javeharron

A question for ya: If you were a mercenary who traveled the world and had to rely on 'local supply' for ammo, what guns would you use the most? I'd personally think an AK47 rifle and CZ75 pistol (or other 9mm). The 7.62mm is the most common rifle round in the world, and the 9mm is the most common pistol round. Even new guns come out in the 'classic calibers' to ensure a sort of reverse compatibility (and thus a bigger market).

We may be "seeing" a cloaking device in the near future. A related story I heard has the British army developing an 'invisible' tank. Any Brits care to verify the story?

And why won't it be?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me5Zzm2TXh4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubens'_Tube

Today was the 4th of July and country's birthday. I caught a marathon of one of my favorite old shows: The Twilight Zone. That, and several classic 50s B-movies, are inspiration for a Gold Age homage scifi series I'm doing.

One thing I did find funny was History channel was full of conspiracy specials on the Founders. For instance, they, and just about every other 18th and 19th century notable figure, smoked hemp and drank. Notably, Ben Franklin did more than just that. He also befriended a certain British aristocrat notable for his orgies, and helped a shady medical school operate out of his London home. Back before scientists were allowed to experiment on corpses, they had to purchase the corpses illegally from 'resurrection men' (who'd dig up fresh corpses for study). Franklin and a doctor friend of his both operated out of his house for such clandestine experiments. He's quite a figure, alright.

Another notable thing is Freemasons. Now, everyone has the idea of Freemasons as a world conquering conspiracy, when today, they're just a social lodge. Two centuries ago, they were one of the first political and economic forces of the Enlightenment, representing the new urban middle class. They elected leaders based on their own merits, rather than whose parents were who. This disturbed the nobility-driven society of Europe, so they made up a bunch of BS stories of dark rituals and the like. It also put like minded, pro-Enlightenment people together. This could very much lead to people planning for political reform, such as the American Revolution. The Masons were a good social networking tool for the aspiring revolutionary in 18th century North America and Europe.

Even the much vaunted Bavarian Illuminati have more in common with the American Revolutionaries than their fictional world conquering counterparts. They planned to replace the monarchy of Bavaria with a secular republic. Again, paranoid nobles and monarchs tried to spread rumors of dark conspiracy around.

So, these political groups are sadly misrepresented in popular culture and history by idiots like Dan Brown. Let's not get started on the Knights Templar. They were just medieval shock troops who stole the idea of banking and checks from the Arabs. The Frogs decide they want Templar loot, so they pull some strings with the Pope, and then condemn us to centuries of bad Templar conspiracy novels.

As of late, watching some classic B-movies and scifi from the 1950s for inspiration. Given most of this summer's cinematic offerings look like shit, I'm watching some classics. So, any recommendations? Them, (original) Day the Earth Stood Still, old Twilight Zone, and Quatermass and the Pit are on the list. Any recommendations?

As of late, a new school's opened in San Fran: The Singularity University. Yes, it's real: http://singularityu.org/

Sadly, not as many program offerings as I had hoped. In other news, a list of fun 'home made' tactics for countering government surveillance: http://www.instructables.com/member/w1n5t0n

The internet is always a gray area for the nation states, government agencies, and corporations that rely on it. Iwar allows even a private individual to harass larger agencies. While Anonymous' cyberwar with Scientology is one recent example, they've expanded to other fronts: Like the disputed election in Iran. Flash mobs, that is, protests organized by things like twitter, facebook, etc. are a concern of law enforcement. Of course new technologies can be used to cause chaos. The same laws put in place to 'protect' against a threat may seem like Big Brother, but we get to an even bigger irony: For a government to rely more on technical surveillance methods is to make itself more vulnerable to attacks along those same lines. Police crackdowns can be caught on video and posted on Youtube (with some good potential for video editing). The line between cyberspace and meatspace is narrowing more.

A great bit of media about this, among other things, is the anime series "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex." A hard scifi police/political action series in a postcyberpunk setting. The surveillance powers of government ultimately much ado about nothing. When a government tries to suppress one technology, another can fulfill its place. A lesson we can learn from history: Japanese peasants banned from owning weapons turned their tools into weapons. From where we get karate weapons: kama, nunchaku, etc. The same principles can be applied to new technology. The "tyranny" of Big Brother is a colossus on clay feet. A smart government, then, rides the wave rather than damn the river. This is why a combination of smart politics, a coordinated professional military, economic robustness, and cyber-saviness are the keys to success in this era. Sadly, the US' political savvy can change every 4-8 years, leading to a wide inconsistency in 'performance.' You may have a smart President and foreign policy, or a retard backed by myopic morons (like Bush Jr.).

The nations of the future may well be decentralized. Just read "Diamond Age" by Neil Stephenson.

