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| I'm No Artist #6: Ninja |
Unfamiliar with the series? Check out the introduction here: I'm No Artist
Monday, April 9, 2012
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Twelve Songs in Twelve Months
"January Wedding" by The Avett Brothers"February Song" by Josh Groban
"Marchin' On" by OneRepublic
"April in Paris" performed by Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
"Maggie May" by Rod Stewart
"June Hymn" by The Decemberists
"1000 Julys" by Third Eye Blind
"August and Everything After" by Counting Crows
"September" by Ryan Adams
"October" by U2
"Come November" by Thriving Ivory
"A Long December" by Counting Crows
Honorable Mentions:
The Avett Brothers could have also gotten credit for "November Blue" and "Denouncing November Blue (Uneasy Writer)". November was a tough month all around, with "November" by Trampled by Turtles also receiving recognition for being one of my favorite bluegrassy songs.
The Avett Brothers are big on using months in their songs--I also considered including "Sixteen in July".
I also wanted to note several artists I've listened to over the years with months in their names: Making April, Until June, Blue October, The Early November, and of course The Decemberists (who received credit for "June Hymn" but also could have gotten in with "July, July!" There are undoubtedly more artists that fit the criteria, but I only wanted to include those I'm most familiar with, and this isn't meant to be comprehensive.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Monthly Thoughts: March 2012
New monthly series, people: last day of each month will now be Monthly Thoughts day. A day in which we recount our random thoughts from the preceding month. So here's what crossed our minds in March:
Joker
I feel that getting a tattoo on your face is essentially saying, "I don't want a job that requires a college degree."
Zero to hero in no time flat? Dan Brown's first three books - Digital Fortress, Angels & Demons, Deception Point - printed less than 10,000 copies each in their first printings. Then The Da Vinci Code came out, hit the NYT Best Seller list in one week, and sold 81 million copies over 6 years. 81 million! No wonder all of his books now say, "From the author who brought you The Da Vinci Code..."
I saw a guy dressed as the Statue of Liberty advertising tax service as "Fast. Accurate. Fun." Fun? Really?
I want to write a rap song about a steel-worker, just so I can use the line, "I got hot-ass swag / I got hot-ash slag"
Dear Taco Bell, I hear that it is pronounced the "five buck box." However, your sign has printed "$5 buck box" which is technically pronounced "Five dollar buck box." So make up your mind.
Prediction for the (hilarious) TV show Community: Since each season is one year at college, if they make it past season 4, ie, their 4th year, Jeff will have earned his needed degree. I predict something will happen such that he is disbarred for X-amount of time and will grudgingly take a job as a law professor at Greendale. Go Human Beings! (I don't know what will happen with the rest of the cast - perhaps there will be a tragic accident or a strike of Greendale's administration and they will all take office/administration jobs there. Or Shirley will open her bakery there. And Troy coaches the football team.)
Judge
Maxis (EA) is releasing a new SimCity game in 2013. I'm a big fan of simulation/strategy/design/management games, and so I'm obviously looking forward to it. A few of the more touted features are 'curvy' roads (rather than just grids and slants) and a new gameplay engine that appears to be incredibly realistic. City planners in training rejoice!
If you haven't already, check out Famous Paintings Improved by Cats. Though they're all pretty clever, my favorite is the first one, the Mona Lisa, if only because I could totally see her holding a cat like that during a portrait.
While I'm sure everyone is familiar with (sick of) tilt-shift pictures and videos, I found this series to be very interesting. The videos are all of high production value and use some clever scenes to get the viewer really into the "real world-as-miniature" focus.
The first game of the Major League Baseball 2012 season occurred Wednesday (morning) in Japan. It answered the question "if a season starts in a foreign country at 5am ET, and no one is around to watch it--does it really happen?" The answer is that, yes, it happened, but it sure didn't make a sound. Not only did the game between the Athletics and Mariners go largely unnoticed in the U.S., but the league immediately resumed pre-season play for the rest of the teams. Even more bizarrely, the rest of the regular season doesn't occur until April 4, when the Cardinals play the Marlins on "Opening Night." I'm sure there was a reason for the first series to take place a week in advance of the true season opening, but I'm not sure what it is.
