Snob

Thanks Miss Silver

 

In 1945, a small Canadian airline was hired to fly 50 beavers to Argentina in an attempt to create a local fur industry. Almost 70 years later, there is no fur trade, but instead a series of failed attempts to remove 1-to-200,000 pests that have now damaged almost 16 million hectares, 50 percent of Tierra del Fuego's riparian forests. It seems no one warned the Argentinians about a previous attempt to start a fur trade in Louisiana, when Argentinian nutria were introduced to the US south on a fur ranch in 1930, but some escaped and the population exploded to around 20 million nutria in the 1950s, though the numbers have been reduced since then.

Argentina's navy thought the beavers could create a fur industry in the region, but no hunting culture formed, and the beavers flourished without predators. One possible reason for a lack of hunting and trapping is because the beavers adapted to the damper and warmer climate by not developing the thick, seasonal coat that is valued by the fur industry, though Tierra del Fuego does get cold and snowy in the winter. And the market for beaver meat didn't pick up, either.

For more on beavers in Tierra del Fuego, see Eradication of beaver (Castor canadensis), an ecosystem engineer and threat to southern Patagonia, a 4 page PDF publication from the Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG). (ISSG, previously)

Nutria (also known as Coypu), on the other hand, have complex and varied treatments in the United States, as a economically important furbearers and invasive pests, plus tasty treats for people and alligators (PDF).

¿Que la gente está muy jodida de la cabeza? Sin duda, pero lo de las señoras que viven sus momentos de exhibicionismo erótico en compañía de sus hijos pequeños es algo que uno no consigue asimilar nunca. El próximo domingo es el día de la madre en la mayoría de países del mundo (en España lo fue la semana pasada), así que hemos pensado que una buena recopilación de esta clase de especímenes incomprensibles en su momento más provocativo sería un forma muy orgasmátrica —erótica al mismo tiempo que bizarra; algo incómoda— de celebrarlo.

Una de las cabeceras claves del llamado boom de las revistas de cómic (finales de los 70 – principios de los 80) fue Totem, editada por Nueva Frontera. En el número 52, cuando ya estaba próxima a su decadencia, los lectores de Totem nos vimos sacudidos por el inicio de El Transglacial , una historia de ciencia-ficción de aquellas bendecidas para permanecer en la memoria, pero nunca habríamos imaginado que acabaría adaptada al cine, y menos con una realización tan espectacular. La película se llama Snowpiercer y acaba de ser estrenada, merece mucho la pena y, a poder ser, en sala de cine en versión original.



Pero volvamos, de momento, al cómic original. El Transglacial (Le Transperceneige) planteaba una poderosa metáfora social a partir de una distopía apocalíptica. En el futuro, una nueva era glaciar se ha instalado en nuestra planeta y exterminado a la raza humana. Los únicos supervivientes viajan en un largo tren, más o menos autosostenible, sin más destino que recorrer durante años su extenso trazado. En su interior viven organizados en una brutal estratificación social: en los vagones de cola despojos y marginados muertos de hambre, en los de cabeza una élite disfruta de todos los lujos. El protagonista es un rebelde huido del último vagón a quien acompañaremos en su periplo hacia adelante por los muchos vagones que van de una punta a otra y que no son sino peldaños de ascenso social a la vez que barreras de desigualdad impuestas a la fuerza o por medios más sutiles. Delante de todo, en la locomotora, habita el ingeniero que mantiene el motor en marcha y que tiene casi la consideración de un Dios. Como ven, una muy poderosa metáfora de cómo funciona nuestro mundo expresada a través de un tebeo de género a caballo entre la ciencia-ficción, la aventura y la intriga política.



El Transglacial era obra de Jacques Lob, uno de los mejores guionista franceses de aquella época (muy amigo del folletín, como demuestra su indispensable saga erótica Las tribulaciones de Virginia junto a Pichard), y el apartado gráfico corría a cargo de Jean-Marc Rochette, que no era un primera fila pero cuyo trazo de línea gruesa funcionaba bastante bien para mostrar la suciedad, dureza, fealdad y carácter avieso de la mayoría de personajes. También es cierto que alguna escena concreta no está del todo bien resuelta y resultaba algo tosca; pero vamos, es un estupendo cómic que ha aguantado con mucha dignidad el paso del tiempo.



Curiosamente, si cuando la leía en las páginas de Tótem me hubieran preguntado por el lugar de publicación original, estoy seguro de que habría jurado que venía de la mítica Metal Hurlant, una sensación que aún hoy permanece, cuando en realidad se publicó en la más aventurera revista A Suivre entre 1982 y 1983, alcanzando una extensión final de 116 páginas, entonces bastante inusual para el mercado francés, donde las 48 o 64 páginas del álbum tradicional estaban marcadas a fuego. Aún así, se convirtió en un pequeño clásico, continuado años más tarde en varios álbumes, ya sin Lob ni Rochette, que no he leído. Bang la recuperó hace unos años, sin demasiado eco, con el título de Rompenieves, e incluso se atrevió con un segundo volumen que recogía un par de esas secuelas. No está de más anotar que inicialmente el dibujante iba a ser Alexis (autor, con guiones de Lauzier, del genial western paródico Al Crane que tanto me gustaría ver rescatado algún dia) pero le sobrevino la muerte repentina cuando llevaba 17 páginas ya dibujadas. Una pena, porque era joven y estaba especialmente dotado para retratar lo mezquino.


¿Y la película que se estrena hoy? Pues estupenda, la verdad. Lo cierto es que a Snowpiercer le tenía muchas ganas sin saber siquiera que era la adaptación de Transglacial. La razón: ser la primera película internacional de Bong Joon-ho, responsable de dos de mis títulos preferidos del nuevo cine coreano: Memories of murder (brutal crónica sobre los crímenes de un psicópata rural) y The Host (espectacular puesta a punto de las monster movies), ambas con un sustrato de crítica social ideales para llevar al cine el cómic original. Como coproducción entre Corea del Sur, Francia y EEUU es un proyecto curioso porque tiene un poco de las tres procedencias. Se beneficia de sólidos actores de habla inglesa como John Hurt, Ed Harris o Tilda Swinton (que está espectacular) aunque reserve un importante papel a Song Kang-ho (uno de los rostros habituales del mejor cine coreano). También está presente el diseño de producción del cine fantástico francés, tan influido precisamente por la estética de los cómics de Metal Hurlant, cosa que le da siempre un toque especial y diferente. Y luego está el tono propio del cine coreano, tanto en el fondo como en su preciosista forma.


