Robert Eden

Yes, yes…I know this is usually a blog about Star TREK fan films.  But hey, it’s a Star WARS weekend with The Last Jedi opening, so deal with it.  This is one of my all-time favorite Star Wars fan projects.  Released four years ago, it’s creatively brilliant, incredibly well-produced, and most of all, absolutely hilarious!  It took a team of both students and faculty in the Digital Video Program at the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, Arizona…plus dozens ofStar Wars cosplayers from the local Arizona community.  With nearly four million views, the force is strong with this amazing fan film / parody / music video masterpiece!

Since December 1, 2016, Curiosity has been unable to drill into rocks because of a serious problem with one of the drill's motors. Emily Lakdawalla thoroughly explains the issues and the path forward for Curiosity.

I recently stumbled upon a way to nudge anti-Trump zombies off the idea that 97% of climate scientists agree with each other and Trump is on the wrong side. I’m not arguing about the accuracy of the estimate because I have nothing to compare it to. I’m only concerned that people are trusting the fate of the planet to that estimate without knowing how it was derived.

I started with a quote from this article by Lawrence Solomon. He says…

“…a much heralded claim that 97 per cent of scientists believed the planet was overheating came from a 2008 master’s thesis by a student at the University of Illinois who obtained her results by conducting a survey of 10,257 earth scientists, then discarding the views of all but 77 of them. Of those 77 scientists, 75 thought humans contributed to climate change.  The ratio 75/77 produced the 97-per-cent figure that global warming activists then touted.”

I assume the student discarded from the study the scientists who were least-involved with climate science. That seems entirely sensible, right? But I don’t know that to be the case.

But then I asked my test subject if it would be important to know the opinions of scientists in general, even if they were not directly involved in climate science. If, for example, 60% of scientists in general were skeptical of climate science, wouldn’t you want to know that? I assume scientists are better-equipped to judge other scientists, even in unrelated fields, at least compared to the public at large.

Next, I asked my test subject if he agreed with the following statement:

"The claim that 97% of scientists agree on climate science MIGHT be true, but I would need to know more about how it was derived to judge its credibility.”

He agreed it was fair.

And keep in mind that the question that generated the 97% figure was limited to whether human activity contributes to warming. Even the critics agree with that statement. Where they differ is on the predictive accuracy of the models.

Summarizing, the problems with the 97% estimate are:

1. Human-caused warming is the part upon which both sides AGREE. Humans “contribute” to warming. The disagreement is on how much, and whether it matters. That wasn’t asked.

2. We don’t know what non-climate-scientists think of the climate models. That would add to our understanding of the topic in a big way.

3. We don’t know how reliable the 97% estimate is because we don’t know enough about the methodology. And it hasn’t been repeated as far as I know.

Try this approach with climate science zombies near you and see if you can nudge them off the 97% figure. Let me know how it goes.

—

You might enjoy my book because 97% of climate scientists agree that it has nothing to do with climate science.

Motorola's latest Moto Z flagship phones are modular, designed to accommodate add-on modules that snap to the back of their cases for extra battery life, more complex camera modules, pico projectors, et cetera. Critical and consumer response to the change has been mixed, as it was for LG's modular G5 designs. But in a recent meeting with technology journalists, the Lenovo subsidiary doubled down on the modular approach. Motorola committed to at least 12 new Moto Mod add-on products per year.

Read More

Motorola commits to at least 12 new Moto Mod add-ons per year was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

prisoninmate writes: A zero-day vulnerability in the FFmpeg open-source multimedia framework, which is currently used in numerous Linux kernel-based operating systems and software applications, also for the Mac OS X and Windows platforms, has been discovered recently by Russian programmer Maxim Andreev in the current stable builds of the software. It appears to let anyone with the necessary skills hack a computer to read local files on a remote machine and send them over the network using a specially crafted video file. Arch Linux devs already rebuilt their FFmpeg packages without the AppleHTTP and HLS demuxers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Divergent (2014) for free in SD and HD.
• Divergent: Bonus Features (2014) for free in SD and HD.
• Paper Planes (2015) for free in SD and HD.
• Odd Thomas (2014) for free in SD and HD.
• The End of The Tour (2015) for free in SD and HD.
• Jackie & Ryan (2015) for free in SD and HD.
• Unity (2015) for free in SD and HD.
• Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story for free in SD and HD.
• Bjork BioPhilia Live for free in SD and HD.
• Lynyrd Skynyrd: One More for the Fans (2015) for free in SD and HD.
• Ellis (2015) for free in SD and HD. 14 minute video.

