The show I am speaking of is The Deadliest Warrior, broadcast on Spike TV on Tuesdays. Each week, the show pits two warriors against each other in the court of television opinion. Some of the contestants are familiar heroes from history, such as a Spartan or a Samurai, and some are more contemporary, such as The Taliban or the KGB. How can they possibly compare warriors of such different abilities, time period, and weaponry? With Science, of course.

The three “judges” of the contest include a biomedical scientist, a doctor with ER trauma surgeon experience, and a computer programmer. The biomedical guy sets up experiments so that they can test the warriors methods and tactics and get quantitative data out of it. The doctor evaluates the simulated wounds that the weapons make, and judges whether an injury is superficial, debilitating, or just plain fatal. And the computer programmer takes all this data and inputs it into a model that runs 1000 simulated battles between the warriors, deciding who the winner is. The show then stages a choreographed battle between actors dressed as the warriors, with the winner of the computer simulation revealed as the winner of this heated battle.

There are many reasons I love this show. First of all, the “experts”. Since the warriors in question often do not exist any more, they get people to come in who are considered experts on the subject, two people per warrior. If the warrior is an Apache, for example, they can get actual Apache to come and talk about the culture and the weapons. However, when the subject is Celtic warriors, they have to just get people who are interested in medieval history and weaponry. All four people are present during all the tests and weapons demonstrations, and all four people must be contractually obligated to trash talk the other team and offer objections to any spectacular display of martial ability. They are always supremely confident that their warrior will reign supreme.

Secondly, the test subjects. Obviously, they cannot test the lethality of the weapons on real people. But they can use simulated people! One the one hand, they can use synthetic people, such as human dummies made of ballistic gel, which has a similar consistency to human flesh. They pour the ballistic gel into molds with simulated (or real??) bone, so that the dummies have skulls and ribs and everything. They also add in bags of fake blood, so that an inflicted wound will bleed messily. But sometimes, that’s just not good enough! They also use pig carcasses (also with strategically placed fake blood bags) to give that extra bit of realism, as pig carcasses (as you may know from episodes of Mythbusters) offer a very close simulation of human flesh.

Thirdly, the test equipment. The biomedicist adds pressure sensors to skulls and armor, and radar and laser detectors to measure weapon velocity. They film the demonstrations with high speed cameras to get great slow motion videos of maces crushing skulls. Did you know it takes about 80 psi of pressure to crush someone’s skull? I do, now.

Fourthly, the weapons. Each warrior gets four weapons to test in battle. Typically, there is one long range, one medium range, one short range, and one “wild card” weapon. It’s always cool to see each culture/disciplines armory. Samurai katana vs. Viking Longsword? Flamethrower vs RPG? Let’s see what they can do to some pigs!

The way the show is set up, it makes for some interesting and sometimes disturbing confrontations. For instance, the first season finale was a battle between the IRA and the Taliban. Experts were basically trashtalking each other about being the better terrorist. The first show that I caught this season was between the Nazi SS and the Viet Cong. It’s really hard to be a cheerleader for SS weaponry and abilities without seeming like a bit of a Nazi.

But finally, the one thing I love is how they always ignore the giant elephant in the room : the computer model. The experts will constantly argue about the efficacy of the weapons. One heavy weapon will demolish fake skulls, and the opposing experts will say something to the effect of “it’s one thing to attack a stationary dummy, but theres no way you would be able to strike a <insert opposing warrior here> with a weapon that slow”. But they will never say “that computer model way overvalues projectile speed over penetration depth.” This central fiction of the show is hilarious. The proprietary model is considered sacrosanct when in reality its the most important factor in all the rankings. No doubt, Slytherin Studios will never offer up the model weightings for public perusal, but one day enough shows will pass that one could probably come up with the ultimate warrior by inferring the weighting based on previous battles. At this point, I will invent a ancient warrior with a specialized backstory and with special weapons that will crush all others in their path. And then finally, I will get the official title of Deadliest Warrior.

The show is filled with so much testosterone that its impossible for any red-blooded male to resist (yeah, that’s right, if you don’t like this show you must not really be a man). After seeing that SS vs Vietcong battle, I went on wikipedia to find out the battles that I had missed. I was really intrigued to see that an Indian Rajput warrior battled a Roman Centurion earlier this year, and that the full episode was online. Hopefully this will stay online, but you can check it out here (no embed, unfortunately, and 40 minutes long). The weapons that are brought to the table in this one are incredible.

Interacting with Sachin is interestingly different from a lot of other kids. In the limited interaction that I’ve had with my other friends’ young kids, I feel like I’m met with a bit of skepticism. Like, they are not sure if I’m for real or not, and they take a while before they feel like they can address my existence. For Sachin, he took to me pretty quickly. I think that the most simple explanation is that unlike my other friends with little kids, I look a lot like his Mommy and Daddy. Sachin showed little hesitation in crawling up to me, pulling on my pant legs to bring himself to his feet, and then asking to be picked up.

In the pictures below, you’ll notice that there aren’t a whole lot of actual birthday party pictures. That’s because I was pressed into camcorder duty, and was thus unable to use my own camera. However, there are a lot of other pictures of doing cute little Sachin things that I’m sure people can enjoy. You can blame the graininess of the pictures on the fact that I used a high ISO setting to combat his fidgety-ness.

Flickr Set Here
Slideshow Below
Pictures and Descriptions after the jump.

Sachin loves his mommy. And cameras.

At this point, Sachin was just learning to walk. His crawling is a little faster, and he can’t go very far without falling or grabbing on to furniture for support. We thought we would entice him with the shaky noisemaker thing, but it looks like he was more interested in the mommy & daddy food.