El punto de partida y estructura de la historia viene a ser la misma que la del cómic, aunque hay bastantes cambios, empezando por el rebelde de cola, que no es un huido sino un líder revolucionario rodeado de un pintoresco grupo humano. Se elimina también el personaje femenino que le ayudaba, una especie de activista de ONG de los trenes intermedios, y eso está bien porque añade desesperanza. También se enriquece la historia y se hace un retrato más o menos sutil de como funciona esto de la dominación social: hambre, desigualdad, violencia, educación, sexo, distracción lúdica, drogas ilegales. Sin olvidar las hostias como panes y los coreanos con martillo.



Son muchas las escenas memorables (la pelea con los guardianes encapuchados, la visita a la escuela, el tiroteo entre vagones) aunque habrá quien considere un pequeño bajón el final dominado por diálogos de enjundia existencialista, pero vamos, nada grave. Ojalá todos los blockbusters de sci-fi apocalíptica fueran así, porque Snowpiercer le da bastantes vueltas a las recientes Elysium (que no está mal pero que parece hija del Concilio Vaticano II) o Oblivion (que pese a su condición hard, que es de agradecer, desprendía un cierto tufillo a cienciología new age).

by Megh Wright

Earlier today, Adult Swim announced that it has picked up a new half-hour comedy series starring Jack McBrayer and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the legendary cigar-smoking Rottweiler puppet created and voiced by Robert Smigel. Always dependable for raunchy punchlines, inappropriate celebrity insults, and uninvited butt-sniffing, Triumph made his television debut in 1997 on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and soon became a regular. Since then, Triumph has appeared all over, from various segments on O'Brien's later talk shows to the MTV Movie Awards to The Daily Show and more. Here's what Smigel told Vice about his many years playing Triumph back in 2010:

Oh my God, it’s so degrading! Sometimes the only reason people will talk to me is because I look so pathetic. I’m this balding, middle-aged guy and I’m crouched in this weird position. That’s how I got Jennifer Lopez, I think. I looked so unthreatening and like such a loser she thought she was doing me a favor. I remember one time in particular when Triumph was supposed to be getting a blowjob from a poodle in the back of this limo. I was literally on the floor of the limousine with my legs sticking out of the door. There’s a trainer on top of me, and food is being passed in order to keep this poodle interested in Triumph’s crotch. I’ve suffered for my art.

To celebrate Triumph's forthcoming return to television and all the wonderful art Smigel has created through him, here's a comprehensive guide to the many appearances of America's favorite Rottweiler.

Triumph in one of his earliest Late Night appearances

Triumph visits the Westminster Dog Show

Triumph interviews some Star Wars fans

Triumph goes to a Bon Jovi concert

Triumph hosts a Christmas special

Triumph makes fun of Tom Arnold

Triumph talks to Moby and Eminem at the MTV Movie Awards

Triumph covers the Michael Jackson trial

Triumph visits a presidential debate

Triumph guest stars on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

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by Bradford Evans

It looks like Community won't be getting its six seasons and a movie. After five seasons, NBC canceled the sitcom today, TV Line reports. Community has been on the verge of cancelation each season of its run, with the show's low ratings always being the reason. Creator Dan Hamon returned to the show this season after having been let go the season prior. Cast members Donald Glover and Chevy Chase both departed within the last year.

Community's fate has been up in the air for the last few months. With a sixth season looking like a possibility back in March, it looked like the show had a shot at fulfilling its "six seasons and a movie" mantra. At the time, Harmon was talking about plans to make that movie any way he could, saying:

"I mean, if they do a sixth season, I have to participate. And having done that, if the movie has to be made out of clay and duct tape in my basement, then that’s how the movie will be made, because there has to be closure. The title of the book about the show is not Community: An Interesting Journey into a Show No One Ever Watched. The title of the book is obviously going to be, Six Seasons and a Movie. So it’s already over. Sometimes, our hands are just tied up in fate.

There's no word yet on whether Harmon and company are looking to shop Community around to another network or streaming service to do that sixth season, but given the show's devoted fanbase, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody else was interested in picking it up for one last round.

At least Community went out on a high note, flipping a big middle finger to NBC by ending its five season run with a series of fake promos for bad NBC shows:

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Esa é unha das ideas que defende Rodri Suárez no seu libro Non temos medo. Historia Oral dos Diplomáticos de Monte Alto, unha sorte de biografía conversacional na compaña dos membros do grupo e dalgunhas voces relacionadas coa formación e o Bravú.

La Voz de Galicia, dous de xuño de 1925

Dieciocho restaurantes ofrecen hasta el día 11 platos fusionados y arrancan los talleres sobre la cultura nipona

O Goberno salienta que na campaña 2013/2014 o prezo do leite en orixe subiu un 16,3%.

Nunca antes había escuchado hablar de las Bubbleberries. Cuando escuché el término pensé que se trataba de una comida de una caricatura, pero resulta que son frutas reales que pertenecen a la familia de las fresas. Lo que las hace únicas es que tienen un sabor muy fuerte y muy parecido al chicle. El nombre oficial de las Bubbleberries es Fragaria Moschata, aunque también son conocidas como “fresas de almizcle”.

Se trata de una fruta muy aromática con el olor característico de la goma de mascar. Su sabor es muy intenso y dulce, algunas personas dicen que es una mezcla de piña, frambuesa y fresa. Es un poco más pequeña que una fresa tradicional y su color es rosa claro, muy parecido al color del chicle tradicional.

Eran unas frutas muy populares en los siglos 18 y 19 en Europa. Se desvanecieron del ojo público por varios años, aunque siguieron creciendo de forma silvestre en algunos bosques del centro de Europa. En los últimos años han resurgido en algunos países europeos, sobre todo en el Reino Unido.

Se recomienda servir estás frutas como postre acompañadas de helado, con malvaviscos o en un fondue de chocolate blanco. Debido a que son muy delicadas, por el momento solamente las puedes encontrar en Inglaterra, en las tiendas Waitrose. Como en la actualidad, su cultivo es muy reducido, el precio de 100 gramos de Bubbleberries es de 110 pesos mexicanos aproximadamente.

Imágenes | Waitrose

En Directo al Paladar México | ¿Has escuchado hablar del ruibarbo?
En Directo al Paladar México | Helados son sabor a vegetales

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La noticia ¿Qué son las Bubbleberries? fue publicada originalmente en Directo al Paladar México por Sweet Cannela.

O outro día tomamos unha quesadilla ben sabrosa (ó comal, que quere dicir feita a plancha porque tamén hai quesadillas fritas).

Pero esperade, unha cousa curiosa:
Esta quesadilla non ten queixo por nengún lado. (Era de flor de calabaza, levaba tamén elote, e algunha que outro vexetal, pero nada de queixo).

E así entrei en contacto cunha das mais grandes polémicas que hai en México co tema do xantar.