Just click one of the buttons that says "free", and the movie is yours forever. You can watch them on your computer, tablet, Roku, or smart TV with the Amazon Video streaming video app.

Always buy the HD quality if the price is the same as the SD quality. HD movies will play in HD on compatible screens, and will also play in lower quality on non-HD screens. However if you buy a SD movie, it could play in low quality on a HD screen.

These movies usually sell for $4 to $20 each.

Also, some short movies for kids:

• Planet 51: Life on Planet 51 for free in SD. 13 minutes.
• Sid the Science Kid (2009) for free in SD.
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Making a Scene for free in SD. 10 minutes.
• The Powerpuff Girls Special: Fance Pantsed (2014) for free in SD and HD. Each 3 episodes are free, click on each one to buy separately.
• Sesame Street From Around The World (2009) Season 1 for free in SD. 13 episodes are 25 minutes each.

The press is reporting that Trump is being uncharacteristically kind to Ben Carson. People seem confused about it. The press reports over and over that, Trump has gone so far as to call Carson a “nice guy.” 

This is quite a puzzler to the press. Why would Trump be so kind to this one challenger?

I hope all of you just shouted out the answer in your heads.

No, not that, you racists. The OTHER thing you just shouted in your head.

Right. That.

“Nice guy” is a linguistic sniper shot. It is engineered to take out its target without revealing where the shot came from. It is not a casual choice of words. It is deeply engineered.

Think back to my past posts about how Trump sets an anchor for any negotiation by staking out the extreme before you open your mouth. That way only Trump gets to decide where the middle is, should you later decide to meet halfway.

Now think about the two anchors Trump has offered.

One anchor is that Trump is worth $10 billion, even though observers are highly skeptical of that estimate. That’s the number that pops up now when you think of him, just as Trump planned. 

Trump has also branded himself as an experienced international business person, a tough negotiator in a world that needs just that, and a man who can’t be bought. 

The anchor Trump dropped on Carson is that Carson is a “nice guy.” The press picked it up and can’t stop repeating it. Repetition is persuasion. Trump deputized the winged monkeys in the media to repeat “nice guy” until it will literally be the only thing you think of when you see Ben Carson’s face. 

Hello, China! Here comes our nice guy to do some negotiating! You better run!

What are the first two words an American voter hears in her head after “Nice guys…”?

In America, a familiar saying is “Nice guys finish last.” If you are familiar with the saying, you probably automatically add those two words when you hear “nice guy.”

Remember, this is a long-distance linguistic kill shot. You aren’t supposed to know where the shot came from. The finish last portion of the thought is literally being created by you, in your head. And it rewires you with repetition. 

Did Trump intentionally rewire your brain so you would think of his rival as the   nice guy who always finishes last? 

Not as far as you know. All you saw was a flash in the distance and your head exploding a few seconds later.

On an unrelated topic, if your friend wants to set you up with someone who is “nice,” does that sound like a good thing to you? It does not. And if we are being honest, one-third of the public probably votes for whoever they find sexiest. If you were going to date Ben Carson, I’ll bet you would be impressed by his good looks (he really is a beautiful man) and probably his keen mind and good humor. What might be the ONE thing you worry about when you ask yourself if you will have good chemistry with this magnificent creature?

No, not that, you racists. I mean the other thing you are thinking. 

You wonder if perhaps he’s too nice. Because that looks weak. Too much niceness shouldn’t bother you, you tell yourself. But it does. Sex is more linked to power than niceness. Trump projects power. Carson projects niceness.

And Trump isn’t done. If the polls narrow too much, Trump might say…

“Ben Carson wants you to promote him from doctor to president.”

Ladies and gentleman, I give you Donald Trump.

Also keep in mind that Carson is still an option for Trump’s running mate. Trump wants him limping but not dead. I think it will either be Carson or Cuban on the Trump ticket. Trump wins it all with either one. But with Cuban it would be the biggest margin of victory in your lifetime.

History buffs will remember that Bill Clinton did a similar “nice guy” play on Bob Dole during their election cycle. Clinton made it clear that he liked Bob Dole. He even thanked Dole for his service to the country. Thanking Dole for his service makes you think of Dole in the past tense. It was a way to call him old and done. That was a linguistic sniper shot you did not see.