Sometimes you just want to sit back, relax, and put your feet up on the kitchen table.

Sachin has an adorable habit of wanting to hold things in his hands, and wave them around. Ideally, the two items should be of similar shape, size, and color. In this case, he decided that socks did not belong on his hat, but in his hands. He would literally hold onto these socks for hours, unless they were taken away or better objects were given to him. I suggest they give him flags for 4th of July. He also likes to mess with doors, like you can see here.

When I watch this video, I always think of that Deep Thought (by Jack Handey) that goes "To me, it’s always a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, "Hey, can you give me a hand?" you can say, "Sorry, got these sacks." Sachin could probably feed himself, but he’s holding two socks, so hey, Grandma has to feed him. Here is also the first documented instance of the "furrowed brow" that he unleashes from time to time for no good reason. It’s hilarious. Seriously, the furrowed look is something that he will reminded of constantly when he gets older, in the most embarrassing situations possible.

Grandma doesn’t like to always get him off scott free during meal time, so this time he needs to work for his strawberry.

The return of the furrowed brow!

Sachin & Grandma

We seem to be caught in the middle of a staring contest here.

He doesn’t particularly like being told no. But he does like his socks!

Sachin loves music and dancing and stuff. So his favorite toys are really annoying. Also, my Mom apparently doesn’t know how this floor is washed.

We had a little grill-action going for the birthday lunch, and the rest of my family was monitoring the proceedings.

Sachin was being really fussy at dinner and whining a lot, so Alok had to use his iPhone to placate him with some video. Towards the end of this video, you also see another Sachinism — the tongue waggle.

Here, coasters take the place of socks. You can also see how he tends to grab hold of whatever is near to pull himself up.

My brother-in-law Rich served as Grillmaster today, although given the high concentration of vegetarians, the only items allowed on the grill were fruits, vegetables, and mushrooms.

In the wild, such a baby-baby confrontation would probably result in a battle.

As before, he loves his coasters. And he knows his name.

This seems like the sort of smile that proceeds mischief.

He got a lot of flashy, loud presents

I think there comes a point in every parents life where you just decide to have the kid do whatever as long as it isn’t permanently harmful or indecent.

On May 1st, I joined a group of people hiking Skyline Ridge, one of the state parks on top of the ridge of hills just south of Palo Alto and Los Altos. I had visited Russian Ridge previously, and Skyline Ridge is right next door. Skyline Ridge is much like Russian Ridge, except that the views of South Bay aren’t as nice, and the archeological artifacts are more prevalent. Overall, the trail was a C. Afterwards, we joined up with another group of hikers who were on Russian Ridge for a nice little picnic.

The week after, I joined in on an urban hike, a trail dubbed “Reverse Bay to Beakers”. Bay to Breakers is an annual 12k race in San Francisco that goes from downtown San Francisco to the Pacific Ocean, at the west edge of Golden Gate Park. We were taking a route that was more conducive to lunchtime eating, though, so we did it in reverse. There were a lot of people involved in this hike, which means that we had to go out in teams.

We were told to proceed to the destination, Gaylords at the Embarcadero Center, by whatever methods we saw fit. Once there, we would compare notes and relate any adventures we had. Previous incarnations of this hike had people participating in outdoor weddings and other amazing events. So, there was a bit of pressure to both get to the destination quickly and have adventures. In the end…we didn’t have any adventures. But I took some pictures anyway.

Flickr sets here and here.

Slideshows below
Pictures after the jump.

I knew the shadows would make this picture look weird, but there was this strange rock formation near one of the ponds halfway through our hike. The weather had eaten away enough of this rock that it looked like it would make a decent waterslide in a downpour.

I think this is sandstone or something. Anyways, the Native Americans who lived in this area before the yuppies arrived carved out these hollows in the rock, and used them as mortars to crush acorns in. Acorns were a food staple for their culture, and they used the acorn flour to make their bread and meal.

On the second half of the loop, the trail took us to the Santa Cruz side of the ridge, where the view was a little nicer. You might be able to see the ocean out there.

After this hike, we joined forces with a group hiking the nearby Russian Ridge and had a bit of a potluck picnic. The guy in the Oregon hat is the best kind of hiker — the type that brings beer to an afterhike party.

While the turnout for the hike wasn’t all that great, the turnout for the picnic was overall pretty good. I used this occasion as an excuse to use the GorillaPod to wedge my camera up in a tree and take a timed photo. Now you can play a game of Where’s Ranjeet?

I think this is the most comprehensive iconography-based "Do Not Do" sign I have ever seen.

The hiking rendezvous point was this mill. No Quixote’s around, as far as I can tell.

If I hadn’t given it away with the previous video, you probably wouldn’t be able to figure out which is the real windmill. Such is the quality of my impersonation.

Since there were a lot of people going on this hike, we set out in groups of ~ 10. These were my companions for the next few hours.

We stopped for a bathroom break, and we found out that the little hut that housed the bathrooms also housed this Model Yacht Club. These people were serious about their boats.

The attention to detail was pretty impressive. But I did see a lot duct tape as well.

Along our path through Golden Gate Park, we walked along this healthy little stream, which had a few waterfalls along this path. We never really figured out where all this water came from.

The waterfall in the previous photo flowed in between these flagstones along the path. In between the rocks, there were a few instances of these large foamy deposits. I found them fascinating. I imagine the proteins and plant matter in the water is acting like a surfactant, allowing airy foams to develop at particularly turbulent points in the flow. They pulsated with the flow of water, making them seem alive. Very creepy.

