imagine never licking the sweat from a lover.....

Recently I came across an S. M. Stirling series of science fiction called “The Enderverse”. In this series of novels explosives, steam power, internal combustion engines, electricity, etc, no longer work.

Excuse me while I puke on the scientific foundation for such an occurrence.

Okay, projectile vomiting completed. We can continue the discussion. I had the same problem with the television series “Revolution”.

First, the concept of “pressure” created by incendary chemicals, where a chemical compound, such as gasoline or gunpowder is burned in an enclosed space creating a gas where previously there was a solid or a liquid. This heated gas, and that is gas as in one of the four states of matter, expands. Since the space is enclosed and the gas cannot expand more than the volume of the space the gas works at the weakest area of the enclosure, typically the piston or the bullet. Sometimes chambers explode because the bullet or the piston is restricted from moving, but, generally the piston or bullet begins to move and continues to accelerate as long as the gas is expanding.

Now this is basic physics, explosions, internal combustion engines, steam engines, all work on pressure. Apparently we have eliminated pressure from the physics of the television show “Revolution” and the books in S. M. Stirling's series, “The Enderverse”.

So there are no longer ocean currents, rain, plants, volcanoes, animals (whose circulatory systems work on blood pressure), and just about everything else I can think of. Earth quakes. Is there anything that exists that does not use pressure in some way? Nope, can't think of one.

Pressure is force applied to an area. In theory force can exist without pressure, but, in theory points have no width, height or thickness. In practical application everything has an area and so every force is converted into pressure. Quite a lot of the pressure we deal with on a daily basis, air pressure, etc, is the force of gravity exerted on an area of mass. Oxygen molecules (O2), our bodies. With no pressure people can't breathe because we are in a vacuum.

The steam cycle is based on exactly the same physics which cause rain. If rain exists, steam power exists. If rain does not exist then salt water is not being distilled into fresh water and pretty soon anything living that depends on fresh water dies. Okay, “pretty soon” is a subjective term, you can figure out how long people can exist on the fresh water supplies currently in storage before everyone dies and then call that time period anything you want.

Sometimes I really hate being educated, even if I am primarily self educated, because I can't watch a movie or television show or read a book or work on a research and development project where I don't find glaring and idiotic errors. Of course, being human, people occasionally catch glaring errors of mine. The problem is, these glaring errors generally ruin fiction and your typically falsified research papers. This issue of rain and steam is one glaring error.

When the tv series Revolution came out I posted a question on their facebook page, “what about steam” and they replied, “The laws of physics changed, steam doesn't work.” “But it rains,” I wrote back, “The physics that drive rain are exactly the same as the physics that drive steam.”

I like the movie “Die Hard”. I remember the first time I watched it and the terrorists were whining about their “detonators”. There are a couple kinds of detonators. Electrical and chemical. An electrical detonator is a switch and a power source. Those boxes with the plunger handle are actually little generators which create an electrical current which causes a chemical explosion in a blasting cap. Chemical detonators are even easier, those are usually some kind of fuse. Instantaneous fuse like det cord or time fuse like on fire crackers. You get the idea, in either case I, and any person who has an inkling of education on explosives, can fabricate a detonator out of almost anything including a flashlight. Like the flashlight Hans was carrying around while he whined about his detonators.

Before some smart ass talks about electric blasting caps I can make them out of matches and bag ties as well as a dozen other things like lightbulbs, nailpolish remover, etc.

So...yeah, we have to suspend belief to watch movies or television shows or read books. The fewer mistakes the easier that is.

The problem with people writing about stuff like changing laws of physics is that they typically don't understand that the physics which are used to create things like steam are also used in a myriad of other environmental processes on which our lives depend. Sweating. The evaporation cycle where water is converted from a liquid to a gas not only provides us with steam and rain, it provides our bodies with a way to control over heating. No steam, no sweat, everyone dies. Imagine sweating and the sweat never evaporated, it just stayed a liquid. No air conditioning, literally. No phase change to absorb heat energy.