Joules
On my way to work one day I stopped at a gas station (as I do every day) to pick up a couple of bottles of Gold Peak sweet tea to get me through the day. However, on this particular morning they had run out of the sweet tea, but filled that empty row with the Gold Peak green tea from the adjacent two rows. I guess this strategy is meant to confuse me and make me believe that there never was, in fact, any sweet tea in that spot, and that I must be going crazy.
On the rare occasion when I have trouble falling asleep, I go here and let the gentle voice of Mister Rogers lull me to sleep like a glass of warm milk. In one particular episode (Sharing Can Be Hard), the concept of sharing is (obviously) emphasized, but Mister Rogers digs a little deeper and states that "Everybody has some things that they shouldn't have to share...If it's extra special to you, that's something that you shouldn't have to share." In a society where seemingly everything we say/do is considered "politically incorrect," this sort of gray-area message is a breath of fresh air and reinforces the subjective nature of society that many like to sweep under the rug. Not everything is a black-and-white right-or-wrong issue, and if everyone would look at issues from others' perspectives in addition to their own, the world would be much more intelligent for the experience.
Joker
I feel that getting a tattoo on your face is essentially saying, "I don't want a job that requires a college degree."
Zero to hero in no time flat? Dan Brown's first three books - Digital Fortress, Angels & Demons, Deception Point - printed less than 10,000 copies each in their first printings. Then The Da Vinci Code came out, hit the NYT Best Seller list in one week, and sold 81 million copies over 6 years. 81 million! No wonder all of his books now say, "From the author who brought you The Da Vinci Code..."
I saw a guy dressed as the Statue of Liberty advertising tax service as "Fast. Accurate. Fun." Fun? Really?
I want to write a rap song about a steel-worker, just so I can use the line, "I got hot-ass swag / I got hot-ash slag"
Dear Taco Bell, I hear that it is pronounced the "five buck box." However, your sign has printed "$5 buck box" which is technically pronounced "Five dollar buck box." So make up your mind.
Prediction for the (hilarious) TV show Community: Since each season is one year at college, if they make it past season 4, ie, their 4th year, Jeff will have earned his needed degree. I predict something will happen such that he is disbarred for X-amount of time and will grudgingly take a job as a law professor at Greendale. Go Human Beings! (I don't know what will happen with the rest of the cast - perhaps there will be a tragic accident or a strike of Greendale's administration and they will all take office/administration jobs there. Or Shirley will open her bakery there. And Troy coaches the football team.)
Judge
 |
| A concept art screenshot of Maxis' new SimCity title |
If you haven't already, check out Famous Paintings Improved by Cats. Though they're all pretty clever, my favorite is the first one, the Mona Lisa, if only because I could totally see her holding a cat like that during a portrait.
While I'm sure everyone is familiar with (sick of) tilt-shift pictures and videos, I found this series to be very interesting. The videos are all of high production value and use some clever scenes to get the viewer really into the "real world-as-miniature" focus.
The first game of the Major League Baseball 2012 season occurred Wednesday (morning) in Japan. It answered the question "if a season starts in a foreign country at 5am ET, and no one is around to watch it--does it really happen?" The answer is that, yes, it happened, but it sure didn't make a sound. Not only did the game between the Athletics and Mariners go largely unnoticed in the U.S., but the league immediately resumed pre-season play for the rest of the teams. Even more bizarrely, the rest of the regular season doesn't occur until April 4, when the Cardinals play the Marlins on "Opening Night." I'm sure there was a reason for the first series to take place a week in advance of the true season opening, but I'm not sure what it is.
Joules
On my way to work one day I stopped at a gas station (as I do every day) to pick up a couple of bottles of Gold Peak sweet tea to get me through the day. However, on this particular morning they had run out of the sweet tea, but filled that empty row with the Gold Peak green tea from the adjacent two rows. I guess this strategy is meant to confuse me and make me believe that there never was, in fact, any sweet tea in that spot, and that I must be going crazy.