In my opinion, the only reason to do something like this in Golden Gate Park is to get people to look at you. I mean, this doesn’t quite seem like an activity where you get a bunch of people together (even spontaneously) to do something as a group. It’s just a guy spinning in a big hoop.

After a while, our path took us into more residential/commercial areas of the city. Here are the famous "Six Sisters". I think there are other nicknames for this row of houses, but they pretty much all insinuate that these houses are females that are associated either through blood or some other professional linkage. You may be familiar with them from the closing shots of the "Full House" intro. I can’t believe I used to watch that show.

I don’t remember where this mural was, exactly, but it’s size and dense style attracted me to it.

This large plaza lies in front of the San Francisco City Hall (home of the fifth largest dome in the world). I don’t know what type of trees these are, but they are planted in a grid pattern that’s perfect for weaving through, which I am sure was the intention.

The info poster on this sculpture wasn’t very descriptive, so I have to resort to the internet to get the necessary information on this piece of art. It is unimaginatively titled "Three Heads Six Arms". I like to imagine that it plummeted from the sky, Mir-style, and they just put up the fence to keep people from getting space germs.

For the first half of the hike, we just admired the wildflowers and the rolling hills. The views were not fantastic, although there was a pretty good view of the peaks of Mt. Diablo. The second half of the hike was more shaded, and passed through groves of trees and poison ivy (luckily, I didn’t run into any) while climbing rather steeply back towards the parking lot.

Overall, this hike wasn’t all that interesting. The wildflowers were nice, and the more challenging portions of this hike were interesting, but it was fairly short (~ 5 miles) and the views were not great (it was a little bit hazy). It was nice to visit an area that I hadn’t hiked at before, and we had a great lunch at Sai’s, a vietnamese restaurant in Livermore. I’ll give it a B-, but the whole experience an A-.

Flickr Set Here
Slideshow Below
Pictures & descriptions after the jump.

Its traditional to take a picture of everyone before they get sweaty and angry. The turnout wasn’t that great, but it was a good group of people.

Its Spring, so the wildflowers are coming out in the hills. My camera is not awesome enough to really see it, though, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that the purple glow on that hill is due to wildflowers.

Since wildflowers were a main feature of this hike, I felt compelled to take some pictures of flowers. Unfortunately, I’m not enough of a naturist to be able to tell what kind of flower this is.

Off in the distance, I could see the twin peaks of Mt. Diablo.

We took a moment mid-hike to share our snacks.

There was really only one point during this hike that I had a look east towards the Sierras. Not that I could see the Sierras or anything.

I walked up to the high ground to get a better look while we took a small break.

Most of the flowers I saw during the first part of the hike were blue, so I was happy to see some different colors.

I took advantage of my tripod + Gorillapod technique to make a good camera support for this group picture. The twin peaks of Diablo rise behind us.

One last shot of the rolling hills and Diablo in the background.

This hike is very accessible, which is both good and bad. Good because it’s only a 30 minute drive from my apartment, and there is no segment of the way that is composed of windy, narrow road. Bad because this means that everyone comes with their kids and their strollers and such. I got a somewhat late start, and arrived to find the parking lot full and the residential streets packed all around. I lucked out and found someone leaving, so my walk to the trailhead was only about 5 minutes.

This hike is not fooling anyone. You get to the trailhead, and you see the peak ahead of you, with the path snaking up to the crest. You know exactly what you’re getting into. The path up from the Stanford Avenue trailhead is wide and graveled. I’m not a huge fan of multi-use trails; I like to pretend that I’m trekking through the wilderness, and that illusion is disrupted if I have to watch out for mountain bikes and if I hear the sounds of babies in strollers.

I also was hoping that the view would be clearer, since it had rained a few days before. Alas, the haze returned sooner than I would have expected. Overall, though, it was a good way to break in my otherwise lethargic body (I was sore for a week) and to get myself prepared for the hiking season. While steep, the view was pretty rewarding. I give this hike a B+/A-.

Picture set on Flickr Here
Slideshow Below
Pictures & Descriptions after the jump.

This is the view from my parking spot. I was really hoping that recent rains would have knocked down the haze in this spot. There were a ton of people here today. It might be because it was one of the first beautiful weekends of the year so far. Or it could always be like this, since this was my first trip. I had to park a bit farther out, on a residential street.

I don’t know what these trees are, but there was a line of impressive trees along Stanford Avenue right before reaching the trailhead.

The trail map for Mission Peak

This is a view up to Mission Peak, from lower down on the trail.

There were quite a few cows grazing along the trail.

I was sorta scared that the mother cow would think that I was eyeing her child for a meal.

The top of Mission Peak is pretty rocky; its crest looks a lot more aggressive from here than it did earlier.

There were a bunch of little chipmunks or ground squirrels or whatever scurrying around. They were cute yet elusive.

From the top, you can see the Sunol Wilderness that abuts Mission Peak Preserve

Here’s a decent little view of East Bay and Fremont below. You can also see the trail switchbacking below.

I was really hoping the haze would be knocked down enough that San Francisco and Oakland would appear, but they’re pretty much blocked out by the haze.

This little pole up at the top, along with being copiously vandalized, had a bunch of little tubes that were oriented towards various points of interest. One might say "San Francisco", for instance. A nice little project.

It could be my imagination or perhaps altitude induced sickness (a shocking 2400 feet above sea level), but I swear I could see the snow capped crests of the Sierra Nevadas in the distance.

The person who took this picture did a pretty horrible job, since I appear to be fat.

I’m a big fan of my GorillaPod, and looks for any chance to use it during a hike.

