*GASP* NOW YOU ARE MY TOTAL SLAVE *PUFF*

Crazy sweetie,

This is dF

CLIMATE CHANGE: IT’S HOW YOU TELL IT

Yr Fear Trumps Science headline of the day:



By “conflicting evidence”, they primarily mean “climategate” (those leaked emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit supposedly exposing a conspiracy to fake climate change evidence) and "glaciergate" (the retraction of the claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that there was a "very high" chance of glaciers disappearing from the Himalayas by 2035).

Neither of which amounted to debunking climate change, but evidently that doesn’t seem to matter.

Let that be a lesson to you: baseless scary stories are more believable than peer-reviewed scientific figures. Which is why we’re basically doomed.

BONUS MATERIALS: The EIU findings are here if you want to go over them.

Off the fence,

This is dF

THAT'S THE SOUND OF TOMORROW RINGING IN YR EARS

ITEM: Over on BoingBoing, John Cusack (yes, that one) reminisces about seeing the Up With People halftime show at Super Bowl XX.

I’m not quite as horrified by it as Cusack is, but it’s fair to say this video takes about 85% of everything that was wrong and bad and hideous about 1980s Optimist American Pop Culture (complete with fundamental misinterpretation of "Born In The USA") and compresses it all into ten hideous minutes.

Watch it. I dare you.

This, if yr wondering, is what drove me to embrace punk rock, Black Sabbath, nihilism, bourbon and writing pr0n stories as a way of life.

Naturally, I don’t regret a thing. Cheers, UWP!

Up the people,

This is dF

FAKE 3D CAN ALMOST BE JUST AS GOOD

John Scalzi’s written a good piece on Hollywood studios jumping on the 3D bandwagon, how it can result in poor quality 3D effects, and why this means that for once in his life, Michael Bay is right about something.

In essence, Bay is unhappy that his studio wants the third Transformers film converted into 3D (as opposed to a film like Avatar that was actually shot in 3D and designed for it):

I shoot complicated stuff, I put real elements into action scenes and honestly, I am not sold right now on the conversion process... Right now, it looks like fake 3D, with layers that are very apparent. You go to the screening room, you are hoping to be thrilled, and you're thinking, huh, this kind of sucks. People can say whatever they want about my movies, but they are technically precise, and if this isn't going to be excellent, I don't want to do it.

I have to say, I’m glad to hear a major film director say it, even if it is Michael Bay. I’ve said elsewhere that while 3D looks better now than it ever did, it’s still a gimmick that’s mostly inessential to the experience unless the film is designed and filmed to make effective use of the 3D imagery (and I don’t mean spears or cars or cats or whatever leaping out at you).

And if yr going to ask me to pay extra money to watch a film with uncomfortable glasses on my face for a couple of hours until my head hurts, it had better be good 3D. Otherwise, I’m perfectly happy to watch the 2D version.

Unless it’s the Transformer films, I mean.

More than meets the eye,

This is dF