On the rare occasion when I have trouble falling asleep, I go here and let the gentle voice of Mister Rogers lull me to sleep like a glass of warm milk. In one particular episode (Sharing Can Be Hard), the concept of sharing is (obviously) emphasized, but Mister Rogers digs a little deeper and states that "Everybody has some things that they shouldn't have to share...If it's extra special to you, that's something that you shouldn't have to share." In a society where seemingly everything we say/do is considered "politically incorrect," this sort of gray-area message is a breath of fresh air and reinforces the subjective nature of society that many like to sweep under the rug. Not everything is a black-and-white right-or-wrong issue, and if everyone would look at issues from others' perspectives in addition to their own, the world would be much more intelligent for the experience.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
The Time Travel Fallacy, part 3
This is the third article in a mini-series on time travel. To read the first two articles click here and here.
Issue 3: What happens to a person who time travels?
There are two main questions I want to look at with regard to a time traveler's person. First, how does one's body time travel? This is much like the question of how one can teleport, as bodies are broken up into pieces of matter or energy and reassembled upon arrival--is the person who arrives the same as the one who embarked? And second, assuming the person remains the same after travel, what does the differing passage of time do to the traveler? Not only does time pass more slowly the faster one is traveling, but the process of time travel would mean that one who spends significant time in the past would return to the present measurably older than he left.
Starting with bodily effects of time travel, the result would depend on what manner of travel is used. There are two main methods I can think of: travel by vehicle that moves beyond the speed of light and travel by "teleporting through time" in a stationary (or sometimes rotating) machine. While I can feasibly see the vehicle method resulting no physical changes in the traveler, I am more skeptical about the results of travel by teleportation.
As I understand it, such time travel involves the traveler being teleported from a particular place and time to another. I'm not sure how such a machine would accomplish the "time" portion of the teleportation, because it seems most theories of time travel require massive physical velocities to accomplish the slowing and reversal of time. Nevertheless, let's assume it's possible to be instantaneously zapped from one time to another. Even so, how does that work? Because such teleportation requires the disassembling and reassembling of matter at the molecular level, it would seem reasonable that--even if the same human form emerges on the other side, it would not be the same body of consciousness. In other words, outside observers would see the same person (and for all intents and purposes it would be the same person), but the consciousness and awareness that exists in that body would be different.
To break it down further, think of a person as an "original." When the atoms that make up that original are teleported, they must, theoretically, be broken down into energy (or at least to the smallest atomic structures possible). The thinking is that you can't pass a 160 lb. person through time and space in its entirety. Then, the body is reassembled on the other side (this would be the work of a retrieval machine that has scanned and stored the structural data of the traveler, e.g. the Transporter in Star Trek). In essence, the time traveler is scanned in the copy machine at the take-off point and printed out at the destination in another time and place.
Here we come across the troubling question: who is this "printed" person? I have to believe that consciousness can't travel across time in the form of atoms or energy in the way that a body can. If this is true, the person arriving would have the mental knowledge, wherewithal, and capabilities of the original, but it would not be the original in the true sense. This is of little consequence to the outside world, because your friend Dave would still be Dave--he remembers your trip to Vancouver, can still recite the Shakespeare he learned in college, and has the same character and personality traits as Dave has always had. But the original "consciousness of Dave" is now gone. This may not matter to the larger world, but to the original Dave it's a pretty big deal!
Putting aside this concern, let's look briefly at the effect of the passage of time on the time traveler. We already know that time passes more slowly the faster something is traveling--at least, relative to its slower-moving counterparts. This has been observed in astronauts who spend large amounts of time aboard the International Space Station, who are a few seconds younger than they would have been on Earth during that span. Consequently, it seems reasonable to believe that a time traveler would age significantly slower during his travel, relative to time's passage on Earth. Because time travel theoretically requires movement beyond the speed of light, it would exhibit the ISS effect to the extreme.
However, what about one who spends time in another era? Presumably they would age at the normal rate of a being at rest in that time (that is, they would age at a 1:1 ratio with what is standard on Earth, if that's where they are). However, their age upon return depends entirely on (1) how long they were in that other era, and (2) what time they choose to return to, relative to their departure time. This second point means that a person who spends a few years in another time and then returns to his contemporary time at even the exact moment he left will suddenly appear much older. Taken to the extreme, someone who chooses to return sometime before he left will compound the effect and age before he left.