That little figure in the distance is a little chipmunk/squirrel thing. He was keeping an eye out for intruders

I really wanted to make this is a loop instead of an out-and-back, so I elected to take a different trail back to the trailhead. This path seemed steeper as well as less distinct.

A couple things of note about this picture. This is the first time I used a technique that is not very original, but seemed like a Eureka moment for me. I jammed my hiking pole into the ground to make a monopod, then used the GorillaPod to mount my camera on top, giving me a much better viewpoint than if I just put it on the ground. Secondly. this bench is freaking huge. This a bench made by Andre the Giant. My feet are not touching the ground at all, and I had to like hop onto it. This is probably about the safe limit of my 10 second timer.

Equilibrium is a 2002 action flick starring Christian Bale & Taye Diggs, among others. While not getting the greatest reviews when it came out (37% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), it’s had a bit of resurgence in the intervening time, and at this point it’s rated 7.8/10 on IMDB. Because of the intriguing re-evaluation of this film’s merits, I thought it was worth a Netflix rental. As it turns out….this is a bad movie. Read on for more, spoilers included.

This story takes place in the not-too-far-off future, sometime after a World War III that causes much global suffering. In its aftermath, a new city-state was formed called Libria. Libria is a very orderly society, with little obvious crime and a population that never indulges in excess. The secret is that in Libria, feeling is outlawed. That’s right : feeling. The idea is that strong feelings incite violence, crime, all the horrible things in the world, and the horrible consequences of these negative emotions outweigh the good consequences of positive emotions. So feelings are out the door. But how to execute this? Well, first of all, every citizen of Libria has to take doses of a drug called “Prozium” (hmmm, could it be any more obviously like Prozac?) that suppresses their emotions. At certain points throughout the day, there is a chime heard throughout the city, and then everyone takes a dose, called an interval. This drug is dispensed at government pharmacies called equilibrium centers. These doses are mandatory, but it’s difficult to enforce. Thus, Libria has an extensive police presence that enforces this behavior. If “sense offenders” (seriously) are found, they are arrested and (theoretically) tried, with the punishment being incineration. Like, putting them in a chamber and burning them.

Libria is ruled by the Tetragrammaton Council, which sounds like a fascist library tribunal. At the top of the Council is Father (who strangely reminded me of Steve Jobs), who shows up on video screens throughout Libria periodically, giving speeches explaining how important it is for everyone to follow the rules and do their part for society. Father is very reclusive and only speaks to his council. Beneath the council and head of the police are the Tetragrammaton Clerics, specially trained police and investigators who lead the search for sense offenders and contraband (known as EC-10 material for its emotional content). This is the situation we find ourselves in as the movie starts.

It’s a grungy, dirty, abandoned building. A man is listening to a record on a record player (something that is outlawed in Libria). Suddenly, a whole host of police cars pull up. The occupants of the building shout out words of alarm and warning, and everyone grabs rifles and shotguns; they know that this is a battle to the death. Despite their great skills in pointing their guns out of the windows and blindly firing at the police below, the police are unscathed and soon storm the building. But it’s not just the normal police who are here : there are two Tetragrammaton clerics here as well, Partridge (played by Sean Bean) and John Preston (Christian Bale). A few spectacular fight scenes later, the building is cleared, and the search for contraband commences. Preston has a sixth sense for finding this stuff, and he soon orders the floorboards in a room to be pulled up, revealing works of art, which are a controlled substance. In fact, its the real Mona Lisa! It’s quite a successful raid, something to be proud of.

I’ll take a break here to point out a few things. I imagine the director/producer picked out the Mona Lisa because its so recognizable, perhaps the most recognizable painting. But in general, I would not say that the Mona Lisa is the most emotion-provoking painting I could think of. Not a huge catch, there, in my view.

Secondly, I must talk about Gunkata. This is the martial art that the Tetragrammaton Clerics are trained in. The traditional martial arts use arms and legs and sometimes weapons, but everything is always short range. As I mentioned during my G.I. Joe rant, the easiest way to combat ninjas are to run backwards while shooting (assuming you ever see them). In Equilibrium, the clerics are trained on how to use firearms in their martial arts. Which seems strange…how can you block a bullet? A martial art involving firearms would just have to be completely based on shooting the opponent while not getting shot at all yourself. Which is exactly what Gunkata is about. One of the premises of Gunkata is that “the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically predictable element.” Therefore, with careful study, an expert in Gunkata can predict where everyone is, avoid their shots, and then return fire. In addition, a skilled Gunkata-ist can use their firearm as an effective melee weapon.

The following is a YouTube video posted by a user who has helpfully spliced together all of the action scenes of the movie. Although I think this movie is stupid, the action scenes are worth watching, as this movie, if nothing else, is very stylish and visually striking. You probably don’t have 9 minutes of time, so I’ll just say the good parts are between 0:45-1:42, 2:53-3:35, 5:40-6:24, 6:32-7:42, and 8:00-9:05.

I have a few problems with this. For one, let’s say that the Tetragrammaton Cleric can determine a firearm’s location and trajectory with 99.5% accuracy. The number of people Bale takes on in this movie is roughly 50 …. the chances of him avoiding 50 shots with those odds is a mere 78%. “Playing the odds” is something you do in the stock market and in the casino, when you just need to have more wins than losses at the end of the day. This is more like russian roulette, where one wrong bet ends the game. Also, in a lot of the action scenes, it’s not like he’s dodging the bullets. He’s just moving his arms. His ability to, at a glance (or perhaps by sound), notice the positions of all the shooters and start shooting at them all rapid-fire is plausible, but everything else isn’t.

