A prominent skeptic got a discussion started when they suggest the above meme was a hoax or, at least, a misrepresentation of the phenomenon it describes. Their contention was that the B/W photo was actually color. They weren't disputing the effect, they were pointing out the meme was using a deceptive example.
There be grey in here!
The photo of the kids is B/W. A commenter enlarged part of the image to show the greyscale bits inside the grid (see above). But the enlargement does demonstrate the problem with the meme. the color grid has plenty of color bleed happening, so it's not a very good example of the effect. Below is a better version of the image.
Much cleaner color lines in the grid in this image.
I commented my opinion that the meme maker was not intending a hoax or to be deceptive in any way. I believe they were excited by the phenomenon and wanted to share ot with the internets. They were just sloppy in their execution.
Never attribute malice that which can be explained by incompetence.
I'm an atheist. I don't often talk about it on the show. I'm not exactly certain why I don't. Sure, I often mention great advances in science and technology weren't prayed into existence, but I don't usually get into the whole no gods thing.
Well, my son received a mini-pamphlet during a visit to the Minnesota State Fair. It was telling him of the "good news" that he could go to heaven and live forever if he would just believe the right silliness. And that's what it seems like to atheists - silliness.
I demonstrated how this kind of "good news" sounds just plain silly.
A Dimland Radio Pedantic Moment: 10 Actors Who Died On Set (Well, Not Exactly)
Trawling on the YouTube the other day had me run across a video titled "10 Actors Who Died On Set." You can probably guess, just from the title, what my pedantry was about this video. And if you guessed the actors didn't actually die on set you'd be correct. Well, one actor did actually die on the set of the movie he was filming.
Here is the video. Be warned, although there is not gore to be seen, the video does show the moment of death of that actor and the two child actors he was performing with. If you find that sort of thing too upsetting (and I don't blame you), when the video gets to the 3:30 mark skip ahead to 3:36 to avoid witnessing the moment.
That's it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com
Please
subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast
section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it
would be awesome.
You can also go to my
CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have
me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.
It's this "Maron Open" thing. After last week's show I decided to write about the Maron Open and Jack Paar for my blog Warehouse Find, the official blog of Nostalgia Zone. In doing my research I found that it might just be that the hosts of The Greatest Generation podcast are the only ones who use the phrase. If so, then it's one of the quirks of the show and not some widespread scourge of the internet meant to drive pedants, such as myself, into flustered tizzies.
But, I have a friend who thinks he has had the phrase elsewhere on the internets. So I guess we shall see.
And I wrote about late night TV talk show pioneer Jack Paar. He's an interesting character who had once walked off his show over the cutting of a joke about a water closet.
You can read my blog here.
Vet Those Memes Before Sharing
Occupy Democrats never lets facts get in the way of their agenda.
On the Facebook recently was a discussion about a certain meme. Which meme it was is not important (since I can't remember it), but it was being used to demonstrated how memes can misinform. A Facebook friend brought up a skeptic sharing a Betty White meme that a quick Google search could show was a lie.
It was one of those quotes with a person's, in this case Betty White, picture thing that leads people to think the person said that quote. Remember, it was Abraham Lincoln who warned us not to believe such memes on the internets. Such a wise man.
I had seen that particular Betty White meme on my Facebook feed, so I decided to do a vetting Google search. And seconds later I discovered Betty didn't say that.
The quote came from a Betty White parody Twitter account.
A Dimland Radio Pedantic Moment: I'm Probably OK PSA
There's a radio PSA (public service announcement) called "The Probablys" meant to inform about and discourage buzzed driver. Buzzed driving is drunk driving, because a little bit of alcohol can still impair your ability to drive.
The PSA uses examples of situations in which a person thinks they are probably OK to do some activity. One probably is going swimming without having first waiting 30 minutes after eating. That notion is sort of a myth. It really isn't a big deal. Cramping may be possible, but it's not really a big deal.
But that's not the pedantic moment. Nope. What I was pedantic about was a buzzed driver saying they were probably OK to drive. No, no, no. In my experience that is never something someone who is a little on the tipsy side would say when they were asked whether or not they should drive. Never.