As far as I can imagine, this aging phenomenon will only go one direction--forward. So time travel for long periods of time would become an "at your own risk" scenario, where one would essentially choose to live his live at normal speed and time in his contemporary age, or spend time traveling throughout the years. The more time travel a person undergoes, the less time he will have to spend in his contemporary time due to the ongoing aging. This doesn't account for the time slowing effects of extremely fast travel in a time machine that actually moves. However, even in such a case, the person will age once he reaches his time destination. That aging can't be undone, no matter when he chooses to return to the present.
In sum, it seems that time travel is a risky proposition for the one doing the traveling, even if all of the possible kinks are worked out. I'm not sure that I would volunteer for such a trip.
Issue 3: What happens to a person who time travels?
There are two main questions I want to look at with regard to a time traveler's person. First, how does one's body time travel? This is much like the question of how one can teleport, as bodies are broken up into pieces of matter or energy and reassembled upon arrival--is the person who arrives the same as the one who embarked? And second, assuming the person remains the same after travel, what does the differing passage of time do to the traveler? Not only does time pass more slowly the faster one is traveling, but the process of time travel would mean that one who spends significant time in the past would return to the present measurably older than he left.
 |
| Now this is starting to get ridiculous... |
As I understand it, such time travel involves the traveler being teleported from a particular place and time to another. I'm not sure how such a machine would accomplish the "time" portion of the teleportation, because it seems most theories of time travel require massive physical velocities to accomplish the slowing and reversal of time. Nevertheless, let's assume it's possible to be instantaneously zapped from one time to another. Even so, how does that work? Because such teleportation requires the disassembling and reassembling of matter at the molecular level, it would seem reasonable that--even if the same human form emerges on the other side, it would not be the same body of consciousness. In other words, outside observers would see the same person (and for all intents and purposes it would be the same person), but the consciousness and awareness that exists in that body would be different.
To break it down further, think of a person as an "original." When the atoms that make up that original are teleported, they must, theoretically, be broken down into energy (or at least to the smallest atomic structures possible). The thinking is that you can't pass a 160 lb. person through time and space in its entirety. Then, the body is reassembled on the other side (this would be the work of a retrieval machine that has scanned and stored the structural data of the traveler, e.g. the Transporter in Star Trek). In essence, the time traveler is scanned in the copy machine at the take-off point and printed out at the destination in another time and place.
Here we come across the troubling question: who is this "printed" person? I have to believe that consciousness can't travel across time in the form of atoms or energy in the way that a body can. If this is true, the person arriving would have the mental knowledge, wherewithal, and capabilities of the original, but it would not be the original in the true sense. This is of little consequence to the outside world, because your friend Dave would still be Dave--he remembers your trip to Vancouver, can still recite the Shakespeare he learned in college, and has the same character and personality traits as Dave has always had. But the original "consciousness of Dave" is now gone. This may not matter to the larger world, but to the original Dave it's a pretty big deal!
Putting aside this concern, let's look briefly at the effect of the passage of time on the time traveler. We already know that time passes more slowly the faster something is traveling--at least, relative to its slower-moving counterparts. This has been observed in astronauts who spend large amounts of time aboard the International Space Station, who are a few seconds younger than they would have been on Earth during that span. Consequently, it seems reasonable to believe that a time traveler would age significantly slower during his travel, relative to time's passage on Earth. Because time travel theoretically requires movement beyond the speed of light, it would exhibit the ISS effect to the extreme.
However, what about one who spends time in another era? Presumably they would age at the normal rate of a being at rest in that time (that is, they would age at a 1:1 ratio with what is standard on Earth, if that's where they are). However, their age upon return depends entirely on (1) how long they were in that other era, and (2) what time they choose to return to, relative to their departure time. This second point means that a person who spends a few years in another time and then returns to his contemporary time at even the exact moment he left will suddenly appear much older. Taken to the extreme, someone who chooses to return sometime before he left will compound the effect and age before he left.