But I’m getting off track from my deconstruction. After finding and burning the Mona Lisa, Preston and Partridge are being driven home. Preston asks Partridge why he didn’t burn a book of poetry, which Partridge had put in his pocket himself. Partridge says that he was going to turn it into the incinerator personally, to make sure it got taken care of. The seeds of doubt have been planted. Of course, it turns out that Partridge has not been taking his Prozium doses, and thus has been feeling emotions. He took the book of Yeats poetry for his own enjoyment. In the end, Preston is forced to kill him for his crimes.

After this “painful” experience, Preston forgets to take a dose of Prozium himself, and starts to question his own beliefs in the system. As the Prozium bleeds from his system, he finds himself drawn into the mystery of Partridge’s life, and spends time trying to figure out Partridge’s connection to the rebellion and the underground movement.

Eventually, he’s given a new partner, Brandt, played by Taye Diggs. Brandt suspects that Preston is off his meds, and is driven to prove that he’s been feeling emotions. The thing is, Brandt appears to be righteous and ambitious (he feels that by exposing Preston, he will make his career). Last time I checked…those were emotions. It seems like if he’s on his Prozium, he should just want to do his job, check in at 9 , check out at 5. Not make a play for a promotion. And later in the movie, when Preston frames him for crimes, Brandt is furious at the deception, vowing revenge. Again, emotion.

Brandt and Preston’s first assignment is to lead the charge against rebels in the “Nethers”, people holding out in a warehouse, no doubt hiding contraband. Preston, with his newly found conscience, is empathetic towards the rebels, and doesn’t actually shoot anybody, although he doesn’t stop the slaughter, all the same. After the building has been cleared, he and Brandt are called behind the building to investigate a discovery, in what turns out to be probably the most (unintentionally) funny scene in the whole film. It’s a fenced off area filmed with dogs. Like, puppies. Brandt expresses wonder at the concept, theorizing that they are there for food. You see, in the one generation (I’m assuming) that Libria has been without emotion, people have forgotten about the concept of pets. Anyways, this is against regulations, so one of the soldiers walks in and starts blowing away puppies with a shotgun. You hear yelps and whimpers of pain, and see the look of disgust and horror appear on Preston’s face. Suddenly, one of the puppies gets past the soldier and runs out of the caged area. “Someone catch him!” Preston grabs him before he can get away, and lifts him up to get a good look at him. Of course, its just about the cutest puppy in the world, whimpering at him. Ignoring the offers to kill the dog for him, Preston stutters that he’s keeping the dog “to run some tests and see what diseases he has” and blusters off.

Of course, Preston can do nothing of the sort, and returns to the Nethers later on to set the dog free. But even then, he can’t stand the pitiful whimpering of the dog, and puts him back in his trunk, deciding to keep him. Just then, he is stopped by a patrol of cars investigating his admittedly suspicious behavior. The patrol leader eventually recognizes Preston as a cleric, and is about to leave, when he hears the puppy bark from within Preston’s trunk. Discovered, Preston is forced to kill everyone in the patrol in spectacular fashion (2:53 – 3:35 in the YouTube video).

The shocking murder of the patrol results in an order from the Librian government to crack down, and soon Brandt and Preston are sent to another sector of the Nethers to kill some more rebels. Just like last time, Preston’s conscience and empathy prevents him from killing the rebels, but this time he takes it a step further and kills Librian soldiers in order to allow the escape of the rebels. There is a ridiculous scene (5:40 – 6:24 of the YouTube video) where he stands in the middle of six soldiers and then beats them all to death with the grips of his pistols. He does this without getting shot, and without any of the soldiers taking two steps back and then shooting. All his efforts are for naught, though, and all the rebels are rounded up and executed, although Preston refuses to do the deed himself, making Brandt even more sure about his treason.

Realizing that he’s gone too far to turn back, now, Preston makes contact with the Resistance (under the guise of working as a double-agent), and is convinced that Father must be killed. Unfortunately, a private audience with the man is impossible, since he is a paranoid and never appears to anyone. The only way Preston could be granted an audience is if he does something spectacular, like infiltrate the resistance and arrest them. So, the resistance turns themselves in so that Preston can get his audience. Unfortunately, the Tetragrammaton Council has known of Preston’s betrayal all along (it wasn’t hard to figure it out, really. He was fairly unstable and prone to emotional thinking), and let him think that Brandt had been successfully framed. In actuality, this was all a trap for Preston, and now they had the Resistance and the treasonous Cleric. To prove that Preston is off of his meds, they submit him to a polygraph test, since it should be able to detect anxiety and the physiological changes that will plague a guy lying when he’s just been taken off of Prozium. At this point, another secret is revealed : Father has been dead for some time, and is just a computer-generated image at this point. The real power, the voice behind Father, has been a council-member named DuPont whom Preston has spent the whole movie talking to. Preston realizes that he has been in the presence of the dictator the whole time.

However, they forgot the Tetragrammaton’s secret weapon : sleeves! Preston hides all sorts of guns and munitions up there, and he bust them out to kill the guards in the room and make his way to DuPont. What follows are a few stirring action sequences that lead him to the office of DuPont. There is a stunningly anticlimactic penultimate battle with Brandt (but not anticlimactic in a bad way), and then a hand-to-hand gunfight with DuPont, a fellow Gunkata practioner. If you’re wondering how you can have a hand-to-hand gunfight, just watch the last minute or so of the YouTube video. After DuPont’s death, Preston sends a signal to the resistance, which sets off timed explosives in the Prozium factories and starts the uprising, shooting and killing the soldiers for the first time. Revolution has come.

