New Terrarium
Last month we decided to upgrade Schmendrick's terrarium. We wanted to give him more space to roam, and more places to hide out. Here's a few pictures of the new setup.
He was mad for a while (because we'd gone and changed things on him), but now he seems to really like his new place. He roams back and forth all night, and he sleeps on the soft dirt in his biggest cave all day.
Climate Change
A friend and I have been exchanging letters about climate change lately. I sent him a fairly detailed answer when he asked for my opinion about a certain video. My response started off as a criticism of the video itself, but quickly turned into a rant about how little trust people have for experts these days.
After I re-read my response, it occurred to me that it might make a good blog posting. If nothing else, it stakes out my position on the whole climate change issue, and explains why I adhere so strongly to that position.
Are you looking for my thoughts on climate change (which have not changed in over a decade) or my thoughts on this particular video?
This guy starts out by claiming to be a humble non-scientist, which is very disarming, until he proceeds to use a landslide of pseudo-science to "prove" his point that climate change is just a big fraud. I don't care how persuasive he is, or how many non-experts he can convince. Thanks to the Internet, it's not very hard to produce convincing charts and cherry-picked facts that seem to support *any* position at all.
This is doubly true when talking to laypeople about a highly specialized topic. If this guy's presentation was being given to a bunch of climate scientists and it seemed to convince them, well then that would make me sit up and take notice.
Actually, I'm getting sick of wading through mountains of information about global warming. I don't even read news coverage about climate change anymore; there's nothing new to read. Climate science is far too complicated for most people to really understand, and these days pretty much every news article and presentation (including Al Gore's) is nothing more than an attempt at persuasion. In other words, most of the climate change discussion these days is just an attempt to influence people who cannot possibly understand the backing science well enough to form their own well-supported conclusions. It just encourages everyone to ignore the opinion of experts in favour of their own "gut feelings".
But the truth is, the noble idea that you should "view the evidence and make up your own mind" is just plain arrogant when you don't have the training or skill to comprehend that evidence and assess how it fits into the whole system.
There are thousands of climate scientists in the world, and nearly all of them agree that climate change is real and man-made. That's it. That's all anybody who is not a qualified climate scientist needs to know. And if that doesn't convince them, then they probably don't understand how science or scientists work.
This is and will remain my position on climate change until a scientific consensus on the matter no longer exists. Frankly, as someone who isn't familiar with climate science, it would be both absurd and presumptuous for me to believe anything other than what the actual experts tell me.
Unfortunately, it's all too easy to convince people that they know more about a topic than they really do. But just because someone shows me a bunch of graphs and charts and explains things in a way that makes me feel like I understand and agree with them, that doesn't mean a thing. Why? Because I am fundamentally unqualified to verify a) whether I am being shown the whole picture, b) whether the data is accurate, and especially c) whether the interpretation of the data is correct.
Fortunately, there are people who *are* qualified to verify these things: the experts. These people have dedicated their lives to understanding how the global climate system works, and to be honest, they are the only ones whose opinions about climate change matter to me.
Everything else is just people making excuses to justify believing what they were going to go ahead and believe anyway.
Batman
I just finished playing Batman: Arkham Asylum. As anyone who's had to listen to me quoting Joker over the last two weeks can attest, Rocksteady Studios hit it out of the park with this one. Not only is Arkham Asylum one of the straight-up best games that I've played in a long time--it also adheres very closely to the mythology and spirit of the comic book Batman.
Here's some videos.
No Credit
You know what I hate? When someone takes a chance, and the world kicks them in the teeth for it. When someone pushes the boundaries a little, they should get credit for being creative. They shouldn't get beaten down by critics who are afraid to leave their own comfort zones. Especially when those critics are dead wrong.
So what am I talking about here? A video game, actually.
It's a title that was released back in 2004, the same year that I bought and played it. It's called The Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. I'm not going to review the game here (it was very good.) Instead, I'm going to criticize all the other people who have reviewed this game.
You see, the majority of game critics who wrote about Warrior Within hated its soundtrack. They panned it for being too "metal" and "inappropriate" and even called it "thuggish", presumably because it includes a lot of heavy guitar riffs.
As far as I can tell, this was a knee-jerk response by a lot of people who either a) aren't comfortable with heavy metal music or b) aren't used to hearing it in video games. Either way, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the video game review industry was completely wrong about this.
In fact, the soundtrack for Warrior Within is absolutely top notch. It's fantastic. The middle eastern sounds mixed with heavy guitar chords blend wonderfully. And far from being inappropriate, the resulting music completely defines the tone of the game, which is of course is what it was meant to do.
In other words, Ubisoft made a very bold artistic choice with this game's soundtrack, and then the musically-challenged game reviewers of the world thoroughly punished them for it.
To demonstrate my point, I will now provide examples of critical reviewer comments that I found using google, mixed in with some samples of the game's actual music. If you want to listen to the entire game soundtrack, you can do so here.
But first, the trailer for the game, to give you some idea of what it's all about:
And now a few complaints:
...the musical score is a totally out of place hard rock thumpfest, complete with roaring guitars and drum solos. It's as though Ministry were hired to design the soundtrack of the next Super Mario Brothers; the music and the game exist in totally different worlds. (source)
Except for the cutscenes, the sound is just plain bad. And AHH! the music! Why did godsmack have to play for this game! Its just as bad as the voices! Why does it play when I am doing nothing? Or not play during a battle? When I'm walking on a beam, thats not exactly the time I want to hear crappy rock blasting in my ear. Then again, I never want to hear that. (source)
Also the soundtrack is pretty awful. It uses too much uninspired trashy metal music. There are only few traces of the last game`s beautiful persian style rock music with female vocals. (source)
Oh. My. God. Ubisoft what have you done! A heavy metal rock soundtrack to accompany a game like this?! Are you joking?! Trust me, the game's soundtrack is awful. I gave the first game a 10 for its great music and nice voice acting, this game is the opposite. (source)
Genuine creative talent should not be rewarded with such scorn.
Idealism
Saw this on reddit the other day. Slightly off color, but funny too, if you think satire is a good way to tell someone that they're being silly.
And I can even add my own wisdom. Ladies, at least when a man says he finds you hot, he's almost certainly telling the truth. But if he tells you that you're beautiful, there's at least a 50% chance that he's either trying to get out of trouble, or trying to convince you to make him a sandwich.
Forewarned is forearmed. 