Photos Can Look Weird
Where is her face?!
The image is a tasteless joke about waterboarding, which my dark sense of humor can appreciate. But looking at the photo had me thinking someone Photoshopped out the little girl's face. I mentioned as much on the Facebook and that led to a discussion about how photographs can just plain look weird.
The more I look at it I can say the face is there. It's just the way her hair is hanging that makes it look so strange.
I also talked about how people really can't say I know what I saw, because our brains fill in so many details into what we are seeing. And our brains make mistakes. Look at this photo:
Looks like a color photograph of a group of young people posing with a turtle or tortoise. Looks like it's a color photograph, but it's black and white. A grid of colored lines have been superimposed making your brain perceive the image as being in color.
No, you don't know what you saw.
Movie Recommendation: Roman Holiday (1953)
This a charming romantic comedy starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. Hepburn plays a princess who has run away from her overwhelming royal responsibilities. She is discovered by Peck who plays a struggling American journalist scratching out a living in Rome.
At first he thinks shes just drunk, but he takes pity on her. Rather than just let her sleep it off in the streets of Rome, he takes her to his place. He's a gentleman! There's no hanky panky, but he does discover who she is without her knowing.
She keeps her identity from him and he keeps his knowing her identity from her. He smells a big story in this and they spend the day together enjoying the pleasures of Rome. They fall in love, but can it last.
It's very good.
I also mentioned two other Audrey Hepburn films worth checking out Sabrina (1954) with Humphrey Bogart and Charade (1963) with Cary Grant.
Check 'em all out!
Oh, and watch for the typo in the trailer. 10 points if you find it.
This Is Why...
This past week my Facebook feed kept showing me several ads attempting to get people in on the $2 billion judgement against the makers of Roundup weedkiller. It was the decision of juries that the active ingredient glyphosate causes Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a form of cancer. The science on this is solid. Glyphosate does NOT cause cancer, but juries are not usually filled with scientists. In the case of Roundup, these jury members didn't have the expertise in the relative areas of science and they were swayed by lawyers' arguments, not science.
There is hope the judgements will be overturned on appeal.
But there they were ad after ad on my Facebook. Some friends helped me figure out how to stop them for showing up on my feed. I began reporting each ad to Facebook as being offensive. And they truly are offensive.
That got me thinking about why skepticism is so important. We are surrounded by so much bullshit that it can get discouraging, but skeptics need to keep working. We need to keep being the voice of reason to at least stem the tide. It's a Sisyphean task to be sure, but, god damn it, we have to.
Music heard on the show...
Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus First ad break bumpers: 'Natural's Not In It' by Gang Of Four & 'Tabazan' by Killing Joke
Second ad break bumpers: 'Rough Boys' by Pete Townshend & 'Ahead' by Wire
That's it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com
Please
subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast
section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it
would be awesome.
You can also go to my
CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have
me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.
I Don't Believe The Universe Wanted Me To Find The Perfect Line
I believe in randomness and coincidence. There are those who see a significant connection in just about everything. They think the universe has a plan. Or their god has a plan. That may be, but I don't see any strong evidence for it. The evidence there is is based on feelings. Well, that's not good enough.
So, when I randomly picked the perfect book to use for a brand new meme going around social media, it was a great coincidence. That's all.
The new meme sensation is the "And then the murders began" phenomenon. Author Marc Laidlaw (I mistakenly called him Eric Laidlaw on the show) twittered in early March of this year that "the first line of almost any story can be improved by making sure the second line is, 'And then the murders began.'" I saw that on the Facebook and took up the challenge.
I thought a children's chapter book would be funny. The first book to come to my mind was Charlotte's Web. I'd never read the book. I was familiar with the story from seeing the animated film from 1973, but I had no idea what the first line of the book was.
I looked it up and what I found couldn't have worked any better.
"'Where's Papa going with that ax?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. And then the murders began."
Perfect! Got it in one try!
I Have A Listener!