Thinking about it, fire could not burn because the phase change from solid to gas that takes place requires that the gas expand so it rises from the fire. Since the gas does not expand, it does not rise and it displaces the oxygen around the fire, so making a fire actually kills the fire. I could do this all day, come up with physics issues related to each other, like expanding gases and fires.

It would take a super duper computer programmed with infinite knowledge to tell us all the things that would happen if we eliminated the expansion of gases or pressure or the ability to convert a liquid into a gas. No, we don't know if different physics could result in some of the same practical applications, but, we can say that if gases don't expand then there is no pressure differential and so they don't rise. A fire would need to create its own oxygen, and that is possible, but not with the stuff we typically use and the temperatures we are typically working with.

Yeah, so me and, I am sure, a bunch of other people recognize these glaring stupidities every time we read or watch fiction (and a lot of supposedly factual stuff, like research papers).

The issue here, I think, is that people figure we don't know everything so anything is possible. There is truth to that. There are things that are impossible from a practical viewpoint. Breathing in a vacuum without some form of respirator is an example of impossible from a practical viewpoint. I believe it is possible, but, only if we eliminate the laws of physics in the region around the one breathing. Eliminate, not just change. In other words, what we call “magic” would have to exist.

If someone could come up with a reasonable scientific explanation for how gases can expand in some situations, evaporation cycles and fire for example, yet, fail to convert the energy absorbed by expansion into pressure within an enclosed space without magic, “once in an enclosed space the energy disappears and cannot be used”, maybe. But there isn't any kind of explanation where mass absorbs energy during a phase change, yet, harnessing the energy of the material phase change becomes impossible. Not difficult, not dangerous, not time consuming. Impossible.

I'm a pretty fart smeller. I can't think of a reasonable explanation why gas would expand everywhere but in an enclosed space. Maybe one, enclosing any space creates micro-worm holes which eliminate the ability of an enclosed space to hold pressure.

Wait a sec though, what is the definition of “an enclosed space” because a piston in a cylinder is not enclosed. There is a gap in the piston rings, typically around a few thousandths of an inch...Is that enclosed? What happens when we close the doors and windows of our homes and walk through these micro worm holes? What happens when reality becomes a sieve? To where? Does pressure have to increase above 20 psi before the worm holes open?

Then the story either becomes about fixing the worm holes, or how stupid the people are because they never discovered them.

Internet Stalkers

I really hate it when internet stalkers create fake Facebook accounts and then try and friend me.  Really, some very pretty 20 something woman I never heard of is going to friend me because......

Yeah, I have Facebook friends I never met that none of my in person friends know, and I believe we share things in common like a love of God, or literature, or whatever.  And yeah, I have some very pretty female friends.  And yeah, some people I never met in person are very pretty and female.

That does not mean I friend every pretty face. 

Anonymous Internet stalkers, like my friend Jay calls "Catfish", need to go away.  Anyone with an opinion should be able to stand up behind it, or, it obviously isn't an opinion worth listening to.

Julian Assange stood up for his opinion on transparency using his real name to protect people who were placed in danger when they made confidential information that they had access to public.  Yeah, nations have charged him with heinous crimes, which, even if true, do nothing to challenge the veracity of either the data he has made available or his opinion on transparency.  If anything, even if these charges are true, these charges demand more transparency.

I doubt very much if any anonymous person ever changed the world, and I doubt if they ever will.  At most anonymous people just become terrorists, maybe assassins, that people spend time and money on protecting themselves against.  What does that do except line the pockets of security corporations from Symantec to Black Water and destroy the lives of people who can't afford the security services and obsess over terrorism?

Eleven people who were anonymous until 9-11 have caused enough havoc that some people claim the world changed, but, did it?  Have the beliefs of people changed?  Did 9-11 do anything like what Martin Luther King Jr., a Republican from a family of Republicans, did with his Civil Rights Protest marches?

No.  Their stated goal was to eliminate western influence from middle eastern Muslim nations.  In fact, there is more western influence in the middle east today then there was twenty years ago.  Did anything change, there or here?  Did people change the way they think?  Are "Americans" less materialistic or less likely to saber rattle?  Did Islam run away and hide?  Did Islam become any more "Holier Than Thou"?

