The terrible movie continuum

I consider myself something of a movie buff, because I go to the theatre nearly once a week and I'll watch nearly any genre of film. I'm also pretty articulate when it comes to ripping apart bad movies, or better still, avoiding ones that look bad before ever watching them in the first place.

Anyways, I'm amazed that so many people seem to enjoy terrible movies, and I came up with a theory as to why. First of all, we have to assume that not everyone is an idiot who can't tell the difference between quality and complete crap. It's hard, I know... but necessary. Secondly, we need to consider the average moviegoer, who does not watch nearly as many films as I do. This is the jumping off point of the theory, because it's based almost entirely on the volume of movies that a person watches.

Pretend that you've only seen a single movie in your lifetime. That movie would be terrible and great at the same time, because you have no other point of reference to compare it to. It is literally the best and worst movie ever. Now add a second film to your viewing list, and one will surely be superior to the other. Things get slightly more complicated here though. There is more than one category by which a film can be ranked. Maybe the special effects were phenomenal, but the acting was atrocious (Transformers 2, this means you!). You have to average these aspects and look at the overall quality if you're going to rank a movie properly.

The point is, every movie you watch will fall somewhere on the scale from complete trash to amazing work of art. What's more is that the scale is not fixed. It adjusts based on the quality of the best and worst movies you've seen, and the number of films in between. Whenever you see a new movie that blows your mind, the scale lengthens slightly, and movies that were once decent now become below average by comparison.

The name of the game here is relativity, and it spawns entirely from personal experience. Because no two people have the same experiences, they are unlikely to have the same opinions. This doesn't mean that you're right or wrong in an absolute sense, but you can appear to be heavily misguided when your opinions are assessed on another person's rating scale.

Basically, the more you watch, the more accurate your assessments will be. It follows the same general rules as sample size in statistics. So, the next time someone gives you a bad reference on which movie to see, break out the bell curve and explain to them why their opinion is irrelevant! Oh, and if they've seen lots of movies too and STILL can't figure it out, don't worry. They're just retarded.

IRL Achievements!

Sometimes I have motivation issues, and I will find pretty much any excuse to get out of stuff. I've been struggling with this for a few years, but I may have found a ridiculous solution inspired by video games.

A few years ago I wrote an essay on video game addiction in which I argued that the virtual world can be more desirable than the real world because progress can be easily tracked in a simple, numerical format. For example, you can instantly know that you have 130/200 fishing skill, or that you need 5000 more experience to level up. Sadly, this does not apply to real life. You can't get a high score, or tell everyone that you're a level 12 guitarist.

I used to play World of Warcraft. Yeah... I admit it. I was pretty damn good at it too, ranked something like top 200 worldwide at my highest point. Anyway, a few years ago they introduced a feature in the game called achievements, where you earn points for doing all kinds of ridiculous things. Anyone who owns an X-Box knows all about achievements too - same idea. The thing about these points is... they don't do anything. Other than showing them off to your friends, they're entirely pointless. In fact, when they were first announced, I told all my in-game friends that I thought it was stupid and I was never going to bother with them.

Well, a few months later I was pretty obsessed with achievements, to the point where I was in the top 5 on my realm of something like 20,000 people. I don't know why, but I loved the little sparkles and banners that appeared everytime I did something difficult. In fact, I remember telling a friend that if there were achievements in real life, I would get a whole hell of a lot more done. How fucking badass would it be to get a little fanfare everytime you accomplish something, complete with a beam of heavenly light and a couple of points to add to your awesomeness? Best of all you would know exactly what you needed to do to get more of those points, and be able to track your progress in percentages.

I was telling my sister yesterday about some of my weird life goals, and she advised me to write a bucket list. While doing so, I had a flash of genius where all the stuff I've described above came together. Why not make every single life goal into an achievement, and make a little digital chart on my PC to track it? All I had to do was decide what was important to me, and make an achievement for it. Obviously there are nearly infinite numbers of things I could include, but by focusing only on things that I would actually be proud of showing off, I can essentially make a very manageable to-do list.

Here are a few of the ones I made up, just so you can see wtf I'm talking about:

Now, I realize that this isn't for everyone, but if it works for me then hell yeah I'm gonna keep at it.

We are screwed

Yeah, it's true. Our way of life is entirely unsustainable, and I can prove it with a few very simple arguments.

There's a finite amount of energy available on our planet. Almost all of it comes from the sun, which is converted by plants into stems and leaves and other good stuff they use to survive. Herbivores eat the plants and steal some of the energy within them, which in turn helps them grow and develop. Finally, carnivores eat the herbivores and steal their energy. We're pretty much at the top of this pyramid, enjoying the benefits of consuming hundreds of other organisms. There is less energy available to each level as you ascend this structure, however, because the transfer of energy is not entirely efficient. Therefore, there are far less carnivores than plants, for example.

It used to be that we were limited by this cycle of birth and death and the energy available within our own lifetimes, but then we discovered fossil fuels. These fuels are formed from the remains of dead plants and animals, crushed under the weight of the earth and water for millions of years. Because of this, they contain a portion of the sun's energy gathered throughout the entire history of life on our planet. After we found this source of (seemingly) limitless energy, we started making machines that could accomplish what no organism limited by photosynthesis could do. This made our lives pretty easy, and since we had so much extra energy in the form of food, our population began to explode. Things were looking pretty good for quite a while.