Well, I have a handful of listeners, but I pretty much know all of them. They're people I have some kind of affiliation with and they listen to the show. The other day, however, someone I don't know sent a message to Dimland Radio. He was suggesting I make a t-shirt design based on one of my show ID sounders. The one in which I pretend to be shaken by an extraordinary EVP (electronic voice phenomena - the audio anomalies ghost hunters think are communications from the dead). The EVP says one thing, but I say it says, "Bread trout."
This listener suggested I draw a bread trout and put it on a shirt with the Dimland Radio logo. It's an intriguing idea. And drawing a bread trout would be a good challenge.
We'll see.
Hollywood (And Lots Of People Including Me) Likes 'Em Shaved
Shaved legs and armpits on women specifically, I mean. I didn't talk about other parts of women that might or might not be shaved.
This came up because there was some objection to the fact that Gal Godot, the new Wonder Woman, clearly has shaved armpits in the trailer for the soon to be released DC super-hero movie. Some of the outcry stems from pedantry: Why would an Amazon shave her armpits? Much more of it comes from decrying the patriarchy.
Well, I must confess I like the look of a woman with shaved legs and armpits. I guess I'm part of the patriarchy.
I noted that having women shaved in otherwise preposterous situations goes way back in Hollywood. Of course, so does the patriarchy. I gave the examples of Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC (1966) and Linda Harrison in The Planet of the Apes (1968). Both were playing essentially cave women and both were way too hairless to be true to life.
I also mentioned women weren't the only ones Hollywood made shave off body hair. William Holden, a man crush of mine, can be seen shirtless throughout much of the David Lean classic TheBridge on the River Kwai (1957). He's also very hairless. Legs, armpits, chest, and back are as smooth as can be.
So smooth and glistening!
If you watch the Billy Wilder classic Stalag 17 (1953), you won't get to see Holden shirtless (pity), but you will get to see a fair amount of chest hair peeking out from under the collar of his undershirt. Interesting. I've also found images of a shirtless and hairy William Holden on the internets.
What that stuff coming up from under his collar?
From what I can tell Holden had to shave his chest for at least two other films he was in: Picnic (1955) and Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). For some reason Hollywood wanted him body-hairless for those roles.
Patriarchy!
An Example Of How Bad Memory Is And How I Might Have Been The Dick
I told the story of the time the DEA came into the building in which I was working and searched one of the loft apartments. It's quite a tale that I won't get into here. I'll just say that the office manager at the time had nothing to do with witnessing the three DEA agents who did the searching.
He saw nothing. He was busy with customers. Dave, one of the fellows in the shop, and I saw those three men. We had no idea they were DEA. Dave and I stayed after work to tell the police what we saw as one of the tenants in the that apartment thought he'd been burgled. We found out the three dudes were DEA days after the event and that they were searching for evidence against the tenant's roommate.
Years later, I would hear the office manager recount the tale to customers. He told the story as though he saw the men. And he saw them sneaking up the stairs. He saw their shirts with "DEA" on the back.
No, he didn't. He was busy doing other stuff.
One day he started to tell me the story. I shot him down. He hadn't seen anything. Dave and I saw the men. And we didn't know about the DEA thing until, at least, a couple days after the event.
The office manager wasn't happy that I shut him down so bluntly. But I thought he was being a self-aggrandizing dick by making the event about him. What a dick! So, when I got the chance I took it and told him he wasn't there. Ha!
That was several years ago. Since then I have learned that human memory is not good. It's very unreliable. Memories change over time and it's very human to incorporate someone else's memories as your own. I learned that it was very possible, even likely, that the office manager wasn't being a dick by putting himself in the story. He probably really did remember the event that way.
I might have been the one being a dick the way I shot him down. I could have handled that situation much better.
Movie Recommendation: None
I didn't specifically talk about a movie recommendation, but you could watch The Bridge on the River Kwai or Stalag 17 or both. They are excellent.
Music heard on the show...
Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus First ad break bumpers: 'Warm Leatherette' by The Normal & 'Rattlesnake' by The Replacements
That's it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com
Please
subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast
section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it
would be awesome.
You can also go to my
CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have
me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.