My objections to the movie are partly material, in that this world of Libria that has developed isn’t as devoid of emotion as they would like us to believe. There is still righteousness and anger. I guess I was thinking it should be more like the Vulcans and less like a cold-hearted killer. In some of the special features, they had interviews with the castmembers, and one thing that Taye Diggs said drew him to the script was the concept that it was “a morality play”. Sure, yeah, it was a morality play in the sense that there were bad people and, uh, mostly less bad people. But it wasn’t a morality play in the sense that there was moral ambiguity to be explored. You’re not sitting there wondering who the good guys and the bad guys were. It was pretty cut and dry. On my last international plane ride I watched Training Day (Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke), and that movie was surprisingly ambiguous. You could leave that movie thinking “Yeah, that cop is crooked, but perhaps he was justified in his actions. When you’re trying to control evil people, maybe there’s no choice but to be evil yourself.” But in Equilibrium, there was no such sense. The Prozium had blinded the Librians to the inhumanity of what they were doing. In the name of stopping all war….they were killing hundreds and hundreds of people that were doing nothing more than listening to music, reading books, and looking at art. Its not like the Clerics were busting up child prostitution rings lead by people who weren’t taking Prozium.

Secondly, I was disappointed at where the twist in this movie led to. If Libria was actual, I think that the scandal would be a little bit different. Perhaps Father’s dogma could last through his life, if he was suitably charismatic enough, but I find it hard to believe that after his death, that the main philosophy of his teachings would still hold. Instead, what I would expect would happen is that the highest members of government would all forgo Prozium in order to partake in emotion, because as the upper class, they would feel entitled to feel the awesome things that Prozium provides. And as long as the lower classes are taking Prozium, then they have a bunch of sheeple to lead around. The perfect situation, in other words. Perhaps this is just classist of me.

In the end, I wonder how much of the new found respect for this movie lies in politics. I mean, there are militia people out in Montana who hoard guns, sure that the government is going to come and take all their firearms, burn their churches, and implant microchips in them. Equilibrium is a wet dream for them — its the manifestation of all their dictatorial, big-government fears, and justifies all their paranoia. Perhaps its just a reflection of my political biases that I find the premise ridiculous, and my alternative twist to be more plausible.

If this movie had come out before the Matrix, I would give it more points for being original. However, while stylish and possessing some great action sequences, the ridiculousness of this movie just makes me label it as : angry-bad.

But this time, I have a number of interesting choices, both old and new. The Hangover, about 4 Harry Potter Movies, The Taking of Pelham whatever, Training Day, a couple of James Bond movies, Transporter 3, Heat, Shawshank, The Da Vinci Code, Night at the Museum, Little Miss Sunshine, Babylon A.D., and some others. A number of these movies fall in that nether region of “I would never pay to watch that, but if you strapped me into a seat for 11 hours, I might consider them.” One movie in that category especially caught my eye : G.I. Joe.

From all that I’ve read, G.I. Joe is a horrible movie. I didn’t think that it would exceed my expectations. However, I did feel that it might be angry bad fodder. And boy, is it ever! It is so bad, that I find myself reaching for my laptop while the movie is still running so I can record the ridiculous before I forget about it.

G.I. Joe is just the latest entry in the obsession with taking my childhood toys, applying CG, and pumping out crappy movies. It should come as no surprise that movies such as Monopoly and Bazooka Joe (seriously) are in the works. As this movie was coming out, all the signs pointed to a disappointment. All the trailers were very careful never to show more than 0.5 seconds of any scene, with absolutely no dialog. No screening events. A Wayans Brother. Etc. But enough build-up, on to the suck. And naturally, there will be a lot of spoilers as I discuss the plot.

Much of the premise of G.I. Joe is that there are two secret, opposing forces that have technological capabilities far superior to that known by common armies. One of these is an international collaboration between various military groups, while the other is a mysterious, privately backed special ops force.

The formidable weapons used in this movie are “nano-mites”, nano-sized machines that will consume metal relentlessly until a kill signal is sent to them. I really wish these script writers had never picked an issue of Popular Mechanics or Scientific American or a Neal Stephenson book or whatever the hell they picked up that gave them the idea for nanoweapons. It’s turned into such a trite, malleable plot device. Basically, it’s the modern equivalent of magic. Need a process by which you can control people remotely, and a weapon that will disintegrate metal? Nano-machines. That’s the ticket. Anyways, one of the villains in this movie is a defense contractor, who has used billions in NATO funds to build these nano-mites, which he can put into a warhead. When fired at, say, a tank, the warhead impacts the tank, the nano-mites are released, and metal is devoured. They will keep going until a remote kill switch is activated.

Practically speaking, this is a strange concept. I’m willing to give in to the idea that you could create such a tiny, autonomous device that contains both motors and circuitry, as well as a receiver that could detect the kill signal and stop going. But I’m having trouble figuring out exactly how it works. Since these nanobots can’t have too much of a power source, it can’t be that they are literally ripping apart the metal at the molecular level; that would require the mites to be supplying the energy to rip atoms apart from one another. And it would be hard to make that specific to metal. The nearest concept I can figure is that they consume metal, and possess some sort of catalyst that lowers the activation energy required to rip up metal. This is an interesting device because it seems like it should be fairly non-lethal; you debilitate and consume the car that a person is driving, but not the person. But I don’t get why NATO would want it, because it’s such an asymmetrical piece of weaponry. Yeah, it’s great against tanks, but NATO isn’t fighting Russian aggression anymore; they’re fighting terrorists and doing other peace-keeping missions where they will have the overwhelming advantage in technology, but can’t apply it as needed to get the job done.