As far as I can imagine, this aging phenomenon will only go one direction--forward. So time travel for long periods of time would become an "at your own risk" scenario, where one would essentially choose to live his live at normal speed and time in his contemporary age, or spend time traveling throughout the years. The more time travel a person undergoes, the less time he will have to spend in his contemporary time due to the ongoing aging. This doesn't account for the time slowing effects of extremely fast travel in a time machine that actually moves. However, even in such a case, the person will age once he reaches his time destination. That aging can't be undone, no matter when he chooses to return to the present.
In sum, it seems that time travel is a risky proposition for the one doing the traveling, even if all of the possible kinks are worked out. I'm not sure that I would volunteer for such a trip.
Monday, March 26, 2012
I'm No Artist #4: The Hipster Tributary
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| I'm No Artist #4: The Hipster Tributary |
Unfamiliar with the series? Check out the intro here: I'm No Artist
Friday, March 23, 2012
Selective Memory
The other day I was doing some long-distance driving for a job interview, and so I plugged in my iPod as I always do during extensive drives to pass the time. Eventually my shuffling playlist played a few songs by the Moody Blues, and I was instantly transported back to my childhood summers. I remembered my dad playing those songs on the stereo during warm summer days, all the windows in the house thrown open to invite a cross-breeze, the music mixing with the sounds of neighborhood lawn mowers and weed whackers as the background ambiance for my brother's and my Pokemon battles and plans to explore the neighborhood creek.
I snapped out of my nostalgic trance just in time to keep from rear-ending the driver in front of me, but the fibers of that memory remained at the forefront of my mind, and I started to wonder: Why would my brain conjure that particular set of memories when listening to those songs? Especially considering that I've listened to those same songs so many other times, and in so many different settings. Obviously, hearing these songs in warm weather (such as yesterday) would evoke flashbacks of similar warm weather events of my childhood, but what about the other seasons of the year? I had listened to the same songs in the cold weather during my childhood, but when listening to them as an adult, even in the dead of winter, I continue to reminisce about the summers I grew up with. Admittedly, my memories of childhood summers trump just about all others, but how could that association be so strong as to convince my senses that I am not driving or cleaning or shovelling snow, but rather playing games with my brother on a warm, breezy summer afternoon.
Everyone has a favorite memory or memories, and to an objective listener, the events may not seem like anything worth remembering. But for the person to whom these memories belong, there are indescribable and subtle nuances that comprise its entirety, and the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. To you, reader, the memory I've recounted here may appear to be simply that of boring, uneventful summer days. But I remember it as days of bonding with my brother, sharing in the musical tastes of my father, and most of all, enjoying the freedom represented by all the sights, sounds, and smells of summer. That association is strong enough to bring those summer memories flooding back with only the slightest of stimuli (i.e. listening to the Moody Blues). Now that I have a nine-to-five job and no longer enjoy such freedom in the summertime, I can recall memories like this as a constant reminder of the childhood, and more generally, the life that I have been blessed with.
Please feel free to post your own associative memories in the comments below, we'd love to hear from our readers!
I snapped out of my nostalgic trance just in time to keep from rear-ending the driver in front of me, but the fibers of that memory remained at the forefront of my mind, and I started to wonder: Why would my brain conjure that particular set of memories when listening to those songs? Especially considering that I've listened to those same songs so many other times, and in so many different settings. Obviously, hearing these songs in warm weather (such as yesterday) would evoke flashbacks of similar warm weather events of my childhood, but what about the other seasons of the year? I had listened to the same songs in the cold weather during my childhood, but when listening to them as an adult, even in the dead of winter, I continue to reminisce about the summers I grew up with. Admittedly, my memories of childhood summers trump just about all others, but how could that association be so strong as to convince my senses that I am not driving or cleaning or shovelling snow, but rather playing games with my brother on a warm, breezy summer afternoon.