Nothing changed.  People died, people spent money, people became rich, but, on a global scale nothing really changed.

Yeah, people have tried life ruins on me, hacked my e-mail, taken out loans in my name, contacted people and done everything they can to ruin my life.  Maybe someone out there is going to find some new way to try and terrorize me.  Stuff happens.  They won't confront me in person, or using their real names because at heart, they know what they are doing is wrong.

What has it done?  Increased the amount of money I pay for car insurance?  Eliminated people who shouldn't be in my life from my life?  Do I care about these things that they care so much about?  If I cared about the same things they did, would they hate me so much?

Nothings changed, I have the same opinions.  About the only opinion I have had that changed is that when my cousin got married I realized that, yeah, gay couples could legally establish the same rights as married couples, but, it was very difficult, expensive and time consuming compared to becoming married.  As Gay marriage has become more and more popular a gay friend who was against all the marriage hoopla, because couples could establish the same legal rights, has also changed his mind.  I remember telling him about how happy my cousin was when he was married, I think that changed both our opinions.  I'm not sure, but, I believe that.

Over the years I have done a lot to give stalkers a view of who I really am, but, I've come to the conclusion that they really don't care.  They are just "catfish", as my friend calls them.  Bottom Feeders looking to eat shit.  They just need someone to obsess over and hate in their lives and they choose me.

The why isn't important, these obsessive nuts will find a reason to hate and stalk people regardless of their stated reasons or intentions.  No one agrees with everyone about everything and no one disagrees with everyone about everything.  People obsessed with disagreement will find something to disagree about, just as people can find something to agree about if they want to.

I live a transparent life, I post my opinions under my own name because I believe in them.

"Catfish" or stalkers or whatever we call them don't really believe in their opinions, they don't stand up for them.  They hide because they are afraid, because they know they cannot support their opinions.  They hide because, at some level, they know they are "wrong" and will be "punished" if anyone finds out who they are.

So they fight against free speech, censoring opinions they disagree with, not because their opinions are right, but, because they know that they themselves are "wrong".  Why do people do this?

When I was six my father told me I wasn't his kid and he treated me like shit his whole life.  His opinion was based on the idea that the genetics for a cleft chin are dominant. He had a cleft chin and I didn't.  He was wrong, cleft chins are recessive.  So I understand feeling "wrong" and I understand how people treat people who believe they are "fundamentally wrong".

My time in the military was an eye opener.  For the most part I was treated as I deserved, based on my behavior.  I learned that I could be judged objectively based on who I am and that I was not "wrong".  I could do things people thought were pretty amazing, incredible even.

These stalkers never had that self realization and they externalize their "wrongness", as if changing things external to themselves will change what is "fundamentally wrong".  That has never worked, and it never will because there is nothing wrong with these people, except the way they see themselves.

Movie Writer and Special Effects Ignorance

One of the most ignorant movie scenes I have ever seen is where the hero, who has prepared for this, enters into a dark place hunting vampires.  Typically they have a flashlight.  Really?

Get a professional grade 4 stroke leaf blower.  Find a small, one wire, racing 12v alternator producing about 30-35 amps.  Find a sealed motorcycle battery.  Now, assemble them all together on a back pack along with some super bright 12v truck lights.

A 4 horse leaf blower produces around 3000 watts of power, but, a lot of that is used up generating usable electricity.  That means we can expect about 1000 watts max, but, the alternator would only produce around 500 watts.  This gives us plenty of power to spare.

If we were running old school headlights this wouldn't be enough.  With super bright LEDs and HID lighting we can put some serious light out using a backpack generator.  Total weight would run, maybe 50 pounds.  Less if the hero is a really good fabricator.

So...how come all of these geniuses, writers and special effects guys in Hollywood, don't build one?  They have shoulder lights on space suits with LED lighting around the face, but, no vampire fighting back pack generator lighting.