All this is just philosophizing, though. The evil villain produces these weapons, sells them to NATO, and then sets things up so that his super soldiers (i.e. Cobra) attack the military convoy and takes the weapons back. This plan is foiled by the arrival of G.I. Joe, who stops Cobra from getting the warheads. Only two (Army? NATO?) soldiers survive the attack, mostly because of luck, but possibly because they’re bad ass, and they are taken to the G.I. Joe base (hidden underground in the Sahara) to meet up with the leader of G.I. Joe, played by Dennis Quaid. These two soldiers are Duke Hauser and Ripcord (played by Marlon Wayans), and eventually they become permanent G.I. Joe members. In order to build up a little tension, we also find out that the crazy woman leading the charge for Cobra (the Baroness) happens to be Duke’s ex-fiance, estranged since her brother died while under Duke’s squad’s protection in a previous conflict.

Cobra wants those warheads, and attacks the base using machines that drill under the earth, and busting through the facility’s back door, so to speak. Three Cobra troops walk through the base, killing everyone in their path to get those warheads back. Lots of explosions. The crack troops of G.I. Joe, taken from the best of the best around the world, who have trained for years, are no match. The two new soldiers, who have been in the group for maybe a week, and done a small amount of training, do make it through, although they aren’t able to stop Cobra.

The attackers, while severely outnumbered, are helped by the fact that they have been enhanced by nano-mites (unaffected by fear or pain) and the fact that the Joes defending the base have a poor concept of military tactics. They like to stand out in the open, in a line, and shoot at people, for instance, instead of going for cover.

This movie also features a pair of ninjas. This in itself is a great idea, because ninjas are awesome. However, they are quite limited in the modern era. In movies, you tend to have to resort to outlandish scenarios to make it all work. In G.I. Joe, the Joes have Snake Eyes, perhaps the most popular character in the series, and Cobra has Storm Shadow. Ninjas are hard to kill, but I think the main secret to defeating them is to be far away from them, and then shoot them. With bullets. If they start running at you, start moving backwards while shooting. In this movie, people are constantly using blades when they should be shooting, and shooting when they should be using blades. This isn’t to say that Storm Shadow does not have projectile weapons. He does have shurikens, and when he throws them at people, they get knocked back and thrown through the air. Must be depleted uranium shurikens or something.

Despite the efforts of the Joes, Cobra (Storm Shadow and The Baroness specifically) gets the nano-mite missiles and escapes the Sub-Saharan (haha, get it?) facility. Not long after, they track the missiles to Paris. The Baroness is actually a baroness, married to a baron. Who also works at a particle accelerator. They will use this connection to commandeer the particle accelerator, and use the accelerator to “weaponize” the nano-mites. Basically, the writers took two things that they don’t understand (particle accelerators and nano-mites) and combined them to advance the plot point. The Joes run into Cobra just as they were leaving the accelerator facility, and a chase through Paris ensues. Some of the Joes are following in a vehicle, but Duke and Ripcord participate in the chase wearing mechanical exoskeletons that gave them increased speed and agility.

The modern world has destroyed the classic car chase, because it should be just about impossible to “get away”, with the invention of helicopters and coordinated police action. Midway through the chase, it becomes clear what the target is : the Eiffel Tower. A giant structure made of metal is the perfect target for these nano-mites. Instead of getting in some sort of helicopter and beating Cobra to the chase, they continue to chase the bad guys through the streets of Paris. Cobra, for their part, are “racing” down the narrow streets of Paris in a souped up Hummer, with enough horsepower that it can repeatedly crash into cars without slowing down. This Hummer can withstand the bullets that are being fired at it, but not the sword that Snake Eyes puts through it. Duke and Ripcord are chasing the Hummer in their little super suits, but are neglecting the main advantage of their exoskeletons — the mobility. They should be taking shortcuts between buildings, using cut off angles, etc., not blindly following the car along the road.

At one point during the chase scene, the Joes are separated from Cobra by…a train. Like, a speeding train. In the middle of Paris. According to IMDB, this train is based on the Tramway des Maréchaux, which is a slow moving tram, instead of the bullet-like train that barrels through in the movie, seemingly with no warning. This stops the Joes in the car, although Duke and Ripcord are able to navigate over/through the train. However, all their ill-conceived effort is for naught, because Cobra is able to destroy much of the Eiffel tower before Duke is able to hit the killswitch.

Now, after all of the carnage is over, the police finally show up and arrest the Joes. But not before they find one of the dead bad guys and inspect his brain, trying to analyze the remnants of gray matter to view his last memories. One of the images they play back is a noisy image of the evil mastermind and his shadow. Based on the length of his shadow and a rough estimate of the time, they narrow it down to only one location : underneath the polar ice cap. This whole thread is ludicrous. It’s so ludicrous that it something that I thought of a long time ago in one of my stupid fiction stories in high school. Except my version was actually reasonable, because the character in my story had a bionic eye that maintained a constant 10 second buffer, allowing someone to extract the last 10 seconds of his life, post-mortem. In this case, they are inspecting a guy who does not have bionic implants (although they did have a nano-mite infestation), and they are trying to dig back a lot farther; at best it should be in short term memory. Secondly, even beyond that, knowing the length of the shadow and a definite time would get you a latitude. Knowing how long ago that time was would get you the time zone. Knowing just the length of the shadow and how long ago it was would just get you a line that crosses different latitudes. It just seems like the writers could have found an easier way to identify that the next stop should be the North Pole.

