The Third Jihad

So this is a thing that is happening. The New York Police are showing The Third Jihad to new officers to scare them in the ways of Muslim. Time for me to see it then.

In this movie, we see the push of Muslim leaders of radical Islam to strike out violently and with any and all means. Within 50 years, Muslims will be in the White House. They even have evidence of a manifesto. Is radical Islam a problem? Yes. Is it to the scale implied by the movie? Not yet.

And it may not be. But it won't be going away by itself. This does show that radicals are far more active than most of us, and doing is going to trump not doing every time. And if the rest of us just sit here... then yeah, they are going to take the world. [I don't know what the tipping point will be, but that is definitely an 'if', not a 'when'.]

Really, watching this, you can see why Christians have Fatwah Envy. According to this movie, the Muslims push on anything that offends them, and society steps back saying 'sorry'. Christianity wishes it could do that so freely. And if Muslims rise to power, we'll see how quickly they stick to the 'there is no separation of church and state' line they so often quote.

But, you think the idea of Sharia Law taking over can't happen here? It's already been practiced, not with the force of law, but with the force of culture. In that case, the woman got away, but in how many cases have they not?

I don't see radical Muslims being as potent as this movie would have us believe, but radical ideology of any kind is very powerful. And a powerful enough idea will change the world while the rest of us dither.

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One Two Three vs 1 2 3

One Two Three is a movie about some bad guys taking a train carriage hostage. It becomes Garder vs Blue, but they play it smart, the characters don't take risks, and intelligence and strength of personality wins the day.

1 2 3 is a slick movie in which John Travolta rants on about different things, while Denzel Washington plays someone that has his role in the movie shifted about so he can be the hero even though it makes no sense.

Twenty-five years separates the two movies, and a lot of difference of how movies are made. One Two Three is about story and characters. 1 2 3 is about actors and fast cuts to try for a sense of excitement. There's a lot of similarities between the two movies, and you can tell where the second references the first. But there are a lot of differences in style and the motivation of the plot. As you might be able to guess, One Two Three is simply a lot better.

Hollywood has remade a fair few films. Just stop, Hollywood. Just stop.

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Got the wrong message

I was sent (via mass email style from someone I know) a story that is supposed to bless me with god or something. It's about a boy who has potato chips and goes out to have lunch with god.

[Interestingly, some versions have him meet an old woman, some an old man. Yet for the man the smile is still described as 'pretty'. Make of that what you will.]

He meets with an old man, shares his meal with him and think he's met god. As had the old man.

The take away message is: "Have lunch with God........bring chips." Um, what?

Actually, the take away message is given in the paragraph before that: "Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a
life around. People come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Embrace all equally!"

That message is actually nice, and speaks to people being with people, making a connection, and how touching it can be.

So why bring religion into it? Why not just have the boy going to the park and having lunch with someone, making them smile, without thinking they are god? Is that impossible?

You don't need religion as a reason to get together. But that message never seems to be the one communicated...

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Congratulations America, you won

The internet has now closed down, thanks to you.

So SOPA/PIPA got cancelled. And in retaliation (it's hard not to read it as causation, which is does indeed look to be), Megaupload got tackled by the Feds and shut down. (More or less.)

And recently, FileServe decided to kill all its links and kick users off. Or maybe not. Or maybe just the US people. Certainly something happened to it that pissed off a lot of people. (My account is still there, didn't have any files uploaded to it.) Whether this was all due to FS being scared or preemptively cleaning house so it can't disclose people/data to the government, who knows, and it doesn't matter.

Because, you know what... US, you win. Thanks guys. Due to "Big Entertainment"(tm), file hosts are running scared, and people who legitimately use and rely on that form of distribution to get their creations/business out there have been totally screwed. Just because the entertainment industry can't stand the idea that someone might download a copy of [insert whatever crappy movie title you like here for your own amusement]. Yes, there is a piracy problem, but this isn't the way to address it. SOPA/PIPA wasn't. ACTA isn't. Shutting down file hosts won't be.

But they think it is, and now they have won. So, congratulations. Money has brought the win again.

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Junji Ito

I like horror, and Japanese horror more than American horror, and manga is a great way to really portray weird stuff that tv just can't quite get. So when I found out that Junji Ito did horror manga, I decided to check it out.