The Ghost review for Bizarro is up. It's nowhere near as exhaustive as the infamous "Oh John Ringo No" review, but definitely does cover the first book completely. Glad I'm not going to have to touch that vile series again, even for the sake of humor. Now, a new promising target has appeared on the radar: "Justice Riders" by Chuck Norris. Yes, THAT Chuck Norris. A "Christian Western" free of profanity and excessive violent...just the opposite of the real old West.

The first video review is up on Youtube, Eragon. Even a 10 minute long video is hard to make, and takes some time. For something with less than 45 seconds of live recording, it took a while to make. My next video review is going to be Battlefield Earth.

Writing wise, work on thesis and summer classes has slowed normal writing. Still able to update my bizarro Napoleonic Wars novel, "Mother of Shadows," on a regular basis. Also been working on a few serial type short stories: Stranger Aeons, a modern action/thriller series about a group of educated mercenaries who defend scientists and researchers in dangerous areas, and a fairly hard science fiction project called Future Zero, about a mad cyborg and his employees seeking out messages from a possible future as a massive war brews.

A few interesting games coming out: Bioshock 2, Mass Effect 2, Fallout 3 "Point Lookout" expansion (this one has a swamp/B-movie horror vibe), and Singularity.

I've been enjoying a fun little program as of late: Audacity. It's a freeware, versatile sound editor. So far, it's been near perfect for my "Doktor Bizarro's Bookshelf of Horrors" podcast recordings. With the recent Dan Brown special, I'm diving into a true piece of shit: "Ghost" by John Ringo. From there, it will be a truly vile book, I consider the lowest of the low.

More recommendations are always welcome.

Armies have always sought ways to make their soldiers more than the average man. A greater integration of humans and wearable computers (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227094.000-harnessing-science-to-create-the-ultimate-warrior.html) means that the grunt in the classic sense is dead, figuratively and literally, on the 21st century's battlefields. Even guerrillas and insurgents against advanced armies have their own technical skills (from IEDs to a sort of insurgent combined arms).

However, the ultimate supersoldier may not be an army of cyborg commandos or genetically enhanced super mercenaries (despite both tropes being so common in science fiction). As Anders reports, a batch of genetically enhanced kids may not want to follow that route, and the traits sought in soldiers can change in 20 years (a political eternity). (www.aleph.se/andart/) A better option may be a versatile force for both peacekeeping and conventional state vs. state tactics, integrating more elements of asymmetric strategy (cyberwar, legal warfare, political warfare, etc.) Thinking of 'war' or 'battle' solely as a clash of armies is a great flaw in many current command structures. While war will always have casualties and horror, smarter strategies can minimize this.

Saw the new "Star Trek," and very pleased with what I saw. I've never been much of a Trekkie. I enjoyed the classic series (as campy as it was) and some of Next Generation, but never got into much else. Enterprise sucked, as did Deep Space 9 and Voyager. The only other space opera I got into was Battlestar Galactica (remake), though the ending was too constrained by the Ancient Astronauts trope, plus some last minute and counterproductive Luddism (despite the overarching theme of preventing a cycle of genocide and hatred of humans and their creations). Another scifi series I've started watching recent, Fringe, is basically a better version of the X-Files crossed with CSI. The producer, JJ Abrams, was the same as Star Trek. I'll have my eye on any future projects of his for sure.

Speaking of projects, I have been writing up some material for a new physical discipline: EASE. It's short for Environmental Assault-Survival-Evasion, and the basic idea is the optimal use of terrain in a hostile situation, for escape and combat. It's a combination of parkour and combative martial arts (such as krav maga, MCMAP, and combat hapkido), plus some simple weapons use. A user of EASE is likely someone who's lightly armed and also likely unarmed. An "easer" is likely to maybe have a light kevlar vest at most, plus a small weapon: Baton, knife, pistol (likely a low caliber or compact one), or even unarmed. Lines of sight, movement, and cover and important for EASE. Despite the name, conditioning and drilling for it is no cakewalk.

Updates for stories all around. The next two Bizarro reviews are going to be a Dan Brown special, followed by "Oh John Ringo No" Ghost.

Got a new batch of Bizarro reviews coming up. This time, I plan to cover a few more individual failures my first batch didn't get. Done classes for two weeks until Maymester starts, so going to use the time for writing. Currently planning: Some Mother of Shadows, Stranger Aeons, and Symphony of Aeons if possible. The goal for the serials is once a month, and MoS is a chapter weekly.

Bizarro reviews occur in "salvos," as I like to call them. After getting the King James Bible as an Easter Special, future religious books may be fun. Like perhaps Dianetics, since I already got Battlefield Earth. This month's specials for Bizarro include: Dan Brown specials (maybe Angels and Demons and or Da Vinci Code), John Ringo's Ghost (one of the shittiest military scifis ever written), Digital Signal Processing by S. Mitra (an overrated textbook that I utterly despised due to the near complete lack of examples and useful information), The Ruins by Scott Smith (actually a decent horror, so may skip it, but the premise of killer, sapient vines is just too good to pass up), and one of the Bottom Tier (books so awful, you need hazmat suit to touch, like Hitler's Mein Kampf or anything by Julius Evola).

