logictortured.com Blog

Court Ruling of the Day

Juries are not held to any rules of logic.

People v. Vaughn, 409 Mich. 463, 465-466 (1980)

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I don’t get profanity

I don’t know how many SpongeBob fans I have reading this site. (Considering I have no readers, there’s probably not too many.) I love the episode Sailor Mouth. SpongeBob and Patrick learn a new word. Patrick assumes it’s a “sentence enhancer” and they start saying it all the time to sound “fancy.” The word is “bleeped” out with the sound of a dolphin or porpoise. Eventually they learn it’s a “bad word” and stop saying it.

I find the show funny because it exposes how arbitrary “bad words” are. SpongeBob and Patrick are oblivious to any meaning of whatever word they were saying. But despite the fact it had no meaning, it was still “bad.”

If being against profanity isn’t odd enough, some people are upset even when profanity is not used. CBS has a new show entitled, $#*! My Dad. And despite the fact that the profanity is specifically “bleeped” out, some idiots are still calling it indecent.

Exactly what harm will the use of $#*! cause? Will it make a child go without food? Nope. Will it lead to global warming? Nope. Will it lead to a crime against people or property? Nope. Will it deprive anyone of anything? Nope. But yet, for some reason the characters $, #, *, and ! should not appear together on TV. I don’t get it.

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Ebert Quote: Sex and the City 2

There’s more cleavage in this film than at a pro wrestler’s wedding.

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Are we compulsively unhappy or inherently innovative?

I’m about halfway through the graphic novel Superman: Red Son. I’ve always been sucker for “what if” stories. The premise of Red Son is that Superman’s ship lands in the heartland of Stalin era Soviet Union instead of Kansas.

Interestingly, (to me at least) the book doesn’t say whether his landing in Russia was an accident or was Jor-El’s intention all along. Krypton society always seemed a little totalitarian and monolithic to me. (I got to the end, never mind.)

Anyway, Superman grows up to be the perfect Communist taking its tenets to heart. After Stalin dies he takes over the Soviet Union and turns it into a “paradise.” He captures Brainiac and modifies it to run all of Soviet society. Everything runs perfectly, people always have food, crime and war are essentially eliminated, and while it doesn’t say this explicitly, I assume the train schedules are pretty accurate. Soon all countries other than the US join the Soviet Union to benefit from Superman’s rule.

As you can imagine, some people don’t like Superman’s rule. He still runs the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state exactly like Stalin, except he never kills anyone. He has surgery performed on dissidents to make them fully happy and compliant. Accordingly, a resistance movement arises.

Superman is perplexed by the resistance. There is no poverty, there is no crime, there is no war (other than terrorist activities committed by the resistance), and he handles nearly all human and natural disasters. What possible reason could anyone have to be unhappy with his rule? He considers members of the resistance to represent chaos and anarchy. In his mind there can be no rational explanation other than a form of insanity. Hence, Superman’s medical solution to it.

Thinking about the situation, it is true that humans are never collectively happy. In any given group of people, in nearly any situation, some members of the group will love, hate, or be indifferent. It could appear that we as humans simply lack the capacity to ever be happy.

However, I have a different take it on it. I think we have a natural propensity to be different and to reject the status quo. That’s one of our strengths as a species. While other species focus on very narrow niches, e.g., panda bears, we can thrive nearly anywhere on this planet in nearly any situation.

I’m sure there are millions of people who grew up living off the ocean as fishermen to move inland and farm. There are millions of people who rejected their spiritual upbringing for materialism, and vice versa. In fact it’s almost expected for young adults to reject their parents’ course and do their own thing.

Such “rebellious” acts ensure our continued existence on this planet, because unless there is a complete catastrophic disaster, there will always be some humans somewhere who will survive and adapt to the new circumstances.

So anyone who thinks that humans can never truly be happy is missing the point. Our unhappiness is actually a manifestation of an inherent strive for something different. That strive exists even when everything seemingly works, because when it eventually stops working, the group that broke off to try something different will survive.

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Time and Daughters are Relative

Mom: “Is the case with my son going this morning?”

Me: “No ma’am, it’s up for tomorrow.”