First I read Museum of Terror, which was the collected Tomie stories. Tomie is a young girl who captivates the minds of men until they get so passionate that they kill her. And then she comes back. Some well done stories in that vein, although once you get the gimmick most of the stories are waiting for that element to come into play, and few are original takes. There looks to be a slew of movies about Tomie, so I'll see if I can get my hands on some.

However, next I read Uzumaki. Now... that was one of the more brilliant manga I've ever read. Any time I took a break at work, I snuck in another chapter. I just devoured it. It's about a town that gets consumed by spirals, and it has weird stuff all over the place, and I love it. The movie is more about the stories in the first volume, and it is slower than the manga. And it gets stupid weird, just avoid it really. But if you like that genre, definitely get the manga.

And I still have Gyo to read, although can't find the first volume in English for less than a truck load of money...

I'm glad I found out about him, and will see what else I can get. And if you like that, also go grab the manga of Ju-On. (The cat scene is freaky!)

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Voynich Descript

The Voynich Manuscript is a great example of a crank text that I would have mentioned last time. It's also one of those texts you can get online, in this case as a PDF. But... what is it?

To jump to the end, I think I'm in agreement with the idea that it fits the concept of a Herbal. Basically something that said 'this plant is good for this' and 'these conditions afflict women' etc. At least, that's what it looks to looks like... (There are other interpretations.)

But what of the text? People think it's a code. It looks like it could be. However, as with being a herbal, it looks like it looks like a code. People have attempted to crack it over the years, and no-one has been successful. People have broken all sorts of codes, but you know what the difference was about those? They knew they were codes. No-one knows that this is a code. To be honest, if we go the herbal route, I question the practicality of it being a code. Yes, it would be good to hide from the authorities, but if this was a working manuscript, then you need to sit down and decypher it every time you need to look something up. That could take a long time. That just doesn't work. And if you were good enough to just read the code, then that would suggest that either the code wasn't that complicated (and no-one has broken it??), or that it was a code form of a language, or another language entirely.

And people thought that as well. Another language. However, it clearly isn't any known language, and, more importantly, it doesn't fit any language structure that we know about, and we know about a ton of them. Even before we had the Rosetta Stone, we knew something of hieroglyphics, especially that it was a language. This, not it.

Which, frankly, points to the obvious conclusion: aliens. (Yes, someone in the document on Voynich that I just watched did suggest aliens.) Okay, not aliens, but, as I said, a crank text. Possibly someone who was listening to random noise and writing it down, but more likely a purposefully constructed hoax. And one that was expected to get something out of it given the work that went into creating it. Whether it was Voynich himself, or John Dee and Edward Kelly... given the amount of work, I'd be looking for another text that they borrowed heavily from.

End of the day, hoax or not, it's an incredible effort of work. I'm surprised Voynich and later sellers couldn't get someone to buy it (although it certainly wasn't being sold cheap). It's now at the Yale University, and they aren't letting anyone near it (possibly because this would be the second hoax they were involved in). An interesting text, and I think psychology is the key to understanding it here, not linguistic or cryptographic analysis.

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Psychosomatic Experiment

I could tell within the first five minutes that I was in trouble with this movie. It had a few shots that were suddenly "artsy" and the acting was mediocre at best. Oh boy.

The premise seems to be that some people randomly developed psychic powers (or there was an actual experiment on them, I'm not clear), and now with other people around to help amplify their powers, they suddenly break out with mass psychicness and everyone is in trouble. There are some sub plotlines about turning them into weapons, and some people are trying to uncover police corruption, or something (again, not clear and I'm not interested in working it out), but it seems to come down for an excuse for people to develop the ability for horrendous things to happen.

Despite knowing the IMDB rating was justified from the opening scene, there was one moment when I thought "nevermind, the effects are good". However, a few seconds later, I changed my mind. Nope, cheap effects for a cheap movie. Not sure why this movie was funded, but then Asylum are still in business too.

Featuring some notable actors in cameos, I note that one of the female leads (again, not interested enough to bother telling who was who) was also the main lead for Paranormal Activity. She needs to find something better to get her name attached to.

Not a great movie, not even a good movie. Although I am just a tiny wee bit tempted to check out Mel House's other movies to see if they are also just as bad.

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