'Korokke de chicharróns' ou 'Maki de xurelo' serán algunas de las recetas que se podrán degustar en 18 establecimientos compostelanos

It sounds like the setup to a bad joke: What’s named after India in Turkey, and Peru in India? But the answer is even more absurd: it’s what we call “turkey” in English-speaking countries. The several categories of names throughout Eurasian languages for the meleagris gallopavo — the inventive and inaccurate binomial meaning “guineafowl rooster-peacock” — serve up a juicy etymological framework for understanding some of  the ways that languages adapt to a new food.

 

For a bit of context: the bird comes from North America, across a territory stretching from central Ontario, across much of the U.S., and through to central Mexico. Along with tomatoes, potatoes, corn, and squash, the turkey was brought to Europe in the early sixteenth century.

So how did this new-world galliform come to be called turkey? According to several sources including the Online Etymology Dictionary, it has to do with birds being from Ottoman — that is, Turkish — lands in North Africa. Originally the cargo were the unrelated though similar-looking guineafowl, which were coming to be named turkey cocks after the traders who brought them. But then the Turks started bringing the meatier, bigger New World bird up from Spain, and the name transferred to this bird.

>> In Arabic it’s dik rumi, “Roman chicken,” for essentially the same reason. Rum derives from “Rome,” which in this case refers to the last vestige of the Roman Empire, the Byzantines, and by extension the empire that took their place, the Ottomans. So, it would seem the Turks brought the bird not just to England but also to other parts of their empire. Arabic uses geography to refer to other near-foreign foods, such as tamar hindi, meaning “Indian date,” which we took as “tamarind.”

Speaking of hindi, that’s the term that Turkish and several other languages use to name a turkey, but for an even more wrong reason than “turkey.” Remember that Columbus and company were sailing west to find “the Indies” and the spices they promised. For a good while it was thought by many that the lands they’d found were indeed adjacent to the Spice Isles, you know, the Indies. Accordingly, the French considered this bird poulet de l’inde — Indian chicken. In addition to the modern French dinde, many other countries maintain the misunderstanding: Russian indeyka, Hebrew tarnegol hodu (“rooster of India”), and Turkish hindi being among over a dozen examples.

>> This is hardly the only instance of New World foods being attributed to what was being sought in the Indies. As told in many sources including Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, the closest thing Columbus found to the zing of the peppercorn he so desperately sought from Asia was the chile, which he called pimiento, just like the thing he was seeking — and hence why we and several others, very confusingly, also call it “pepper.” We’re also still dealing with Columbus’ legacy of calling the people he encountered Indios.

Back to the bird. So we call it turkey, the Turks name it hindi…and the Hindi language calls it pīru, as in Peru, the country. WTF? Blame…the Portuguese! According to a Straight Dope article, the bird spread to their corner of the Iberian peninsula right around when the Spanish conquistador Pizarro invaded South American land of that name in 1523, and they incorrectly assumed the bird had come from there. (Had they had the right info, they might be roasting mexicos in Lisbon and Rio to this day.) The Portuguese then brought the bird, and its na. At least a few other languages have a Peru-derived name for the bird, including Hawaiian pelehu and Croatian and Slovene puran, which itself comes from the Italian peruano. (Though the Italians call it tacchino, presumably an onomatopoeia.)

>> This isn’t the only time that something’s been named for an geopolitical event that’s thematically related. The Baked Alaska, with a core of ice cream under a baked merignue topping, was named, and possibly invented, in 1876 at Delmonico’s in New York to celebrate the purchase of the territory. (Amusingly, there’s also now a Frozen Florida, which uses microwaves to heat a liqueur blend under a frozen meringue shell.)

Can the turkey story get weirder? Through one more iteration of the thought-it-came-from-there game, it sure can! Several Northern European languages name it after Calicut, the trading port on India’s west coast. Michael Quinion of World Wide Words surmises that folks from Northern Europe had heard about this tasty Indian bird and assumed that Vasco de Gama had brought it back to Europe on his travels a few decades prior, and now we have Dutch kalkoen, Lithuanian kalakutas, and even colonial influences like Indonesian kalkun and, head-spinningly, Sinhala kalukuma — despite the fact that this Sri Lankan language is spoken mere hundreds of miles from Calicut. So, what we call turkey, the Turks call hindi, Hindi calls peru, the Dutch name after a city in India… and the road ends in Malay, which call it ayam belanda, meaning… “Dutch chicken.”

>> The potato has also on occasion found its local name based on the intermediary who brought it there: Hungarian burgonya probably comes from Burgundy, and Czech brambor from Brandenburg.

The turkey uses the “name it after somewhere” technique a whole lot more than any other food I’ve seen. (“Greece” doesn’t count, silly.) Three other common three ways to name a New World food in Eurasian languages are to give it a name in reference to something familiar, give over an existing name to that new food, or be novel and actually try to call it what it’s called in its native land.

Various languages offer some amusing interpretations of the turkey in the words available to them: Urdu feel murgh (“elephant chicken”), Swahili bata mzinga (“great duck”), Mandarin both huoji (“fire chicken”) and much more creatively if less commonly tushouji (“cough-up-a-ribbon chicken”), and the bizarre Japanese shichimencho (“seven-faced bird”). Then there’s the diminutive in Bosnian and Serbian, ćuretina (“little chicken”).

>> The potato and the tomato followed particular structures in reference to a familiar food product. In both case, apples are a common reference. Potato in French is pomme de terre (“apple of the earth”), Dutch aardappel and Hebrew tapuach adama are calques — word-for-word transpositions — of the French. Very similarly, the archaic German grundbirne (“ground-pear”) gave rise to the current krompir in several Balkan languages. Tomatoes get a more fanciful treatment: Italian pomodoro (“golden apple”) becaome Russian pomidor, and the similar Hungarian paradicsom (“paradise apple”) and Croatian rajčica (“heaven apple”), both calqued from the also archaic German paradiesapfel.

The one instance I can find of the re-assigning of an existing name to the meleagris gallopavo is none other than Spanish, the language of the conquistadores who got us all into this mess in the first place. They call it simply pavo, which is what they used to call peacocks, whom they now distinguish as pavo real (“royal”).

>> This pattern occurs from time to time with other foods where the newcomer resembles and quickly supplants a native species in the pantry. For instance, the word in Indian subcontinental languages for potato is aloo, which is the name originally applied in Hindi to a type of yam. The Germans ceded a word for truffle, kartoffel, to the decidedly less gourmet spud, which then caught on in many Eastern European languages, including Russian and Polish.

