Police "resort" to psychics

I'm sure most people by now have seen the article Police turn to psychics in Kaye Stewart mystery, wherein the police turn to the "psychics" from Sensing Murder for help. And indeed, there was information from one of the psychics, and "[her] revelation "could go down in New Zealand policing history"."

However... "But Detective Senior Sergeant Ross Levy said police who interviewed Webber and fellow psychic Kelvin Cruickshank had already discounted that person, and other publicly unknown information revealed by the pair had failed to produce any fresh leads."

Yeah, once again the psychics have come through with information no-one could know...

Of interest are the comments. Most of them are skeptical, and some claim "I'm open" and "you can't talk about it until you've experienced it" (a line which is used in many places and bugs me... but I might blog that later...). Also claims that psychics have solved cases, although details are not forthcoming.

There was also a poll, about the use of psychics and TV shows. Me, I voted for the "publicity" angle, and while "Yes (useful)" is winning in absolute terms, the rest of the items are all negative to actual ability and so overall that's 70% saying 'no' to psychic ability. We seem to be a largely skeptical country...

EDIT: NZ Skeptics chair entity, Vicky Hyde, speaks up about Sensing Murder's stunning record... of no successes. (Thanks Alden!)

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The Captain of Disillusion

This guy was on the Skeptic's Guide a while ago, and I finally got around to checking out his YouTube videos. Captain Disillusion looks at various YouTube videos, and decomposes them to point out why they are fakes (ghosts and the like are his focus). Quite brief and entertaining (I particularly like his endings). HD versions are available on OpenFilm.

And remember: love with your heart, and use your head for everything else.

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Cloning the Wars

Despite the efforts of friends and buses, I have finally managed to see Clone Wars. I do think the basic premise, of the event re Jabba, is pretty lame. Frankly, it's just an excuse for one battle after another... which does make it rather like the movies.

Speaking of, it's rather hard to get too worked up about some of what happens here. We know various characters have script immunity, so it doesn't matter what happens to them, they will survive to appear in Revenge. This is probably one reason the "cute kid" character was introduced, to give us someone to worry about (although the other reason would be: to appeal to the kid market).

Animation-wise, yeah, I thought it would be harder to get into than this based on the trailer. A friend of mine said the character models were based on the Thunderbirds, which explains their large eyes and that their bottom lip were the only movement during speaking (which wasn't entirely true). It worked pretty well, actually. Just some close ups don't quite work as we get far too close to the texture maps. Still, the ships work, probably because they were all CG in the first place (presumedly the production team got a hold of the models?).

Vocals work well too. It's more the actual voices that stand out as unusual than the returning guest voices (who probably won't be in the actual series).

Definitely something to see if you have any interest in the Star Wars series, and I did enjoy it more than I thought. But very thin on the plot.

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HC Again

Once more we delve into the cubical jungle, find out more about the workings of the cubical tribes (and meet another tastefully PC group), but don't really achieve any major goals. Lots of finding details, but no real huge deals made. Tribal Troubles: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7.

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This things I believe

In the latest Sunday Star Times there were the results of a survey into conspiracy theories and the paranormal and stuff.

Interesting reading, and they spit the Paranormal block into female and males to see who believed in things more. Only in three items did men believe more than females: Evolution (82.4% vs 77.2%), Big Bang Theory (77.1% vs 66.2%), Life on Other Planets (72.4% vs 59.6%)... Um... Paranormal??? Er, they might have just lumped things together for easier printing, but those things are not paranormal items!!! Evolution was the highest item "believed" in, although there is still around 20% of the populace who don't buy it. It's just the biggest scientific theory ever that underpins everything biological...

Otherwise woman believed more than men. Soul existence came in at 65.3% vs 39.7%. God rated 44.5% vs 34.6% (less than half the populace, ha!). Taniwha exist rated lowest at 12% vs 5.7%.

Another group was conspiracy theory. Rating higest (79% likely) was "Iraq was is about oil not democracy". However, the rest were less than 50% likely. Some I've never heard of: All Blacks were poisoned at World Cup (40%) and Political conspiracy to suppress rights of minorities in NZ (9%) [remember: don't ascribe to conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence].

For Urban Myths, they also say if it's true. Highest belief was 64% in "seasons caused by elliptical orbit" (no - axial tilt). That annoying 10% of brain canard rates 58% (not even slightly true). Lowest rated (10%) was "germs won't affect dropped food if you pick it up in 5 seconds" (myth - busted!).

And there's a whole lot more. Worth taking a look at and considering further.

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Old School: Quark

Another series from history: Quark, made in 1978. Adam Quark is the head of the garbage collection squad, and has hilarious adventures on the way. And it is clear that it is a comedy, whenever there is a funny line or moment, the laughter track kicks in. (This is one of the hardest angles to get to grips with. The humour seems really forced in places, and the laughter track quite distracting, but towards the end of the show I was getting into it.)

Again, only seen one episode so far May The Source Be With You. Can be taken as a highly religious episode, but unless the rest of the series continues, I'm going to treat this as a source of humour with the whole "oops, the Source made a mistake, I don't believe, unless I don't have a choice". It does take a while to get off, but it does keep up the pace and it extremely watchable.

The main crew is interesting, being a big first I'm thinking in many ways. Aside from Quark, there is a plant-based lifeform (who looks human, strangely enough), a robot, a being that is both man and woman (first duo-sexual being on TV?), and a woman and her clone (that look incredibly hot, of course, just look at the wiki page). Can't say I know of many shows that have mixes like that (well, hot women in starring roles, yes, of course, but aside from that...).

At first I was dubious, but yeah, I can see why people like this. Definitely want to check out more episodes.

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Old School: Wizards and Warriors

Been seeing some older TV series recently. One such is: Wizards and Warriors. Made in 1983... and it definitely shows. However, it was a children's show, so let us not judge it too harshly. Well, except for the fact that it is really bad. So far, I've only seen The Unicorn of Death, and have been informed that the next two episodes are far better. I have them to watch, so may yet say "first episode, they were just starting out, let's move on".

However, I haven't seen them yet. But, I don't want to be too critical. It is watchable in a rather bizarre way, completely over the top fantasy, with very basic characters (sword wielding heroes, annoying princesses, evil dark mage...). It even stars Jeff "Zack Allan" Conaway (no wonder everyone refers to his Grease performance as opposed to this). And many of the episodes are directed by Bill "Hulkster" Bixby. With talent like that, and that it was made by Warner Bros, I am surprised it only lasted eight episodes.

The first episode is not one to challenge the hard of thinking, hopefully the later ones will actual develop potential.

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