logictortured.com Blog

War of the Pocahontases

People have been talking about how James Cameron’s movie Avatar ripped off films such as Pocahontas and Ferngully. Such people have a complete misunderstanding of how the creative process works. There are no completely original works in mainstream media. Think of one completely original and successful film, song, or TV show. You can’t. It doesn’t exist.

You can even make the argument a priori. If any music was completely original, it could not use any music theory either melodically or rhythmically. E.g., if it used a chord structure, it would use notes and chords which have already been done before. Thus, it wouldn’t be completely original.

A completely original piece of music would be both atonal and arrhythmic. In other words, it would not actually be music at all.

A similar complaint of “theft” was alleged against the film Star Wars. People have claimed that it was merely a ripoff of ancient myths, of Flash Gordon, of the Japanese story The Hidden Fortress, and a retread of a western set in space.

How many claims have to be made that George Lucas ripped off diverse and utterly unrelated sources before it becomes clear that it’s the underlying idea of the stories which is common and very popular.

In the US copyright is not supposed to protect mere ideas, but a particular expression of an idea. This can be seen in the television shows The Fugitive, Renegade, Kung Fu, The Hulk, and The Pretender. They’re all based on the exact same idea. An innocent but persecuted man who goes from town to town helping people while he attempts to clear his name. (Actually, I think Caine did murder someone, but it was justified somehow. Anyway…) So the expression of the The Fugitive was protected by copyright, but the underlying idea was free to be expressed differently by others.

In the same vein, Cameron did a war movie where one of the bad guys switches sides to help the good guys. That’s not an original idea. It’s been done before. However, to claim it was “ripped off” is simply asinine.

Lucas did a war movie where the hero had to rescue the princess and stop the bad guy. That’s not an original idea. It’s been done before. Once again, to claim it was “ripped off” is simply asinine.

In thinking about this I noticed how the movies Independence Day and Avatar follow a similar theme. They both involve invasions from other planets. They both attempt a peaceful solution to the invasion. We and the Na’vi both learn that the invaders are amoral consumers of resources who have destroyed every other planet they’ve/we’ve come into contact with. We and the Na’vi contact other countries/tribes to get them on board for the coming battles. Right before the final battles President Whitmore and Jake Sully give over-the-top impassioned speeches about how the invaders must be defeated to save their planets from eradication. And despite overwhelming odds, we and the Na’vi defeat the invaders using a combination of the invader’s technology with our/their own.

So if James Cameron ripped off the movies Independence Day and Pocahontas, does that also mean the creators of Independence Day ripped off Pocahontas? Heck, considering the claim that Independence Day was merely a ripoff of the movie/book The War of the Worlds, why didn’t anyone ever claim that H. G. Wells ripped off the story of Pocahontas’ life to write it?

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Cracked Pants

I didn’t hear this one personally, the story was told to me by someone who was there when it happened.

A guy came through the metal detector and pulled a huge ball of tinfoil from his pants pocket and put it in the basket. The deputy asked,

What’s in the tinfoil?

The guy answered,

Nothing.

The deputy responded,

I’m going to have to look in the tinfoil.

The guy responded,

Never mind you about the tinfoil.

The deputy opened the tinfoil and found several rocks of crack cocaine. The guy exclaimed,

Wait, these aren’t my pants!

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The best laid plans of puppies and men…

My daughter really wanted a puppy, but my wife did not want an inside dog. So I put up a fence/pen in our yard and I was pretty anal about it, I thought.

To make sure the puppy didn’t crawl or dig under the fence, I dug a trench underneath the fence, pushed the fence down into the trench, and then filled it with cement. As far as I was concerned it was escape proof.

The first time he escaped was completely my fault. To push the fence down I had to disconnect part of it from a poll and I didn’t reconnect it. Our puppy never tried to escape from us before, plus he’d have to push on that particular portion of the fence to discover the weak spot, so I didn’t think it’d be a big deal to put him in his pen while I did something else for a bit. I leaned a shovel up against that weak corner and left for a few minutes. Of course when I got back he had pushed the shovel down and wiggled through the weak spot.