 

The sixteenth century saw a major expansion of available foods unparalleled until the twentieth, when air travel and refrigerated (and frozen) transport made all sorts of perishable foods suddenly available very far away from its natural climate. But in contrast with the prior go-around, it appears that almost all languages have simply adopted the native name or a close variant of so many newly imported foods, like banana (Wolof banaana), avocado (from Nahuatl āhuacatl), and tilapia (from Tswana thiape). Heck, we even imported the name of a flavor sensation straight from Japanese: umami.

One angle worthy of further exploration is why some languages, including English, demonstrated a higher proclivity to hang on something close to the native name, notably tomato (Nahuatl tomatl) and potato (Carib batata, which first referred specifically to sweet potato). One thing’s for sure, we can forgive the speakers of Eurasian languages for not wanting to wrap their name around the word the Aztecs used for the turkey long before the conquistadores got at it: huehxōlōtl— a name that still lives, in the Mexican Spanish term guajolote.

Cada uno puede pensar o creer lo que estime conveniente. Quede eso por delante. Todas las personas, con independencia de sus ideas, merecen respeto, o al menos tienen derecho a expresar sus ideas (aunque no estemos obligados a escucharlas). Sin embargo, no todas las creencias son respetables, a pesar del tópico. Matar a judíos porque algunos los consideran una raza inferior no es respetable, por buscar un ejemplo extremo.

Lo más difícil es trazar una línea que delimite las creencias respetables de las que no lo son. Por ello, mejor que cualquier línea, lo óptimo es que cada uno de nosotros, a título individual, asuma qué clase de ideas o creencias es capaz de tolerar sin esgrimir su intolerancia. Con todo, ¿existen unas líneas maestras? O, al menos, ¿es más productivo y satisfactorio para la mayoría de nosotros condenar al ostracismo determinadas creencias?

Creencias y creencias

La naturaleza del ser humano le impele a llenar las lagunas de ignorancia con conocimientos, porque la incertidumbre resulta profundamente incómoda. Cuando dicho conocimiento no está disponible, entonces la laguna se rellena con mitos o narraciones apaciguadoras.

Cuando nuestros antepasados, hace probablemente entre 100.000 y 75.000 años, empezaron a buscar respuestas a quienes eran y a dónde iban los muertos, no tenían demasiado tiempo para investigar sistemáticamente la naturaleza, de modo que se refugiaban en mitos construidos por la comunidad y solidificados por algún argumento de autoridad. Los cultos Cargo son un buen ejemplo viviente de esta dinámica.

Sobre esos cimientos imaginarios, se empezaron a levantar todas las religiones, tal y como explica Edward O. Wilson en su libro La conquista social de la Tierra:

Los humanos primitivos necesitaban un relato de todo lo importante que les ocurría, porque la mente consciente no puede funcionar sin relatos y explicaciones de su propio significado. La mejor manera, la única en que nuestros ancestros podían conseguir explicar su propia existencia era a través de un mito creacionista. Y todo mito creacionista, sin excepción, afirmaba la superioridad de la tribu que lo inventó sobre todas las demás tribus. Habiendo asumido esto, cada creyente religioso se veía a sí mismo como una persona elegida. Las religiones organizadas y sus dioses, aunque concebidas en la ignorancia de la mayor parte del mundo real, por suerte fueron grabadas en piedra en la historia temprana (…) Sus dogmas codifican normas de comportamiento que los devotos pueden aceptar absolutamente sin titubear. Cuestionar mitos sagrados es cuestionar la identidad y el valor de los que creen ellos Esta es la razón por la que los escépticos, incluidos los que están comprometidos con mitos distintos e igualmente absurdos, son considerados con tanta antipatía. En algunos países se arriesga a ingresar en prisión o a morir.

La madurez de abordar la realidad

En pocas palabras, pues, ya vamos intuyendo los efectos perniciosos de las religiones. En primer lugar, su efecto conciliador y apaciguador se funda en mentiras y/o ignorancia. En segundo lugar, las afirmaciones de las religiones son dogmáticas e indiscutibles, porque son la Verdad. En tercer lugar, las personas que no piensan igual son el enemigo.

Cuando las sociedades humanas no tenían tiempo ni recursos para adquirir conocimientos empíricos sobre el mundo natural, basar la convivencia en reglas indiscutibles fundadas en mitos era una buena solución. Con todo, los que no comulgaban ardían, literalmente.

Sin embargo, en un mundo donde todos tenemos acceso a la información, donde dicha información crece exponencialmente y puede ser continuamente contrastada, criticada, impugnada o discutida, los dogmas resultan, cuando menos, inmaduros e ineficaces. Si las normas sociales dependen de dogmas que podrían ser fácilmente rebatibles (cosa probable habida cuenta de que las fuentes son argumentos de autoridad), entonces las normas sociales penden de un hilo cada vez más fino. Por otro lado, el progreso científico y tecnológico que se ha venido produciendo desde el siglo XVI denota que una forma eficaz de obtener conocimientos cada vez más precisos o útiles para la sociedad consiste en falsarlos: son ciertos hasta que alguien demuestre que son falsos y sepa explicar en qué error se incurre.

Es decir, las creencias basan su eficacia en la idea inmadura de que se posee la verdad absoluta y la falta de humildad del que no quiere aceptar que se equivoca. La ciencia, por el contrario, funciona justo al revés: asume la ignorancia inicial y propone explicaciones sobre el mundo que deben ser, obligatoriamente, puestas en tela de juicio por la mayor cantidad de ojos posible.

Finalmente, defender ideas incuestionables por simple fe te enemista de cualquiera que no comulgue con dicha fe: imaginaos que alguien afirma que existe el Monstruo del Espaguetti Volador y que no podemos cuestionar dicha creencia. A la mínima, se enfrentará a quienes traten de esclarecer el engaño que da sentido a su creencia (la fe irracional se detecta rápidamente en el sentido de que quien la profesa se irrita profundamente cuando se trata de cuestionar). Los hacedores de preguntas o buscadores de razones, pues, son el peor enemigo de los que profesan una fe irracional.

¿Todos tenemos fe?

Una cuestión que suele salir a colación cuando se examina la fe en un mito es que todos profesamos alguna clase de fe. Por ejemplo, no hemos visto un átomo y creemos que existe. ¿Por qué creer en un dios creador debería ser diferente? Unos párrafos más arriba ya hemos visto que la fe en un mito que basa su funcionamiento en la inmovilidad ideológica. Por el contrario, si alguien demostrara que los átomos no existen recibiría el Nobel de Física.

Otra diferencia entre la fe racional y la fe irracional reside en la calidad de las fuentes de información que se aducen. Por ejemplo, si crees algo que solo aparece reflejado en un libro (o una docena de ellos), viola sistemáticamente parte del conocimiento empírico acumulado durante siglos sin explicar la razón de forma falsable y, además, tiene muchos años de antigüedad... probablemente estamos ante una muestra de fe irracional.