Everyone has a favorite memory or memories, and to an objective listener, the events may not seem like anything worth remembering. But for the person to whom these memories belong, there are indescribable and subtle nuances that comprise its entirety, and the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. To you, reader, the memory I've recounted here may appear to be simply that of boring, uneventful summer days. But I remember it as days of bonding with my brother, sharing in the musical tastes of my father, and most of all, enjoying the freedom represented by all the sights, sounds, and smells of summer. That association is strong enough to bring those summer memories flooding back with only the slightest of stimuli (i.e. listening to the Moody Blues). Now that I have a nine-to-five job and no longer enjoy such freedom in the summertime, I can recall memories like this as a constant reminder of the childhood, and more generally, the life that I have been blessed with.
Please feel free to post your own associative memories in the comments below, we'd love to hear from our readers!
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Review: Taco Bell's Doritos Locos Taco
As far as price goes? It's not too bad I suppose. Honestly I don't remember - I got it in the Doritos Locos 5 buck box - but let's be serious...this is Taco Bell, you can go in with $5 and dine like a king.
My biggest fear was that the Dorito taste would be too overpowering. Fortunately, they managed to balance that out just right - the shell isn't exactly a Nacho Dorito chip. Like I mentioned above, it has a "cheese-dust" on it that reflects a Dorito, but it's not quite as powerful. [It's different than their volcano taco since the volcano is strong and spicy and your tastebuds are much more focused on that than the other ingredients of the taco. It can be a little overwhelming. (Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the volcano taco, too.)] That's fortunate for two reasons. One, you don't want it so strong that you think you're just eating Doritos as a side with your taco - ie, two strong and different flavors that don't mix. You want the taste of Dorito to be a supplement to the taco, there to enhance your taco experience. And it does. And two, I think that the Doritos taste can be too much to handle in large quantities. I can only eat so many Doritos before I start to feel a little queasy. Fortunately, you can order multiples of this taco if you so desire: you'll be full due to the taco-ness well before your system would start rejecting the Dorito flavor.
All in all, this is a positive addition to the Taco Bell menu. If you're a fan of Taco Bell in general, give it a shot. Is this the end-all be-all of tacos? No. Is it a good addition to the Taco Bell line-up and your repertoire of go-to menu items? Yes. We'll see how long it lasts.
So there you have it, a quick overview of the Doritos Locos taco. Recommended by myself and some random twitter-ers on the box/cup.
Now your Taco Bell experience can be: Come for the Doritos Locos, stay for the food-to-price ratio (so good, so cheap!). (Leave with the Taco Bell-exclusive Baja Blast Mountain Dew.)
And to let you know: as a basis for my review, I am grading it as a taco, as compared to other tacos / Taco Bell items. Not as a stand alone food against every other edible out there, because surely it pales in comparison to steaks and pastas, etc. (Well, I suppose that's dependent upon the level of a certain illicit drug in your system.)
So, to recap:
Positives: taco supreme, good taste / good flavor blend, not overwhelmingly Dorito-y, not too expensive.
Negatives: I don't know...it has a tendency to break apart, but what hard taco doesn't? And it gets your fingers cheesy. I just don't like giving out perfect scores - sorry every professor I ever had.
Verdict: 8 out of 10
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| Mmm |
Heroes in a half shell! Wait, that's Ninja Turtles. Tacos in a half-Dorito shell! Similar, but Michael Bay isn't trying to ruin the latter. (Although, the Doritos Locos is like an explosion in my mouth - Michael Bay style - so again, similar enough.)
In case you haven't heard yet, the Doritos Locos taco is real, and it's exactly what it sounds like. It is a regular Taco Bell taco supreme* (ground beef, lettuce, cheese, tomato*, sour cream*) in a shell coated in Doritos cheese-dust (original flavor, Nacho Cheese). I guess it's "Locos" because it's so crazy of an idea! And it rhymes!!
The taco itself is point number one in it's favor - it's a taco supreme (which I prefer), so you have a better basic taco to begin with, and also more flavors for the Doritos to interact with. Particularly the 'smoothness' of the sour cream playing off the [slightly] tangy/'biting' cheese-dust.