Mom: “I was here last Thursday on the 14th, and the judge said it was adjourned for a week. That’s today.”

Me: “Ma’am, the 14th was a Friday.”

Mom: “No, the 14th was a Thursday. I was here.”

Me: (I show her a calendar clearly proving that the 14th was a Friday.)

Mom: (Turning to daughter) “The 14th was a Thursday, right?”

Daughter: (Shrugging shoulders.)

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To the guy driving behind me in a construction zone…

You may have not noticed, but we’re driving in a construction zone. See the orange cones? And we’re also down to only one lane. You notice that right? And right now there is a line of cars and trucks in this single lane going the same speed all the way past the horizon. You can see that far right, to the horizon? And you do notice that despite the ongoing construction, we’re all actually going well over the 60 mph posted speed limit, right. So we’re necessarily not slowing you down, right?

Anyway, as there are hundreds of cars and trucks in front of me, I can only go as fast as they are. Riding my rear bumper will in no way allow me to violate the laws of physics and pass through those cars and trucks. You understand that, right?

So my question to you is, why? Why are you tailgating me? As I said before, tailgating cannot cause me to move faster than the car in front of me. So why are you doing it?

The only reasonable answer I can come up with is that you like tailgating. So I do you a huge favor and slow down to 45 mph and set my cruise. However, you don’t appear to like that either. It appears to get you very agitated. It causes you to swerve your vehicle back and forth. It also causes you to attempt to pass me on the right, despite there being no real road over there.

It should go without saying, but your actions leave me highly perplexed. On one hand you seem to love tailgating, on the other hand, when I slow down to make it easier for you, you get pissed.

Please respond in the comments as to what is expected of me when you tailgate my truck in a single-lane construction zone. Thanks.

Well, there’s my exit, see you tomorrow.

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Privacy? No problem

Sitting around bored at work I just did a vanity search of my name on Google. In the old days I’d get information about myself in the first ten results. Not anymore. Going through page after page of results I get nothing. All because some b-movie uses a character with my name. Thus, Google is filled with links relating to that movie leaving me completely invisible. Invisibility can be a very good thing. (BTW, my name is not Tony Stark.)

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When satire is indistinguishable from the truth

I found this on Digg today:

It’s getting to the point where it’s impossible to tell a joke from the truth. A whole franchise of Forbidden Planet movies?! Really?

It’s not April 1st. Check. It’s not the Onion. Check. What the frick?

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Some things never change

Way back in the 70s and 80s the seniors in my high school participated in what was called a “senior skip day.” It was one day in the last month of the school semester where all the seniors would skip classes.

Kids today are using Facebook to organize such skip days. But instead of blaming the kids, the schools and parents are blaming Facebook. It’s such a compelling and devastating problem that a judge has even ordered Facebook to stop students from organizing skip days.

It’s amazing we accomplished such an amazing feat as skipping class without the use of social networking or smart phones back when I was a kid. Of course driving around with bald feet was a huge downside.

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Why I love Ebert

I love reading Ebert’s reviews. Not because he’s right or because I tend to agree with him. He’s not and I don’t.

For most people a review is merely explaining who made it, who’s in it, what it’s about, and whether it’s worth seeing. A machine could probably complete that entire process with the “worth seeing” part being based on data compiled from Rotten Tomatoes.

What I like about Ebert’s reviews are the little bits and tibits, the jabs and praises, what he says and how he says it. Here are a few examples below. I’ll post more as he writes them.

How to Train Your Dragon

Some movies seem born to inspire video games. All they lack is controllers and a scoring system.

The Last Song

Now that Miley Cyrus is 17, it’s about time she played a 16-year-old.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Here is a family movie you don’t need a family to enjoy. You must, however, have been a wimpy kid. Most kids are wimpy in their secret hearts. Those that never were grow up to be cage fighters.

Clash of the Titans

Most of the film involves terrifying battles between mortals and special effects.

Iron Man 2

Mickey Rourke gives us all the Ivan Vanko we could possibly wish for, unless he had a third arm to provide space for more tattoos.

Robin Hood

“Robin Hood” is a high-tech and well made violent action picture using the name of Robin Hood for no better reason than that it’s an established brand not protected by copyright.

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