Un ejemplo de fe racional sería creer en la existencia del país Japón a pesar de que nunca lo hemos pisado. Es racional porque disponemos de muchas fuentes confiables que nos sugieren su existencia, dicha existencia no parece contradecir otros conocimientos (de hecho, se imbrican armónicamente con ellos), y, por si fuera poco, siempre podemos comprar un billete para Japón y comprobar su existencia con nuestros propios ojos.

Naturalmente, entre estos dos extremos de fe, racional e irracional, existen muchas posturas intermedias, e incluso algunas basculan de uno a otro lado, bordeando la ciencia ortodoxa y la heterodoxa. La religión, con todo, es una postura que puede situarse sin ningún género de dudas en el extremo de la fe irracional. Como también lo son determinadas posturas ideológicas de carácter político. O determinadas adhesiones a equipos de fútbol. O incluso determinados nacionalismos, como ya os expliqué en una ocasión.

En aras de obtener conocimientos cada vez más precisos del mundo, dejar de ver a los que no profesan nuestras ideas indiscutibles como enemigos (trazando fronteras más altas que las políticas), admitir nuestra ignorancia con humildad, dejar de repetir que los valores se están perdiendo o se desacralizan (cuando en realidad solo dejan de ser como tu fe determina que deberían ser en todos los contextos históricos, se descubra lo que se descubra, cambie lo que cambie)… en aras de todo eso, y sobre todo en aras de dar un pasito más hacia la comprensión de lo que hacemos aquí, creo que deberíamos combatir las religiones y, por extensión, cualquier idea que no pueda ser cuestionada, ridiculizada o pisoteada. Y si queréis un poco de consuelo, apuntaos a bailar salsa, que diría Robin Dunbar.

Abunda en ello Edward O. Wilson:

Entonces, ¿por qué razón es prudente poner abiertamente en tela de juicio los mitos y los dioses de las religiones organizadas? Porque son idiotizantes y divisivos. Porque cada uno de ellos es solo una versión de una multitud de situaciones hipotéticas en competencia que posiblemente pueden ser ciertas. Porque fomentan la ignorancia, distraen a la gente de reconocer los problemas del mundo real y con frecuencia los conducen en direcciones equivocadas que provocan acciones desastrosas. Fieles a sus orígenes biológicos, fomentan de manera apasionada el altruismo entre sus miembros, aunque por lo general con el objetivo adicional del proselitismo. El sometimiento a una fe concreta es, por definición, fanatismo religioso. Ningún misionero protestante aconseja a su grey que consideren el catolicismo romano o el islámico como una alternativa tal vez superior.

Por cierto, ante la pregunta que me realizan a menudo, esta es, quién creó entonces el Universo… mi respuesta es que no lo sé, y tampoco sé si esa pregunta tiene sentido. Y como no lo sé (de hecho, nadie lo sabe), no propongo una hipótesis nada esclarecedora como fue Dios, porque dicha respuesta no ofrece ninguna información. ¿Quién creó a Dios, entonces? Sería como responder a ¿quién creó el Universo? algo así como “él mismo”, “azar”, “una energía especial que no conocemos”.

Fotos | Ratomir Wilkowski | Shakti | Head

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La noticia ¿Por qué debemos combatir la religión? fue publicada originalmente en Xatakaciencia por Sergio Parra.

by Megh Wright

Fox is putting a lot of faith behind comedian and former SNL writer John Mulaney's upcoming multi-cam show Mulaney. THR reports that the network has ordered an additional 10 episodes of the series, totaling the current order to 16 episodes. The move is part of Fox's new approach to ordering shows, in which they've done away with pilot season completely and instead have been giving straight-to-series orders. Mulaney's cast also includes Martin Short, Elliott Gould, Seaton Smith, Zack Pearlman, and SNL cast member Nasim Pedrad, whose future on the NBC sketch show is now up in the air considering the new 10-episode order for Mulaney will tape in Los Angeles.

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by Megh Wright

Here's a clip from Conan's interview with guest Paul F. Tompkins last night, in which they cover both his longtime love for bowties and other stylish clothing as well a story about Tompkins going to Sullivan's Island, South Carolina and learning about its strange history with human feet stored in garage freezers.

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Many women are up in arms about the lack of characters in the world of Star Wars, in other words they’re looking for geeky icons of their own and coming up short, which is a fair point.

This used to be explained away with sales, stating that it was simply a matter of marketing towards a target audience, but nowadays there’s really no excuse not to include female characters in sci-fi franchises like Star Wars.

The discussion has been re-kindled by the casting announcement for Star Wars Episode VII, which only included one female character, and that has caused people to revisit the strange Star Wars theory set out last Octoer by author Matthew Gladstone last October dubbed the Hive Theory.

Short explanation: There are no humans in Star Wars.

-Via Topless Robot

Oops. Just deleted my last Tweet. & would like to apologize to seniors & sufferers of Lyme disease. I was out of bounds.

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 7, 2014

Twitter is an incredibly useful publishing medium. It lets you instantly shout across the world any poorly-considered thought that can bridge the gap between your brain and your computer keyboard. Are you angry? Drunk? Twitter is definitely the medium for you if your judgment is even slightly impaired.

We all say terrible things sometimes. But if you're a celebrity on Twitter, you can be sure that a lot of people will know about those terrible things.

You can't edit a tweet. You can only delete it. So if you've been caught with an offensive tweet, it may be a good idea to apologize in a subsequent tweet.

Yesterday, comedian and actor Patton Oswalt showed his skill with the medium by tweeting out apologies for deleted, horrifically offensive tweets. Except those deleted tweets never existed.

Yikes. Had to delete another Tweet. I crossed a line on that one. Also, I thought 12 YEARS A SLAVE and THE BUTLER were brilliant.

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 7, 2014

PLEASE disregard last Tweet. Already deleted. Transphobia is hurtful, and I'm a big fan of HEDWIG & THE ANGRY INCH.

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 7, 2014

Previous Tweet very hurtful. Already deleted. @KimKardashian & @JoeBiden are national treasures. As are our Native American friends.

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 7, 2014

Some of his followers expressed great outrage as they attempted to reverse-engineer his jokes from the apologies. Oswalt was, of course, just trolling them.

Anyone else witnessing @pattonoswalt troll out everyone's inner demons? There needs to be a word for this. #Twitception maybe?

— Kevin Fenix(-Dy) (@FenixDy) May 7, 2014

You can see more tweets in the exchange at Twitchy.

The following is an article from Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader.

Have you always dreamed of being a princess or a king? Be careful what you wish for -you might end up like one of these folks.