Recently I started wiring my old backpack with a small 12v battery, a solar collector chagrining system and a couple of forward pointing super bright LED lights.  Looking for some vampires I guess :-)

Fact and Fiction and Opportunity

From page 139 of the sixth edition of Invitation to Oceanography by Paul R. Pinet:

"We can taste seawater samples and say qualitatively that this sample tastes 'saltier' than this other one.  But this is a rather subjective technique, and a SCIENTIST (highlighting mine) needs to know exactly and precisely how salty a parcel of water is."

Personally, I think that is rather well put.  The difference between science and everything else is that science is objective and everything else is subjective.  Science is based on fact and everything else is based on opinion.

Unfortunately, or fortunately for me, many in the scientific community adopt subjective opinion as fact.  This is a huge error in thought process that creates arbitrary and ambiguous limitations in thinking and capability.  I believe this inability to determine fact from fiction is one of the primary reasons why new technology typically takes a generation or more to become main streamed.

Students learn these arbitrary and ambiguous boundaries from teachers in a cycle of defeat by humiliation.  Some teachers become interested in ideas and encourage the next generation of students to accept these ideas so some students in the next generation are prepared to adopt new technologies.

I believe that what occurs, during the cycle of defeat by humiliation students are typically subjected to. develops into a near religious like system of beliefs that students, much like religion taught to children, are typically unable to shake off during their later life.  This system of religious like beliefs, created by the system of defeat by humiliation we call education or "schooling", has to be properly developed in students before new technology can be adopted.  We see this in our studies of continental drift and plate tectonics as well as other scientific theories that took one or two generations to become accepted.

This is actually why I am studying Anthropology and Sociology, particularly the development of religious and religious like beliefs.  Academics often find it necessary to hide their theories for fear other academics will steal them.  This creates another method of defeat by humiliation in our education system.  I doubt if I have to worry about that because there are way too many arbitrary and ambiguous limitations created in thinking within the academic system for my ideas to be held as anything more than "wacked" for a generation or two.

Would it surprise anyone to discover that I think that is hilarious?

Assassin's Creed 3

I play video games on a PlayStation 3. I really enjoy them. I play third person shooters. I like Open World best. A first person shooter is kind of like a cheap virtual reality. The game behaves as if the player is using the weapon. A third person shooter is where the player controls a character that is using weapons. They are called shooters, but, the weapon can be anything. In the game Infamous the weapon is electrical discharge. In the Uncharted series the weapon is usually a gun. In the Assassin's Creed series the weapon is usually a knife or sword.

I don't like the God of War series, or Devil May Cry, because I am not into chasing around the power-up jewels or beads that are bouncing around. I like Uncharted, Assassin's Creed, Battlefield, Call of Duty, The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption, even Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is okay.

Open world means the character can go anywhere in the game world. Closed world means the character has to follow a particular path.

I was just recently introduced to the Assassin's Creed series and I really liked it, until I got to AC3. What a crappy game. I played for a few days and somewhere in the 60% completed I asked myself why I was playing a game that just wasn't fun. I shut the game down, ejected the disk and I will return it to the person I borrowed it from. I have never done that, just quit playing a game.

Sure, I have set games aside for a week or even a month or two. Stuff happens, life happens, we run into game play that becomes frustrating. I would bet almost everyone has set aside a game or two for a while. That is not what I am doing with Assassin's Creed 3 (AC3). I doubt if I will play it ever again.

Game play can be difficult. Assassin's Creed took game development to a new level of stupidity.

Essentially, to complete any task in any video game, the user has to perform a series of button pushes in the correct order within a developer specified time limit. If the focus groups playing the Alpha versions and the Beta versions complain about the game play being too easy there are three ways to make it harder really cheaply. These are things the developers can do without delaying the game release date too much. Sometimes these are frustrating, but, they can also enhance game play when properly used. Improperly used they make games suck.

The first way is to over-ride the user set controls sensitivity setting. This makes the character suddenly more difficult to control. Making the time between button pushes really short is another function of this. The game becomes harder, but, not because the game is actually harder, because the developers mucked with the controls.

The second way is to change camera angle suddenly. Since character control is based on the view, changing the view makes the character more difficult to control. Again, the game is not more difficult, character control becomes more difficult.