We can maintain our current lifestyles only because fossil fuels continue to be extracted from the earth, but there is a huge, glaring problem with this. It takes so long for fossil fuels to form that they are not being replaced. When they run out, the energy is gone for good, and we'll be forced to return to a simpler way of life where we depend on the sun for the majority of our energy. This is the first and most obvious way that our civilization is unsustainable.

Fossil fuels, unfortunately, also contain a lot of toxins that have been built up over the millenia, and burning them releases these into the air where they can travel pretty much everywhere. This has caused considerable pollution of the water, air, and soil, as well as living things that depend on them. Countries that do not have access to oil and natural gas tend to use plants to get their energy by burning wood. We also use it for cooking, construction, and for refining metals, among other things. The world's forests are disappearing at a rate that will make most of them a memory by the end of this century, simultaneously killing off many of the creatures that call them home. By the time we run out of fossil fuels (and it doesn't matter when that happens), we won't even have a healthy natural environment to fall back on. This will make our transition back to the pre-industrial age even more difficult, if not impossible. How will we purify our water? How will we grow our food? Both are accomplished using fossil fuels. This is the second way that our civilization is unsustainable.

There's one more problem we need to look at, and it relates to the first line I wrote about the finite amount of energy on our planet. If we ignore the added energy of fossil fuels, there is little doubt that the available energy from the sun, via plants, has decreased significantly for about 200 years. Therefore, the total biomass of the earth must also decrease, because there just isn't enough energy left to support every living thing. The only way it can remain the same is for organisms to evolve greater efficiency of energy transfer. We can rule that out because evolution simply takes too long to adapt in the time frames we are currently dealing with. Well, that means that some critters need to die, and typically that happens near the top of the pyramid. Remember who's up there? Yeah... us. Don't worry, though. We're pretty adaptable after all, so let's assume that we're not the ones who will start croaking. That leaves all the other animals below us, many of whom are already extinct thanks to our efforts to sustain ourselves. Essentially, the only way for our population to stay at its current value (and remember that it will likely increase to 10 billion or more) is for many more creatures to go extinct. In the end, it might end up being just plants, insects, a couple of hearty animals, and humans. I don't know about you, but that's not a world I want to live in, thanks. This is the final way that our civilization is unsustainable.

In summation, the population needs to come WAY down, and we need to stop using fossil fuels NOW! You'll probably have to give up your IPhone, your computer, your BBQ, and a few other things, but the alternative is just not worth it. Your grandchildren are gonna be pissed off at you.

Got H2O?

At my friend's wedding last year, I took my last drink of alcohol. Actually, I had quite a few drinks and made a particularly awkward speech as I recall. In any case, I'd been planning to quit drinking for a while. Most people don't really understand this. I wasn't an alcoholic or anything. It just wasn't for me anymore. That was June 13th, 2009.

I should rewind a little bit though. A few years earlier, I'd started having stomach problems of unknown origin. For example, I ate a bowl of oatmeal before work one day and passed out on the assembly line a couple hours later. I thought it might be some kind of grain thing or an allergic reaction, but after a lot of trial and error, I determined the problem to be milk. I didn't really drink that much milk since I started living on my own, and when I did have it, my guts just couldn't handle it anymore. This was a shame because chocolate milk is among the greatest things in life. A little later, I lived in Japan, where no one drinks milk, for about a year. This just made the problem that much worse.

I came back to Canada in 2009, having already given up milk for good. I wasn't a big fan of pop or fruit juice, and I don't drink coffee. I started thinking about how virtually every animal drinks only water, and how our ancient relatives would have done the same. That's what we evolved to consume, after all. It didn't take long before I was committed to a water-only diet (still food though, of course). I had to make a few arbitrary rules in order for it to work. I still have soup, pudding, and the occasional frozen treat. Other than that, however, it's been 14 months now with the whole water thing. I feel fine. My bones haven't imploded or anything. As an added benefit, I've probably saved a minimum of several hundred dollars on unnecessary beverages.

Obviously this isn't for everyone. What started as a strange curiosity has basically become a way of life for me. I consider it a long term science project. We'll see how healthy I am in a few decades.

Don't pray, do something instead!

So I've been working on getting an employment visa to teach overseas in India, and it's been quite the struggle. I was under contract to begin working July 26th - nearly a month ago - but as you may have guessed I'm still stuck here in Canada.

Well, after about 7 weeks of fucked up politics and pointless thumb-twiddling, I'm about ready to give up. Last I heard, the consulate is waiting for some unnecessary document from some useless ministry, and I'm just sitting here decomposing...

Anyway, people keep telling me they are praying for me, and praying for these documents to arrive, and praying that everything works out. The problem is that no one is really doing anything. It's no secret that I don't believe in God, but even if I did, he is really of no help to me during this process. Who controls the speed of the mail? Well, aside from obvious limitations due to physics and technology, the mailman does. Who controls whether or not I get the visa stamp in my passport? The dude at the Indian consulate of course. Who controls whether or not I still have a job offer down the line? The head of Science at my school, obviously. I could continue, but there's really no point.

If I wasn't putting constant pressure on my school, the government, and the Indian consulate in Canada, this whole process would grind to a halt like an obese hamster. Seriously, take a break from prayer and start typing some emails! Make a few phone calls! I applied for a Japanese visa a few years ago and got it in no time. Could this be because they were working instead of trying to convince God to fill out some paperwork? Seems probable.