Hapsburgs: From left, Philip V of Spain, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and Philip II of Spain. Keep in mind that royal portraits were always flattering.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

For the past thousand years, the royal families of Europe have routinely intermarried. Why? They did it to create dynasties and to keep the royal wealth within their families. The problem: Over time it can create a genetic nightmare. The poster family of royal inbreeding is the House of Hapsburg. Since the 15th century, the Hapsburg have intermarried with royal relatives in Spain, Austria, England, Hungary, Bohemia, Greece, Portugal, and Mexico. Somewhere along the line it created a genetic deformity called the “Hapsburg lip,” which then spread through the family tree. This condition, known as mandibular prognathism, causes the lower jaw to protrude in front of the upper teeth like a bulldog.

Other common Hapsburg traits due to inbreeding: a large misshapen nose, sagging lower eyelids, stunted bodies, and hydrocephalus. This genetic disorder, more commonly known as “water on the brain,” makes fluid accumulate in the skull, putting pressure on the brain. It causes mental disabilities, convulsions, and death -symptoms the Hapsburg royals had in abundance.

ROYAL DISASTERS

Two extreme examples:

Left: Ferdinand I of Austria in 1870. Right: Charles II of Spain.

* In 1793 Emperor Franz II married his double first cousin (they had the same four grandparents) Marie-Therese. Their son, Ferdinand I (1793-1875), was born with a hydrocephalic head, shrunken body, and epilepsy. He had the Hapsburg jaw, a tongue too large for his mouth, and only marginal intelligence. One of his favorite pastimes was to wedge his bottom in a wastebasket and roll around the floor on it. Despite that, he reigned as emperor for 18 years.

* In 1649 King Philip IV of Spain married Mariana of Austria… his niece. Their son Charles II (1661-1700) had maladies like those of Ferdinand I except that his tongue was so huge he could hardly eat or talk. He was also impotent, which ended the Hapsburg’s reign in Spain.

MAD MEN

The Hapsburgs weren’t the only royal house muddying the gene pool. In 1802, as British essayist Walter Bagehot noted, “every hereditary monarch in Europe was insane.”

* George III of England (1738-1820) was taken to Kew Palace in a straightjacket in 1801 and never seen in public again.

* Queen Maria I of Portugal (1734-1816), whose half-wit husband was also her uncle, liked to dress like a little girl and throw temper tantrums.

* Christian VII of Denmark (1749-1808) ran around the palace smashing furniture and banging his head until it bled.

* Russian Emperor Paul I (1754-1801) may have been a paranoid schizophrenic, and was given to unpredictable behavior: In 1797 he banned shoes with laces, then sent troops into the streets of St. Petersburg with orders to kill anyone violating his edict.

* Ludwig I of Bavaria (1786-1868) was prone to wander the city of Munich in rags carrying a tattered umbrella.

VICTORIA’S SECRET

By all accounts Queen Victoria of England (1819-1901) and her husband (and cousin) Prince Albert (1819-1861) had a happy marriage. Together they produced nine children and married them into every royal family in Europe. Unfortunately one son and two of their five daughters carried a deadly gift from their mother in their genes- hemophilia. Hemophiliacs lack the protein that clots blood, making the smallest cut a potential killer. Victoria’s children who carried this defective chromosome passed it on through their children, some of whom passed it on to their children. The disease is believed to be extinct among the remaining European monarchies, but since female descendants can carry the gene without knowing it, it’s possible that it’s still out there somewhere.

THE WACKY WINDSORS

The current ruling dynasty of England, the House of Windsor, is carrying on the breeding habits of their ancestors. Queen Elizabeth II (1926- ) is married to Prince Philip, her second cousin once removed through King Christian IX of Denmark, and her third cousin through Queen Victoria. The beat goes on…

__________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

From AVClub's TV Club 10, Advanced Introduction To Community (in 10 [representative] episodes)

Interesting mix of series review and series highlights.

The uncommonly well-moderated and researched Ask Historians subreddit answers the question: What common medieval fantasy tropes have little-to-no basis in real medieval European history?

There is a place in Russia called the Kola Penninsula that is just a jump away from both Norway and Finland. At this remote locale, people can visit a crumbling cinder block building in the middle of nowhere that is surround by debris. Amongst this debris is a nondescript metal cap secured with a dozen rusting bolts. Beneath this cap is the deepest hole in the world.

The Kola Superdeep Borehole was a Russian project started in 1970 to drill as deep a hole as possible into the Earth's crust. By the time they stopped the project in 1994, they had drilled 7.5 miles straight down. Here is the full article from Atlas Obscura. And though they did find lots of interesting stuff down there, they did not in fact discover the screams of tormented souls.

To put a new spin on awkward online dating stories, last week Redditor mightymdc created the thread “Your best OkC date story, in 10 words or less.” Of course, the “best” date story is often the most awkward and nightmarish. So all of the comments sort of read like beautiful bad date poetry.

Though the dates sound awful, at least they got a good story out of it.

And hey, a few of the dates actually turned out well, like this one:

The Date Report, Reddit

It’s still kind of a mystery why Pornhub decided to allow comments on its porn videos. Highbrow news sites have enough trouble maintaining civil and sensible discourse, so it’s hard to imagine comments on videos of people mechanically pounding their genitals into each other will be anything but deranged.

Thankfully the latest brilliant viralbait site by Jason Mustian (who also brought the world Porn Hub Comments on Stock Photos and TLDR Wikipedia) makes use of the comments, by repurposing them as 3D spinning text GIFs. And so now we have a blog called “Spinning 3D Pornhub Comments.”

Check out a few of them below, and then quietly shudder to yourself, knowing that these poets could be your neighbors and teachers and peers.

Spinning 3D Pornhub Comments

Spinning 3D Pornhub Comments

Spinning 3D Pornhub Comments

Spinning 3D Pornhub Comments

Spinning 3D Pornhub Comments

In what can only be described as a grand cosmic punchline, Gilberto Valle, the NYPD officer convicted of conspiring to kill, cook and eat multiple women has been assigned the work detail of cooking for his fellow inmates at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan.

Naturally, Valle feels quite at home in the kitchen.

“He has mastered making pizza,” his mother, Elizabeth Valle, told the Daily News.  Ever the proud mother, Valle even went on to boast that the pizza is so good that even the prison guards eat it.

Sounds like an episode of Hannibal come to life.

The irony of assigning Cannibal Cop to the kitchen isn’t lost on the other inmates, who often take to joking to him about it.

“Don’t stand too close to the oven, and that kind of thing,” they say to him, Valle’s mother said.

Yeah, it’s all fun and games until prisoners start mysteriously disappearing.

The so-called Cannibal Cop was arrested in 2012 after he got turned in by his wife, Kathleen Mangan, who found a disturbing stash of dark fantasies and graphic Photoshopped images on their shared home computer. One of those fantasies involved taking Kathleen off to Pakistan where she would be slaughtered and eaten by Valle and another man.