Despite the fact that he’s still a puppy, we’ve only had him a few days, and he doesn’t even respond to his own name (or any other command), he came back. Whew, I dodged a bullet on that one.

I completely reattached the fence and thought it was safe to put the pup back into it. I was wrong.

The pen has two gates. The gates have curved corners. Which means that each gate has two small triangles on the bottom which he could push through. And push through he did. I swear when I saw him outside the gate that second time, he looked at me and thought, “Nana nana boo boo.”

I’ve since fixed the bottom corners of the gates and feel pretty confident that he’ll never escape again. But I won’t be laying any bets on it.

I’ve always thought that a perfect lock, a lock that necessarily would keep any unauthorized people out, was logically impossible. Basically, any lock that one person could open, which is necessary for it to be considered a lock, is logically possible for anyone to open.

If only I had sufficient brains to out-think a puppy.

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Slightly used ambiguity for the living room

Maytag Fridge & Sofa Set

The best of both worlds. The man would love the fridge in the living room and the woman would love that they’re a matched set. But I guess it could be a sofa for the kitchen, which would also be cool. Someplace to lay around and wait for the microwave to beep.

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Adding Insult to Injury

They say the rich are different. I agree. They seem completely unable to accept or understand (or care about) the impact the current financial crisis is having on our nation’s middle class.

Glenn Beck’s “solution” to our incredibly high unemployment rates is for the unemployed to simply “get a damn job.” Yeah, why didn’t I think of that. Maybe I could get a job as a shock jock and call up and make fun of a woman on the air who had just lost her baby due to a miscarriage. That sounds like fun, right?

Some corporations and recruiters have decided that the unemployed are not worth employing. The mere fact that these former middle classers lost their jobs, due to the outrageous actions of Wall Street (which the remaining middle class is paying to fix with the little money they have left), they are now tainted and unworthy of ever working again.

Now Senator Hatch thinks that not only are the unemployed too lazy to find work. Not only are they unworthy of being given a chance to work. They are all good-for-nothing druggies who should be rounded up, drug tested, and arrested. He wants mandatory drug testing for the unemployed.

Television must be the opiate of the masses. Our large TVs must be the only thing keeping blood from flowing on Wall Street and in DC. It’s lucky for the status quo that the digital transition occurred just in time to give us something big and shiny to look at while all of our hopes and dreams crumble away.

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Little Red Robbing Hood

Criminal Defense Attorney to Defendant: Why are you wearing blue jeans and a red hoodie for trial?! They have video of you wearing that exact same outfit at the scene! I told you yesterday to wear dress clothes.

Defendant: Look, everyone knows I wear red shirts.

Criminal Defense Attorney stares in utter disbelief at his client.

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Review: The Forbidden Kingdom

The film the Forbidden Kingdom is famous for one simple reason. Well, two simple reasons. It’s the first time Jackie Chan and Jet Li appeared in a movie together.

It tells the story of a modern day white American kid who loves martial art movies. However, despite his encyclopedic knowledge of all things kung-fu, he has no ability to perform it.

The old Chinese man who sells the kid movies gives him a staff and tells him to deliver it to its owner. He’s then transported back in time to China. He learns the staff is owned by an immortal warrior. The immortal warrior was (and is) trapped in stone by another immortal warrior, the bad guy, of course. The movie specifically tells us that he was trapped in stone because he could not be killed. Hence being immortal.

Of course it was told in prophesy that the kid would come from another world, return the staff to the good immortal, so the bad immortal could be defeated.

The kid was told this story by another immortal. (Who in a boring twist, was not actually immortal at the time, but becomes immortal, so he can be the guy who gives the kid the staff in the first place. Which we know because we saw him give the kid the staff. Didn’t see that one coming… not!) Anyway, he becomes the kid’s master and teaches him martial arts.

I’m not going to “review” this movie and let you know if it was good or bad. That’s subjective crap. My site is mostly about logic, so I’ll point out a glaring logical inconsistency.