My biggest fear was that the Dorito taste would be too overpowering. Fortunately, they managed to balance that out just right - the shell isn't exactly a Nacho Dorito chip. Like I mentioned above, it has a "cheese-dust" on it that reflects a Dorito, but it's not quite as powerful. [It's different than their volcano taco since the volcano is strong and spicy and your tastebuds are much more focused on that than the other ingredients of the taco. It can be a little overwhelming. (Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the volcano taco, too.)] That's fortunate for two reasons. One, you don't want it so strong that you think you're just eating Doritos as a side with your taco - ie, two strong and different flavors that don't mix. You want the taste of Dorito to be a supplement to the taco, there to enhance your taco experience. And it does. And two, I think that the Doritos taste can be too much to handle in large quantities. I can only eat so many Doritos before I start to feel a little queasy. Fortunately, you can order multiples of this taco if you so desire: you'll be full due to the taco-ness well before your system would start rejecting the Dorito flavor.
All in all, this is a positive addition to the Taco Bell menu. If you're a fan of Taco Bell in general, give it a shot. Is this the end-all be-all of tacos? No. Is it a good addition to the Taco Bell line-up and your repertoire of go-to menu items? Yes. We'll see how long it lasts.
So there you have it, a quick overview of the Doritos Locos taco. Recommended by myself and some random twitter-ers on the box/cup.
Now your Taco Bell experience can be: Come for the Doritos Locos, stay for the food-to-price ratio (so good, so cheap!). (Leave with the Taco Bell-exclusive Baja Blast Mountain Dew.)
And to let you know: as a basis for my review, I am grading it as a taco, as compared to other tacos / Taco Bell items. Not as a stand alone food against every other edible out there, because surely it pales in comparison to steaks and pastas, etc. (Well, I suppose that's dependent upon the level of a certain illicit drug in your system.)
So, to recap:
Positives: taco supreme, good taste / good flavor blend, not overwhelmingly Dorito-y, not too expensive.
Negatives: I don't know...it has a tendency to break apart, but what hard taco doesn't? And it gets your fingers cheesy. I just don't like giving out perfect scores - sorry every professor I ever had.
Verdict: 8 out of 10
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
The Time Travel Fallacy, part 2
This is the second part of a multi-part series on time travel, posted weekly on Tuesdays. For part 1, click here.
Now that we've discussed the problem with time travel's effects on reality and events, I'd like to move on to the issue of why no one has ever been outed as a time traveler. (I think the closest we've come is Nicolas Cage, the immortal / time-traveler). Are time travelers that stealthy? What's the deal? Without further ado, let's dive in.
Issue 2: If time travel were possible, we would have already encountered travelers at some point in history.
This one is pretty easy to wrap your head around, even if its implications are pretty far-reaching. If, at some future time, humans gain the ability to time travel, why have there been no confirmed (or as far as I know, officially reported) instances of encounters with time travelers? One could easily imagine a situation where someone heads back in time and is unable to hide their identity as a future-person, thus tipping off those of us in the past. For instance, if future time travel becomes a new recreational activity (like the time vacations that are so common in the future in Family Guy), it would seem inevitable that someone would slip up and let the cat out of the bag. Because this has never happened, it leads to one of three possible results:
(1) time travelers have been unfailingly diligent in covering their tracks,
(2) time travelers have rarely to never visited a time in which humans exist, or
(3) time travel simply is not possible.
I would argue that possibility (3) is the most likely on this list. The chances that no one will ever slip up while time traveling is all but impossible, even if authorities are somehow able to restrict its use to "official, non-commercial use only," like the military tries to do with a lot of groundbreaking new technologies today. Only an outright ban on all time travel (before it even begins to be used) will prevent a foul up in traveling to the past. Possibility (2) is also very unlikely, because the thought of traveling to times in which past, historically recorded events have occurred is essentially the main draw to the ability to time travel. There is very limited utility in only traveling to times in which trilobites roamed free and humans were millions of years in the future.
This list of possibilities ignores the possibility that is always looming in the margins of such things: that the answer is "we can't comprehend it with current understandings." I'm willing to accept that as a possibility, it just doesn't make for a very interesting discussion. Perhaps there is some future technology that renders it impossible to unmask a time traveler, or perhaps there is some aspect of the time travel process that perfectly disguises the fact of travel. But while that is possible, remember that the simplest explanation is usually the right one. And in our case, the simplest explanation is that, given the concerns above, time travel is not possible.