Almost as disturbing as Valle’s online trail of graphic plans to kill and eat multiple acquaintances is perhaps his mother’s single-minded devotion to defend a son who is consumed by thoughts of dismembering women.  Valle fleshed out many of those morbid fantasies on the site DarkFetishNet.

“He was on that site for 2 1/2 years, and nothing ever happened to anyone,” his mother claims.

 

If you want to get ’90s PTSD, then we have the perfect video for you. On Wednesday, YouTuber MrMkerstetter uploaded the ultimate remix of the Spin Doctors’s “Two Princes,” with only “the best part” looped over and over again.

If you were wondering, the “best part” is the first verse, the part where he sings “just go ahead now.” Over and over. Whether or not this is the true “best part” is up for debate. I mean, what part of “Two Princes” isn’t the best? And what about scat singing?!

He dedicated the video to his “wonderful girlfriend,” who is by now no doubt his ex girlfriend.

Image: Cute Culture Chick

Let’s face it: Florida is a national embarrassment. When there are so many absurd crime stories starting with “Florida man…” that there’s an actual FloridaMan subreddit, you know things have gotten out of hand.

Florida is the Justin Bieber of states. The White House wouldn’t deport Bieber, but Death and Taxes thought we’d try creating a petition to give Florida back to Spain. They could really use it. And we sure as hell don’t need it.

Sign the petition HERE, and read the full text of our request below. We think it’s perfectly reasonable.

We petition the Obama Administration to give Florida back to Spain.

Florida is a national embarrassment and should be returned to Spain. John Quincy Adams said it served “no other earthly purpose than as a post of annoyance” before we bought it in 1821, and today it serves only to provide absurd crime news.

Benefits to the U.S.:

* We’ll have no state where it’s legal to shoot someone for being black or for texting in movie previews

* Decrease in law enforcement costs to combat incidents of defecation and naked rampaging at fast food restaurants

* Giant Burmese Pythons and face-eating zombies will become Spanish problems

Benefits to Spain:

* Florida’s economy is 1/2 Spain’s GDP. Spain’s unemployment is over 27%, Florida’s is 6.7%.

* They’ll receive skateboarding goats

Giving up Florida will restore our dignity. And Spain could really use it.

Image by: Tony Wong

Photo via Wikipedia Creative Commons

March 31 marked the 15-year anniversary of the release of the first film in the Matrix trilogy. A few outlets marked the occasion with hagiographic looks back at the "enduring legacy" of the movie, its themes, and memorable iconography, but for the most part, no one gave a shit. What the hell happened to a movie that once defined a generation?

I was 14 when The Matrix came out, and far more interested in the upcoming Star Wars prequel to give much of a shit about a movie in which the guy from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure wears sunglasses for two hours. I heard from friends that were brave enough to sneak into a screening how "fucking sick" The Matrix was, and that it would "blow your mind, dude." It would be another few years before I finally knew the touch of a woman, but this movie sounded like a cinematic consolation prize.

Being that I was already a professional cynic in training, I tried to ignore the bro-tastic bluster and hyperbole. It didn't dawn on me that maybe there was something to their rhetoric until I found myself walking to my showing of The Phantom Menace and happening past an auditorium screening The Matrix. Between the gun shots, bombastic score, and earnestly delivered philosophical dialogue, there were audible gasps coming out of the theater. The last time I heard people gasp during a movie was the poolside sex scene in Showgirls, and that was me—alone in my room—while masturbating.

The Matrix became a pop culture phenomenon that spawned video games, cartoons, merchandise... and two ignominious sequels we'd all pay money to forget. It was the ideal film for the society in which it was birthed. That's great in the moment, because it means The Matrix could dominate the zeitgeist that spawned it. There's an ugly side to that momentary relevance, and that's how a movie like the Wachowskis' magnum opus fares with later generations. The Matrix was perfect in 1999, but watching that movie in 2014 isn't much different from listening to a Limp Bizkit album in 2014—as in, I highly recommend not doing it.

The Matrix soundtrack includes such "legendary" artists as Propellerheads, Deftones, Monster Magnet, Marilyn Manson, and Rammstein. The soundtrack for the sequel naturally ups the ante and commissioned Linkin Park and POD (responsible for this risible, horseshit music video above) to submit tracks. The pop music in these movies was like the world's worst Ozzfest lineup, since there's actually an appearance by Dave Matthews Band on the Reloaded soundtrack. Dave Matthews Band! It's almost appropriate, since their body of work is like a computer simulation of music. In 1999, the most popular man in America was Stone Cold Steve Austin. Things were tough all over, but especially in music. The Matrix soundtrack totally embodies this dark time.

Photo via Flickr User Peter Taylor

From the crap music to the dubious fashion choices, The Matrix is hopelessly dated. "Yeah, so what?" you say, scoffing. "All soundtracks and costumes become dated one day. That's why you think The Matrix is lame?"

Hardly, though the below screenshot from that POD video might make me reconsider:

Cowabunga, dude! Oh, wait, wrong movie.

The music (and the fashion) is actually the easiest target for ridicule, but if you dug deeper into the "rabbit hole" (see what I did there?), you'd realize that this film is trapped in a causality loop of endless anachronism that it can never escape.

Before The Matrix, pop culture really had no way of knowing how to acclimate itself to the new paradigm created by constantly improving computer-processing power and internet connectivity. "Evil technology" movies were a dime a dozen in the 90s. There were movies like that Sandra Bullock–Dennis Miller stinker, The Net, which was the cinematic equivalent of one of those scary local news stories about how there are razor blades in Halloween candy. "Hackers will steal your credit cards... and your soul!"

Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days predicted that by 1999, people would be watching virtual reality recordings of snuff films for kicks. In reality, we still hadn't figured out how to make 3-D movies palatable, let alone pump video directly into someone's head. Before that was Bigelow's ex-husband's seminal film, The Terminator, which told the tale of a future war between man and machine. The Matrix shook that formula up by making computers and the internet a conduit for humanity's eventual evolution—a blank canvas of unlimited possibilities. It actually found a way to envision technology as something that seemed exciting. With computers you can fly, dodge bullets, and learn foreign languages—in addition to being enslaved by giant squid monsters, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's reset.

If you don't know the story of The Matrix because you're 12 and your favorite movie is Frozen, allow me to break it down for you: Keanu Reeves is a nerdy computer programmer being chased by cool people in leather jumpsuits and IBM programmers from 1957 who always wear sunglasses. The IBM programmers seem way more evil, probably because they wear ties. The cool people in leather jumpsuits seem like good guys because they hang around raves and can do karate. It turns out that the world Keanu lives in is actually a computer simulation of the year 1999. In the real world, he's strapped to a machine that extracts energy from his lifeless, comatose body. This is the fate of the entirety of humanity, as sentient machines have taken over the planet and use people to power their evil machine society. Why do they hate humans so much? You'll have to watch a totally separate cartoon prequel DVD to figure that out.

