaniac dream of Doc. Ock.

If we'd spent the TRILLION DOLLARS AND COUNTING we've spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to develop commercial fusion power, we'd be riding high on a second industrial revolution.

But I digress.

Fugate's 53rd Law

Some geniuses are assholes. It does not follow that acting like asshole makes you a genius.

Happy Birthday June Foray!

Props to the woman behind the voice behind Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Cindy Lou Who and Tweety Bird's Granny.

Disgruntled physicist

"Disgruntled" and "physicist" are words you don't want to read in the same sentence.

The same applies to "Venezuela" and "nuclear bomb."

From NPR --

A former scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who left following a dispute over funding, and his wife — who also worked at the facility — face federal charges in a sting operation built on the scientist's alleged offer to help build Venezuela a nuclear bomb.

Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, 75, and Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni, 67, were charged in a 22-count indictment returned Thursday in a federal court in Albuquerque, N.M.

NPR's Carrie Johnson tells All Things Considered co-host Melissa Block that Pedro Mascheroni worked in a secret unit called the X Division. The scientist held a Q-level security clearance that allowed him access to certain classified information, including "restricted data."

"He got into a big fight with the Department of Energy after speaking out over its failure to fund a project that he highly supported," Johnson says. "The government wound up investigating him and yanked his security clearance in 1987. He ultimately left and filed a lawsuit.

"Sources tell me he kept on being disgruntled all these years," she says.

Fugate's 113th Law

If you crack a joke about Eskimos, Nanook of the North will be sitting in the booth behind you holding a harpoon.

Is it life or is it ...

Oil platform explodes. Again.

Oil platform explodes -- again?? Who's manning these things, the Three Stooges?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2010/09/02/reports-apache-oil-rig-explodes-in-gulf-near-bp-spill-site/

House of the Future

Here's another blast from the past: the Monsanto House of the Future, a demonstration house the plastics company used to have at Disneyland.

Enjoy.





I actually think this house was pretty cool. Judging by the construction, I imagine it would stand up to a fairly intense hurricane. For some reason, the thinking behind house construction remains primitive. With some exceptions, we stack blocks together, hammer frames out of wood and pour concrete into forms.

SF trivia note: I believe this was the inspiration for the "Bubble" homes in Kornbluth/Pohl's Gladiator at Law.

Fugate's 17th Law

Never eat at a restaurant that boasts that its owner is old, fat or poor.

Unabomber Lite

Today, a Luddite douche named James Jay Lee burst into the Discovery Channel HQ, held some hostages at gunpoint, and made various insane demands. All is well now. The police put a bullet (or two) in his head.

He had various demands which were up on his website. I post them here as a cautionary example of twisted thinking. I've encountered it before.

Years ago, I got a ride from UVA to my home in Florida with a sweet young woman who drove a vintage VW Beetle. Badly. She had tree-hugging sensibilities and also loved animals. I mean, she really, really loved animals. Like a lot. Being an animal myself, I agreed with her nature-loving sensibilities. I made some big statement to the effect that, if humanity didn't change its ways, we would all die. She replied, "That'd be really neat. Then all the animals'd finally be free to live in peace, you know?" I kept my mouth shut, because there were a few states to go and it was her car. But ...

"That'd be really neat."

This is her response to the death of all human life.

"That'd be really neat."

She'd probably approve of the guy in 12 Monkeys who invented a plague to selectively kill humanity. And -- getting back to our news item -- James Jay Lee would probably agree.

He hates human life, it's just that simple.

Essentially, this guy is the Unabomber with a lower IQ. His prose style makes the Unabomber look good.

His basic logic: I love animals. Humans are bad for animals. Therefore, I hate humans.

Hey, I love animals. I love plants. I want to stop global warming and save the rainforest. Yattayattayatta. Sure. But I love human life. Beethoven, Einstein, R. Crumb. Human consciousness is interesting. Self-awareness is probably exceedingly rare in this universe. As rotten as we are, I'm rooting for our species to go on.

Not everyone agrees. If more people think like this idiot, we just might be screwed.

Yeah, OK. Another grim warning for our time. That doesn't mean this chump isn't exceedingly funny.

Here are his demands:

1. The Discovery Channel and it's affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn's "My Ishmael" pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other's inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilization building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!

2. All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs' places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.

3. All programs promoting War and the technology behind those must cease. There is no sense in advertising weapons of mass-destruction anymore. Instead, talk about ways to disassemble civilization and concentrate the message in finding SOLUTIONS to solving global military mechanized conflict. Again, solutions solutions instead of just repeating the same old wars with newer weapons. Also, keep out the fraudulent peace movements. They are liars and fakes and had no real intention of ending the wars. ALL OF THEM ARE FAKE! On one hand, they claim they want the wars to end, on the other, they are demanding the human population increase. World War II had 2 Billion humans and after that war, the people decided that tripling the population would assure peace. WTF??? STUPIDITY! MORE HUMANS EQUALS MORE WAR!

4. Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down! This is your obligation. If you think it isn't, then get hell off the planet! Breathe Oil! It is the moral obligation of everyone living otherwise what good are they??

5. Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)

6. Find solutions for Global Warming, Automotive pollution, International Trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy. Find ways so that people don't build more housing pollution which destroys the environment to make way for more human filth! Find solutions so that people stop breeding as well as stopping using Oil in order to REVERSE Global warming and the destruction of the planet!

7. Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people's brains until they get it!!

8. Saving the Planet means saving what's left of the non-human Wildlife by decreasing the Human population. That means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies! You're the media, you can reach enough people. It's your resposibility because you reach so many minds!!!

9. Develop shows that will correct and dismantle the dangerous US world economy. Find solutions for their disasterous Ponzi-Casino economy before they take the world to another nuclear war.

10. Stop all shows glorifying human birthing on all your channels and on TLC. Stop Future Weapons shows or replace the dialogue condemning the people behind these developments so that the shows become exposes rather than advertisements of Arms sales and development!

11. You're also going to find solutions for unemployment and housing. All these unemployed people makes me think the US is headed toward more war.

Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what's left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture.

For every human born, ACRES of wildlife forests must be turned into farmland in order to feed that new addition over the course of 60 to 100 YEARS of that new human's lifespan! THIS IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FOREST CREATURES!!!! All human procreation and farming must cease!

It is the responsiblity of everyone to preserve the planet they live on by not breeding any more children who will continue their filthy practices. Children represent FUTURE catastrophic pollution whereas their parents are current pollution. NO MORE BABIES! Population growth is a real crisis. Even one child born in the US will use 30 to a thousand times more resources than a Third World child. It's like a couple are having 30 babies even though it's just one! If the US goes in this direction maybe other countries will too!

Also, war must be halted. Not because it's morally wrong, but because of the catastrophic environmental damage modern weapons cause to other creatures. FIND SOLUTIONS JUST LIKE THE BOOK SAYS! Humans are supposed to be inventive. INVENT, DAMN YOU!!

The world needs TV shows that DEVELOP solutions to the problems that humans are causing, not stupify the people into destroying the world. Not encouraging them to breed more environmentally harmful humans.

Saving the environment and the remaning species diversity of the planet is now your mindset. Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels.

The humans? The planet does not need humans.

You MUST KNOW the human population is behind all the pollution and problems in the world, and YET you encourage the exact opposite instead of discouraging human growth and procreation. Surely you MUST ALREADY KNOW this!

I want Discovery Communications to broadcast on their channels to the world their new program lineup and I want proof they are doing so. I want the new shows started by asking the public for inventive solution ideas to save the planet and the remaining wildlife on it.

These are the demands and sayings of Lee.