Scott

Conservatives have long portrayed themselves as the voices of personal responsibility. They insist that the traditional values encompassed by patriotism and faith demand that individuals be accountable for their actions. But when it comes to the brutal assassination of two New York police officers, Fox News exploits the tragedy to lay the blame on innocent people that they regard as political adversaries.

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The blinding hatred that Fox News has for New York Mayor Bill De Blasio and Al Sharpton doesn’t justify splashing the blood of dead officers on people who had no part in their demise. Other cretinous pundits have gone so far as to indict President Obama for this horror. The only thing that sort of vile and false condemnation achieves is to reveal the rancid bigotry of the accuser.

The butcher who assassinated two NYPD officers yesterday was a deeply disturbed and violent man with a long record of criminality. And despite news reports that sensationalized a few comments on social media that referenced Eric Garner and Michael Brown, his motives are still not clear. He may indeed have had opinions as to the injustices in those cases (as did millions of righteous Americans), but it is impossible to spin his shooting of his girlfriend in Baltimore prior to traveling to New York as part of a vendetta against the police. Plainly there is something else that is darkly lurking beneath the surface of this still unfolding drama.

One thing for certain is that the only person responsible for the murders is the perpetrator. It is wholly inappropriate to shift the blame to others who are just as repulsed by this as those feverishly pointing their sanctimonious fingers in other directions. That sort of flailing rebuke not only slanders the targets, it pardons the guilty. And it is particularly disgusting when the intent is such a brazen act of partisan politics.

You have to wonder why there was no similar condemnation of the treasonous Tea Party brigades that flocked to Nevada to defend tax cheat Cliven Bundy. Among their ranks were a couple who later went to Las Vegas and executed two police officers as they ate their lunch in a diner. The Tea Party cop killers failed to meet the Fox News criteria for condemnation because they were a white, Christian couple from Indiana. Consequently, Fox quickly dropped the story without any sermonizing about responsibility.

Get the ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
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On the other hand, right-wingers were quick to mock Garner and Brown, for whom rallying cries reflected their final moments with utterances of “Hands up, don’t shoot,” and “I can’t breathe.” These unintentional epitaphs became fodder for the conservative martinets of virtue to disregard the human tragedies and shift the blame to vague criticisms of black culture, families, and values. The spokesmen for these deliberate distractions were paraded across Fox News along with the absurd and insensitive notion that the victims caused their own deaths. The conservative viewpoint was that responsibility for their fates was their own and that the people protesting ought to accept that as a fact.

Now, suddenly, responsibility is no longer attributable to an obvious offender, but is shamelessly cast on perceived enemies. It’s such a Christian thing to do in this season of peace and goodwill. And it’s just another hypocrisy by malicious jackasses who care more about their own spiteful prejudices than the very real losses suffered by both police officers and citizens whose lives are stolen too soon and without reason.

“Mama, I wrote on your drawing! I made it better!”

At the sound of those words, I stood straight up from where I was cleaning nearby. I stilled the impulse to immediately start yelling, recognizing my fear and my own fault in an instant.

“You wrote on my drawing?” I echoed, buying myself time to observe the damage before really reacting. I’d left my sketchbook open on the table, with a picture I’d spent a lot of time on the night before.  Right next to a freshly-sharpened No. 2 pencil, the most enticing writing implement on the planet.

I knew I shouldn’t do that around a three-and-a-half year old. And I’d done it anyway. And now my sketch had to be scrawled all over in pencil, ruined forever. It’s just a concept sketch, I told myself as I neared the table. You were going to draw it again anyw –

And then I saw it. “Oh!” I said in surprise. “You did make it better!”

There, along with the Little Engineer’s beaming face, I saw the first completely recognizable word he’d ever written.  Mama.

“I signed it for you. Muh-ah-muh-ah!”

A kiss. A hug. Pride and love and tears chasing the first wave of relief from my body before I’d really felt it. “It’s so much better, I think I might cry,” I said, then added, “Next time, ask before you write on one of my drawings.  But this…this time, it’s perfect.”

“I will,” he promised. “What picture can I write on next?”

Hmm. Well, I think I’ll still try to be better at putting my sketchbook away in the future.

This sketch, by the way, is for a secret project I’m working on to share with all of you. Check back in September to see what I’ve been up to!

The post I Knew I Shouldn’t Leave My Sketchbook Out Around My Three-Year-Old appeared first on Play Trains!.