Anyway, the IBM dudes are actually computer programs whose job is to keep humans from discovering the truth. The leather karate ravers are freed humans who go back into "the Matrix" to release other humans from this psychic prison. Keanu is their messiah, predicted to free humanity from bondage, but before he can do that, he has to learn to believe in himself. 

Sounds like an awesome movie, right? Well, not so fast, true believer. Beyond the bad fashion, nu-metal atrocities, and over-reliance on the color green, The Matrix suffers from being yet another goddamn movie where evil computers want to destroy the planet. Sorry, but in 2014, we're all much more aware that it's not technology that will destroy us, but the wealthy industrialists who seek to wield it for their own personal gain. Recent Johnny Depp poop-nugget Transcendence was a throwback to this late-90s mentality of computers corrupting man's boundless capacity for mangnimous action. Yeah, right. There's nothing truly shocking about the notion of squid robot monsters turning humans into batteries, because we're all already someone else's tool anyway. The future sucks, but a guy who knows kung fu isn't going to save us. 

The Matrix isn't technically terrible, though. It's well-paced, suspenseful, clever in places, and visually stimulating. It's just that from the design all the way up to the basic plot, it's all trapped in the year 1999, just like Thomas Anderson before he became Goth Jesus. It's simply the recycled offspring of everything that preceded it.

There aren't many sci-fi/fantasy films that can claim to have the same level of impact as The Matrix, but there are a few. Star Wars, the first modern blockbuster (and yet another classic hero's journey about a reluctant messiah saving the day), easily plops into this category. The fact that a picture of a bunch of people sitting in a living room reading a script can merit even a little media attention is a testament to the everlasting reverberations of the first movie's release in 1977. Without Star Wars, the world—not just movies—would be different.

On the other end of this rarefied spectrum is Blade Runner. A critical and commercial disaster when it was released in 1982, Ridley Scott's dystopian thriller could not be considered on the level of Star Wars in terms of popularity, but its unique vision of the future (cribbed from numerous sources from French comic books to Japanese manga) smudged its filthy fingerprints all over every sci-fi movie that came after it—including The Matrix.

The Fifth Element, Judge Dredd, Dark City, The Crow, and just about every pre-Matrix comic book/sci-fi/fantasy movie from 1982 onward is a pale copy of Blade Runner's rainy, industrialized aesthetic nightmare. Blade Runner and Star Wars couldn't be any different in look, theme, pace, or tone. And yet the Wachowski siblings got them both drunk, made them screw, and nine months (or 20 years) later, they had a baby called The Matrix—a dark, ominous, rainy, bleak Christ allegory about the battle between good and evil. The only thing that truly separates The Matrix from its forebears is a bunch of annoying songs by horrible bands and bullet time. Imagine putting a Donna Summer song into the cantina scene in Star Wars.

Come on, imagine it. OK, don't just imagine it. Listen to this while you watch the cantina scene on mute:

With all of that said, please, for the love of God, do not remake The Matrix. It's a cultural artifact of a different time, like RoboCop, Seinfeld, The Dukes of Hazzard, and Monica Lewinsky. Let's leave those things where they belong. It's actually OK for stuff to get old and lame. My children are going to absolutely loathe the Hunger Games and Twilight (with their soon-to-be-dated soundtrack albums), which kids today swallow like eager baby birds. Some things are not "timeless classics." Admitting that is step one in the healing process. 

Follow Dave Schilling on Twitter.

VICE on HBO, season 2 episode 8 preview

Back in 2013, we set out to make a news-magazine show unlike anything that had come before it. The idea was simple: cover important and underreported stories all over the globe with a straightforwardness and on-the-ground perspective that didn't exist anywhere else in the mainstream media. We were successful, got nominated for an Emmy, and are now happy to officially say that we plan on delivering more of the same in the future. Today HBO announced the renewal of our show for a third and a fourth season, meaning, through 2016, you'll be seeing a lot more of the kind of immersive reporting you've become accustomed to.

We're not ones to talk ourselves up too much, so we'll just leave you with the PR release (below) and the reminder to tune in on Friday nights at 11:00 PM EST for new episodes from Season 2. This week, we head to Papua New Guinea to investigate the effect Exxon's new $19 billion liquid natural-gas project may have on the residents, and then to Texas, where, despite a devastating three-year drought, state legislators have taken few initiatives to limit the state's CO2 emissions, which are the highest in the country.

LOS ANGELES, CA (May 7, 2014) - HBO has renewed the news-magazine series VICE for two more seasons, it was announced today by Michael Lombardo, president, HBO Programming. Season three will debut in 2015 with 14 episodes, and season four will debut in 2016.

Hosted by Shane Smith, founder of the revolutionary global youth media company of the same name, VICE explores today’s most pressing issues, from civil unrest and hotbeds of terrorism to unchecked government corruption and looming environmental catastrophes.
           
“The success of VICE on HBO proves that people are hungry to be engaged in world events when the storytelling is not packaged into sound bites,” noted Lombardo.  “VICE’s smart, honest, in-depth approach to news coverage is a perfect complement to HBO’s programming.”

“We would like to say a big ‘thank you’ to HBO for letting us do what we love for another two seasons, and for providing the best platform in television where the stories we work so hard on can live,” says Shane Smith. “VICE on HBO has transformed our brand. It has forced us to get better, to try harder, and now, with two new seasons, we will keep striving to be better still. We promise to report on the underreported, to tell the forgotten stories, and to remain committed to uncovering the truth about our planet in peril. Here we come.”

Smith and VICE correspondents traverse the globe, bringing viewers the overlooked and underreported stories, all told through an immersive documentary style that offers a unique perspective on the events shaping the future.

Over the past two years, VICE has covered some of today’s most vital issues, including the environmental destruction in Greenland triggered by climate change, rampant US military waste and corruption in Afghanistan, extortion, torture and killing in Rio’s favelas, and terrorist training in Dagestan. Correspondents have embedded with Nigerian oil pirates, reported from within North Korea, and offered a firsthand look at Afghanistan’s child suicide bombers. The 2014 season has seen the addition of new award-winning correspondents and more episodes.

VICE kicked off its 12-episode second season on March 14, debuting new editions on Fridays (11:00–11:30 PM ET/PT), following new editions of Real Time with Bill Maher.

Season two credits: VICE is executive produced by Bill Maher, Shane Smith, Eddy Moretti, and BJ Levin; consulting producer, Fareed Zakaria.