In all the confusion, Duke was kidnapped by the bad guys, so the Joes are resolved to rescue him and defeat Cobra. Soon, they’re off by plane-that-can-turn-into-a-boat towards the North Pole. I don’t know how far into the future this movie takes place, but there’s a decent chance that by that time, there’ll be no ice during the summer. But whatever. They fly past snow-capped mountains on their way. Mountains! There’s nothing but ice and water up there, people.

What follows next is a big underwater battle while our main characters infiltrate the underwater base to rescue Duke and defeat evil. There is quite an extensive evil laboratory/base underwater here, tunneled into the ice pack. Again, considering the recent climate trends, it seems like it would have been better for Cobra to have firmly anchored all of his stuff off of the bottom of the ocean. The big underwater battle is an awful lot like overwater battle, just bluer. That’s always a bit disappointing. I always hope for some interesting physics and sound effects, but nope, everything is just as maneuverable underwater as it would be above water, and sounds mostly the same.

In all the excitement, there are a lot of amazing plot developments. First of all, we find out that the Baroness has at least partially been under nano-mite control. We find out that the real mastermind behind this whole thing has been — the Baroness’ assumed-to-be-dead brother! He was horribly disfigured in an explosion and left for dead, and the pain had twisted his brilliance until he decided to become the Cobra Commander. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow have the obvious showdown that has been building this whole movie, ever since we find out that Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes trained under the same master, until Storm Shadow killed the master due to jealousy over favor given to Snake Eyes. The battle between them is sword-filled and ridiculous, and ends with Storm Shadow falling to his “presumed” death.

There is one scene I have to mention though, because it had me shaking my fist like a madman at the tiny airplane lcd screen. At one point the G.I. Joe rescue party came across a pressure-sensitive security floor. Scarlett, the brainy redhead, recognizes the security measures, and declares that the floor is very sensitive, to the extent that “anything larger than a quarter” will activate them. Snake Eyes responds to this by walking across the floor on his fingertips, which are smaller than quarters. Of course, if this was anything but a stupid movie, that would have exacerbated the problem, since it’s a pressure sensitive floor, and Snake Eyes was concentrating his weight onto his fingertips.

In the end, the top villains manage to get away (of course), but not before setting off the self-destruct button and launching two nano-mite missiles towards Moscow and D.C. First, the self-destruction : explosions rip through the ice and stuff starts sinking, threatening all the Joes in their underwater craft. Now, I realize that this is actually plausible, because there is a lot of metal embedded within the ice, enough to make it denser than the water. But I wouldn’t put it past the writers to think that they could blow ice up and have it sink down on the protagonists. Now, the missiles. They are already too far away for the kill switch, so they must be shot down. Ripcord finds one of Cobra’s special, experimental planes, and jumps in to fly it, since he’s a pilot and can thus fly anything (he actually says this).

Ripcord has a deadline to work against. One missile will hit Moscow in 4 minutes, and D.C. in the 18 minutes. They’re closer to Moscow, so that’s his first target. He manages to catch up to the nano-mite rocket, but he can’t find any firing controls on the plane. Scarlett immediately guesses the issue : it is voice activated. And since the evil CEO was Scottish, it only responds to Gaelic commands. Which, luckily, she speaks fluently. Ripcord takes out the missile with one minute to spare. Next, he had to save the missile heading for D.C. It’s about 4900 miles from Moscow to D.C. To get there in 17 minutes, he would need to travel an average of ~ 17,000 mph. Which is mach 22. In other words, impossible.

Amazingly, he does it, and gets within range to fire — but he misses his first shot. The missile is now so close to the city that even if it is destroyed, the nano-mites will hit the ground and wreak havoc. Ripcord decides to make a risky move. He accelerates towards the rocket and fires his weapon just before hitting it, flying through the cloud of nano-mites to gather them up and then flying straight up in the air. Within seconds he’s in the upper atmosphere, gaining altitude even as nano-mites are busy eating up his airplane (an airplane this advanced is probably made of fiber-reinforced composite, though, so I bet a lot of it isn’t even metal). At the last moment, he ejects himself, leaving the plane (and the nano-mites) to exit into space. The G.I. Joe crew
waits breathlessly by the radio, waiting to hear word from him. It takes 30 seconds or so, but finally he speaks up, free of the airplane and slowly drifting towards D.C. Everyone cheers! Ripcord is saved! Sure, hundreds of other soldiers have died today, but the wise-cracking new guy is safe! Hooray! Ripcord can be confident that Scarlett will be there for him when he returns to Earth. You see, although she was a cold woman, unflinchingly dedicated to logic and uninterested in emotional attachments throughout the movie, Ripcord breaks through her facade with a few well-timed caring comments over the course of a few days. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works in real life, too.

It wouldn’t be a bad movie without setting up a sequel. One of the last scenes involves the President of the United States going into his secure bunker after the missile warning went out. Once locked in, one of is secret service agents goes rogue (he’s being controlled by nano-mites) and eliminates the others. A secret panel opens up and out pops…another President! Cobra has made up an impostor and are clearly intending to pull a coup! Who is this man, and who’s the real villain here? And really, even if a person looked like the president, could they really pull off the replacement without arousing suspicions?

This movie, unfortunately, made a ton of money, so there will likely be a stupid sequel. Full of horrible, horrible dialogue (with quotes from the cartoon shoehorned in wherever they can put them), nonsensical action sequences, ridiculous use of science, and improbable human interactions. Here’s to hoping that the only chance I get to watch it is while strapped into a chair at 30,000 feet.

First up, a visit to an RNC meeting in Hawaii to discuss fiscal responsibility.

That video is good, but I don’t necessarily think that its all that hypocritical to have a summit on fiscal responsibility in Hawaii. Maybe they got really good group rates.

However, this next clip is delicious.