I recognize that an argument could be made that relates the fact that no one has verifiably encountered aliens. The gist would be that, the above scenario, when applied to alien encounters would essentially mean that there are no intelligent life forms on other planets. That is a logic leap I am less willing to make for a few reasons. First, there is a difference between the two subjects because aliens would travel (presumably) in their contemporary time, so there's nothing that says we would have to have already encountered them if they are out there. Think: if they are progressing technologically at the same rate as humans (from the same starting point), we would not have encountered them at this point because we have not been able to travel intergalactically ourselves.
The other key difference is the application of Occam's Razor. In the time travel situation, it is indeed simpler to say we have not encountered time travelers because time travel is not possible. But with regard to aliens, the unimaginable vastness of space tilts the scale, leading me to believe that the simplest explanation (which is usually the right one) is that we haven't encountered visitors because (1) we haven't expanded our own universal footprint enough to find them ourselves and (2) there is simply a lot of empty space out there.
To summarize: if time travel is possible, where are the travelers? Is Nicolas Cage the only one who has been allowed access to time travel? Or is he the only one who (may have) slipped up? I suppose we just don't know (yet).
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| A sequel? Well, all right... |
Issue 2: If time travel were possible, we would have already encountered travelers at some point in history.
This one is pretty easy to wrap your head around, even if its implications are pretty far-reaching. If, at some future time, humans gain the ability to time travel, why have there been no confirmed (or as far as I know, officially reported) instances of encounters with time travelers? One could easily imagine a situation where someone heads back in time and is unable to hide their identity as a future-person, thus tipping off those of us in the past. For instance, if future time travel becomes a new recreational activity (like the time vacations that are so common in the future in Family Guy), it would seem inevitable that someone would slip up and let the cat out of the bag. Because this has never happened, it leads to one of three possible results:
(1) time travelers have been unfailingly diligent in covering their tracks,
(2) time travelers have rarely to never visited a time in which humans exist, or
(3) time travel simply is not possible.
I would argue that possibility (3) is the most likely on this list. The chances that no one will ever slip up while time traveling is all but impossible, even if authorities are somehow able to restrict its use to "official, non-commercial use only," like the military tries to do with a lot of groundbreaking new technologies today. Only an outright ban on all time travel (before it even begins to be used) will prevent a foul up in traveling to the past. Possibility (2) is also very unlikely, because the thought of traveling to times in which past, historically recorded events have occurred is essentially the main draw to the ability to time travel. There is very limited utility in only traveling to times in which trilobites roamed free and humans were millions of years in the future.
This list of possibilities ignores the possibility that is always looming in the margins of such things: that the answer is "we can't comprehend it with current understandings." I'm willing to accept that as a possibility, it just doesn't make for a very interesting discussion. Perhaps there is some future technology that renders it impossible to unmask a time traveler, or perhaps there is some aspect of the time travel process that perfectly disguises the fact of travel. But while that is possible, remember that the simplest explanation is usually the right one. And in our case, the simplest explanation is that, given the concerns above, time travel is not possible.
I recognize that an argument could be made that relates the fact that no one has verifiably encountered aliens. The gist would be that, the above scenario, when applied to alien encounters would essentially mean that there are no intelligent life forms on other planets. That is a logic leap I am less willing to make for a few reasons. First, there is a difference between the two subjects because aliens would travel (presumably) in their contemporary time, so there's nothing that says we would have to have already encountered them if they are out there. Think: if they are progressing technologically at the same rate as humans (from the same starting point), we would not have encountered them at this point because we have not been able to travel intergalactically ourselves.
 |
| If he can become a flaming skeleton, time travel's a cinch. |
To summarize: if time travel is possible, where are the travelers? Is Nicolas Cage the only one who has been allowed access to time travel? Or is he the only one who (may have) slipped up? I suppose we just don't know (yet).
Monday, March 19, 2012
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