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News Briefs 26-02-2015

A huevo!!

Thanks to Alejandro, for forcing the Gringos to start using the letter “Ñ”.

Quote of the Day:

“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination.”

~John Keats

  1. Purple UFO – Quadcopter
    With the popularity of Quad copter drones this “UFO” is likely a drone owing there seems to be no other videos from different angles and from the construction site.

      1. Pro Quadcopters
        Yes you’re thinking of retail drones which last only about 15 minutes or so however professional drones can stay aloft about 30 minutes.

        The lack of other videos, especially from the construction site with a “UFO” visible for such a long time indicates a more “earthly” explanation rather than the “take me to your leader” assumption. 🙂

        Cheers

        1. 30 minutes

          Eyewitnesses reported seeing the aerial object for up to two hours [emphasis mine], and yet, no video has emerged showing how the UFO left the scene.

          I’m sorry, but the “I don’t know, therefore drones” is just as lazy and simplistic as “I don’t know, therefore aliens” 😉

          The lack of other videos, “especially from the construction site,” can be attributed to many things. One, that people who might have successfully recorded the object haven’t come forward yet, or don’t have an inclination to do so; second, that maybe people on the construction site don’t have cell phones capable of recording video –this is, after all, Peru and not the States– and thirdly, that they might have been too busy, you know, working? 😛

  2. Birdman
    I think the award was well deserved. There were a lot of good films up this year (not including American Sniper in my personal option, I can’t get past the fake baby scene) and it was hard to say who would take home the Best Picture. Of all of them I’ve only seen Grand Budepest and I thought it was beautifully manufactured to an audience that may or may never have seen live theatre, because I felt I was watching live theatre at some points during the film. That and my dark sense of humor. Not many other films can make you laugh at a corpse just because of a juxtaposition of scenes. I hope to see Birdman too, Michael Keaton has always been one of my faves.

    1. Iñarritu
      Iñarritu’s road to fame has been long and arduous; and unfortunately, like his compadres Cuarón and Del Toro he was forced to work abroad in order to make his dreams come true. I hope the day comes when a film made by Mexicans in Mexico gets as much recognition as a film made by a Mexican in Hollywood 🙂

  3. yoga
    Do you want Atheists Fr. Colhoun? Because this is how you get Atheists. And in this case I wouldn’t blame them because in the year 2015, a priest is the last person who should be nailing someone to the cross. Paganism does not equal Satanism and…wait…why am I saying this here? I’m on TDG…I’m safe here…

  4. snake oil
    Given the fact that many of the people who signed up to go to Mars seem like basket cases, calling it snake oil makes perfect sense. To quote Rick from the cartoon Rick & Morty: “You don’t agree to have an amusement park built inside you if your life is going alright.” Even though many of these individuals have families and jobs they are obviously feeling trapped and not loving their current situation. They want a way to just leave it all behind. While they except that it may never happen, if they could go up today they would have, simply because they are seeking something. Look at this whole thing as not snake oil, but the fool trying to become the adept without the mountain. They want…no…lust for something they do not have as humans. Something humanity has always wanted but speaks it in different ways. To become gods or immortal, not to reach god. It’s all one big existential crisis.

    1. Oscars Make History
      https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/13/why-hollywoods-war-stories-need-to-be-true/

      “I’m not really concerned about “The Imitation Game” or “Selma” or for that matter, “Argo” or “The King’s Speech,” because nobody is going to die from the wrong lessons they might impart (and it’s not clear that “Selma” was wrong). It’s probably true, as The Guardian said of “Braveheart,” that it’s a “great big steaming haggis of lies” — but the present-day costs of its liberties with the truth are negligible. However, when it comes to blockbuster tales about our ongoing wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, the wrong lessons are deadly. If, as “American Sniper” suggests, people believe that Iraq was filled with crazed savages who had no reason to attack the foreign army in their midst, we risk engaging in more warfare in the region, because fighting sub-human Muslim fanatics is far easier to justify than killing and maiming innocent civilians, which is a lot of what actually happened.”

    2. Longing

      They want a way to just leave it all behind […]

      I don’t know if that’s the cause. And maybe someone would’ve said the same about the 1st person to climb mount Everest, or Magellan.

      For sure these people are driven by a longing and a certain dissatisfaction with their present life. Then again, I guess everything we get to enjoy nowadays is the result of people who weren’t 100% happy with the state of the world. I read once a quote said by Baroness Susan Greenfield –an interesting person: a scientist AND a member of the British royal family; I think prince Charles is her cousin or something– and the quote was “happy people don’t build civilizations.”

      It’s something I go back and forth in my mind; how the cruel fate of innovators, explorers and artists is to be born with a state of dissatisfaction, and not being content with how things are.

  5. Threats to civilization
    Something called Global Challenges Foundation estimates that cumulatively over 12 different disaster possibilities there is just a negligible likelihood of the fall of global civilization within the next hundred or so years. I think this so-called study is naive and unrealistically optimistic. I guess we can blithely ignore all the clear signs of coming environmental collapse and resulting social instability. What about the ongoing habitat destruction, unraveling of the ecosystem, and the collapse of the world’s marine and land food chains due to over-fishing, pollution, deforestation to plant crops, etc. etc.? Their number 2 on the threat list was “Unknown Consequences”, given just .1%. Talk about optimism. To top it all, they conveniently left out the threat of spreading Islamic jihadist barbarism.

    1. Carrington
      I was disappointed that the list didn’t include a future Carrington-level massive solar flare, which could seriously compromise our modern electrical infrastructure.

      And I agree with you. This study is far too optimistic, and seems to assume our civilization is sturdy enough to endure a massive catastrophe in the next 100 years. But lately I’ve been thinking that perhaps the folly of civilizations is that, the more advanced they get, the more frail they become.

      Let’s get back to the hypothetical Carrington event: Let’s suppose a coronal mass ejection manages to affect just 10 or 15% of our modern satellite communication systems –presently our satellites are not insulated against such types of solar activity. One would think this wouldn’t be so catastrophic –so a few millions of people are left without HBO, right?– but given how many economic transactions are by now dependent of satellite communications, the consequences of that kind of disruption could IMO unleash a catastrophic domino effect conducing to a global economic crash, social unrest and warfare.

      Speaking of domino effects, that’s another scenario they failed to consider: A combination of more than one threat; because if History has taught us something, is that there’s NEVER been just one cause for any major human conflict.

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