I hate when movies violate their own rules. The movie tells us that immortals cannot be killed. The entire reason the immortal is not dead, but merely trapped in stone, is because he cannot be killed. Thus, the only reason the kid can come back in time and return the staff necessarily depends on immortals being immortal. Otherwise, if there was anyway the bad guy could have killed the good guy he would have, which would have made a very short movie.

However, we soon meet a young girl whose parents were killed by the bad immortal. She wants revenge against him and plans on killing him with a weapon tipped with jade. So the rules have been changed. Immortals can be killed by a stone somewhat common to the area. Common enough for a dirt poor orphan teenager to find one and have it made into a dagger.

This change from the underlying rule completely undermines the entire premise of the movie making everything we’ve seen up to that point a waste of time, solely to create dramatic tension where there is none.

Such contrivances take me out of the movie and back into reality. They remind me that I’m watching a movie. A dumb one.

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Are Ladies’ Nights discriminatory?

A man won a lawsuit in Minnesota where he alleged illegal gender discrimination for being forced to pay a cover charge at a bar which was holding a Ladies’ Night.

On the surface it would appear to be an open and shut case of gender discrimination. Imagine if a bar held a Whitey’s Night and had no cover for white people. That would certainly be outrageous.

However, is the purpose of ladies’ night to exclude men? Not at all. The purpose of a ladies’ night is the exact opposite. It’s to give men an incentive to attend the bar. The bar owners are not discriminating against men, they’re helping men get laid by increasing the ratio of liquored-up women to men.

The problem is that this could be used to exclude men. For example, a lesbian bar might have a “womyn’s night” to ensure that straight men aren’t allowed in. And it would also be unfair to gay men who would have to pay the cover without the benefit of having extra women around. So overall, maybe this decision is a good one.

Still, if you’re looking to get laid at bar in Minnesota, it’s just got a little more difficult.

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Fun with Craigslist

VW Dune Buggy, purchased 2 years ago. Was in working condition.

Was in working condition? The last time you checked? When you bought it? When it came off the assembly line? How about now, does it work now?

2 pink Razor motor scooters. I do not have the charger for them but they were only road a handful of times by my girls

So you’re saying because your daughters rode them only a few times, the scooters no longer require chargers?

And on a side note, how did you manage to lose both chargers? I could see losing one of them, but both?

off road style go-cart $425-450 O.B.O.

Never give a high/low suggestion. No one will ever pick the high.

(Refrigerator) Like new condition except has a bad compressor.

Apparently, “like new” means “doesn’t work.”

lab-chow female mix up to date on all shots, spayed great protecter only till 930 am…

This demonstrates why punctuation is so important.

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Kahler’s support ROCKS!!!!

Back in the 80s, when rockers wore women’s makeup and teased their hair, all rock guitar gods and demigods had to have floating bridges on their guitars. With such tremolos you could raise the pitch up five steps and drop it down to nothing, without going out of tune.

In those days (and now, apparently) there were two major players who built these bridges, Kahler and Floyd Rose.

I recently got my old Spattercaster working again and couldn’t find its tremolo arm for the Kahler bridge. I noticed it’s a “Z700 series” so I took a chance and googled it. Because it was built before 1995 the net has no information about it. (Has anyone else noticed that if something occurred or existed prior to 1995 and was not a major or popular niche event or occurrence, the web will have nothing about it?!)

Even Kahler’s own website has no information about their bridge. But the bridge is over two decades old, so it’s not really shocking.

Anyway, I decided to email Kahler’s support to see what arm they recommend I buy. I wasn’t expecting much. Occasionally I email companies about their products but never get responses. You’d think with all the money they spend on advertising they’d want customers to contact them. But they don’t. They want customers to blindly buy, not bother them.

Surprisingly a person from Kahler emailed me after a few minutes. Now you might think they’ve outsourced their support to a huge bank of underpaid third world foreigners. But, the email IP address says it originated from Texas.

Anyway, when I buy a bridge for another guitar I have, I’ll be sure to buy from Kahler. At the very least I know I’ll get great customer service and support.

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