The third way is to eliminate hints on what actions are required to achieve the developer set goals.

Here is an example of “hints”. In Assassin's Creed 3, there is a “lock picking” function. The user uses the left and right joy sticks to control the lock picking tools and then, when the tools are correct, the user presses the R1 button (on PlayStation) to pick the lock. Every time the user goes to pick a lock the screen provides hints on what controls combinations are required to pick a lock. It is always the same control combinations.

But, this is the exception in Assassin's Creed 3. Most of the time users are left to figure out what combination of buttons are required to achieve the developer set goals. That is frustrating enough, then add tons of weird camera angles, control sensitivity over-rides, ever shorter time limits on button events, software bugs galore and the game goes from being tolerable to the point where it just isn't fun to play.

There are other stupid things too. For example, I have every “Treasure Chest” in the game, except for one chest in Central Boston. People who have played the game know that this is because this chest isn't identified on the “Treasure Chest” map. This is caused by “removing hints”.

Then there are the software bugs. I cleared Fort Division 5 or 6 times before it actually worked. Don't get me started on every other bug I encountered. When I say cleared, I mean walking around in the fort after I had my character kill all the “bad guys”. I kept wandering around looking for more to kill even after I took the treasure.

The hunting stuff was a little bit of a pain to get at the beginning, but, at least they used button hints so that eventually I became really good at it. I was able to hunt bear, wolves, bobcat and cougar pretty easily, except, when they made it near impossible to react fast enough to the key hit prompts. I have arthritis so moving fast enough for the wolves on Oak Island was difficult. Oh, and find Captain Kidd's Treasure just to have it destroyed by the explosion used to clear away the entrance to the treasure. Dumb. Once I got the hang of it, making money by hunting down thirty or so bears, wolves bobcat or elk was easy. That is how a game should be, tough at first, then fairly easy when you get the hang of it.

In Uncharted the “Crushing” difficulty adds more bad guys and makes aiming a little more sensitive (I think). The enemies also seem to be slightly harder to kill. Not in AC3, enemies require weird and undocumented button combinations with weird timing.

The actual story history is pretty bad too. The history is from a typical grade school history book. Adding in some Howard Zinn, “A People's History” and information from a history book called “American Insurgents” by I forget who and maybe the history lesson in the game would have been okay. At least it would have been much more realistic.

Okay, so cheesy bad game development, poor overall history, poor story line, tons of bugs and the end result is a game I really wanted to enjoy and ended up hating.

Truthfully, it seems like the developers at Ubisoft took the best cool features from Uncharted, Red Dead Redemption and some other games by other developers, incorporated them into the Assassin's Creed series and then, at the last minute, tried to make the game more difficult by eliminating hints, screwing with control sensitivity. The changes probably created a ton of the bugs in the software. Stupid development.

There are things I did like about Assassin's Creed 3, the hunting, the lock picking, task lists. Red Dead Redemption needed better task lists to help users achieve 100% game play. I don't think I ever got to 100% on Red Dead, but, I did in the 90s somewhere. AC3 had good task lists. Like all the games there was a good way to earn money, although, in other games it was easier because there was less user involvement. The buying and selling goods worked well enough once the user has the hang of it. I liked that the apprentice assassins never died, they were just unavailable.

I liked Assassin's Creed 2. I even liked AC Brotherhood, even though I suddenly found myself in the end game with a world's crappiest weapon (The Apple of Eden) and armor that didn't work, well before I had acquired the best armor or weapons through game play. The game was fun, and the next time I play it I will avoid taking on the end game until I want to. Sure, I beat it first time through without dying, but, I would rather have gotten to that point after I had the right armor and weapons and all my assassins ready. Even if I can't use my assassins or weapons during the end game.

I am looking for someone to borrow Assassin's Creed 4 off of, since I don't want to spend money on a game after the disaster Assassin's Creed 3 was.

Assassin's Creed 3 will probably go down in history as the defining way “not to sequel a game”. Assassin's Creed 5 is coming out soon and that is a game I am not looking forward to. If someone I know buys it and loans it to me, okay, but, I am not buying it until after I play it.