My newest serial, Stranger Aeons, was a reboot of an older one. The premise is a group of erudite mercenaries working to defend the scientific community in various ways (acting as ecomercenaries, defending a boat of researchers from pirates, defending scientists in a war torn country, recovering high tech devices, fighting smugglers, and the like). The technology, weapons, and fighting is pretty realistic so far, and I enjoy writing that. The current chapter is set in Hong Kong and involves an artifact smuggling ring. Intellectual Ruthlessly pragmatic mercenaries with an intellectual side are much more fun to write than 'average guy/gal' type characters.

Talking like Rorshach lately. Researching sucks soul, time. Still submitted some stories. Used an old scifi and a historical fiction one shot. Research this semester almost done. Teaching computer to condition EEG data and recognize patterns in it (specifically move right vs. move left and think about moving right vs. thinking left). Also plan to patent a device over summer, if I can find time.

The spectre of unethical medicine appears whenever there is a lack of transparency and accountibility. These lead to the atrocities of Dr. Mengele, Ishii and Unit 731, Wouter Basson, and similar sick fucks.

And guess what? Something similar just popped up!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090407/wl_nm/us_usa_torture_redcross

Shiro Ishii's smiling from his grave.

Recently, there's been a rash of murder/suicide shooting and killing sprees. They have been three that I recall of the last week alone. I do have the question of why the hell are people going postal at places from volunteer organizations to nursing homes to their own homes?

The answer I personally believe is desperation. The murders could have been committeed with knives or bats (though chances are, they would not have killed as many). The availability of guns is not as much of a factor, I think, as desperate people getting ahold of them. One of the particularly disturbing factors, though, is the erratic nature of these shooting sprees. People all over the country have done them. One common thread is people who loose their jobs and cannot find employment under the bad economy decide there's no other 'way out,' and decide to take down other lives as well as their own. Other massacres have occured in countries where guns are banned (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akihabara_massacre) and hard to get (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woo_Bum-kon#Uireyeong_massacre).

This particularly vile is scary. However, there are some things that I would personally do if the unthinkable happened. First, know the exits and try to get the hell out of there. Use those fire exits in addition to normal ones. In some cases, though, the shooter barricaded back doors and entered from the front (in the case of the NY shooting). But trying the quickest way out is better than randomly searching. Most buildings are close quarters, but if there's open space, I'd try to move in a zig-zag pattern. Moving targets like that are harder to hit. Alternatively, an exit could be created. Taking a one story fall from a broken window is better than getting shot. (One reason parkour may be handy!)

The likely weapon they'd have would probably be a pistol. Pistols can be accurate at some ranges greater than a hundred feet, but the more distance, the better. Preferably, go for cover. Thick walls and corners are good. Getting out of and away from a building or location with an active shooter is the best. You want a way out, not a way to play hero.

Police officers may respond fast, but given any limits on their training or equipment, they may not be able to intervene immediately. Though some departments are going with more IARD tactics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immediate_Action_Rapid_Deployment). If a SWAT team or officers intervene, it is best to remain on the ground and compliant. Lots of motion, screaming, and panicked movements could also attract attention from other things than police officers (like say, the shooter).

Finally, the last case, if you are stuck in a 'one way room' with no way out, resistance is the most dangerous option. Generally speaking, a shooter may focus on what they're looking at and then turning to look for more "targets." In this case, where you cannot run, hide, take cover, or create an exit, you may need some kind of weapon. But first, you need to ensure you're outside the line of fire. That is, get away from the direction that gun barrel is pointing. If it's pointed at you, you may need a distraction.

Look around you. Anything small, from a CD to a cup or pencil, could be thrown as a distraction. A heavier object could also be used as a blunt weapon (like what you'd find in a toolbox, such as a wrench, hammer, screwdiver, or the like). Knives, pens, or screwdrivers could also be used as stabbing weapons. The neck, arm pits, eyes, and chest are all vulnerable to this. Even with a melee weapon vs. a gunman, there's something called the '21 foot rule' (about 7 meters). That's the distance a determined attacker can rush and deliver a blow with in a moment.

Sometimes, even if shot, an attacker may still have enough adrenaline to deliever the strike, especially with low caliber bullets. If possible, use a hand (or two) to disarm or immobilize the gun hand (krav maga is very good to learn for this). If unarmed, an elbow to the face or temple, or a throat grab could also work. A pen jammed into the throat of an attacker is preferable to getting shot. But, escape is always better than playing hero.

Being aware of your surroundings is another good defense. Hear shouting and loud bangs getting closer? Don't sit around doe-eyed. Run the hell out of there. Sadly, as long as maniacs have some type of weapon and the rest of us don't, we'll need some way to protect ourselves. Common sense and your survival instinct are the best tools for this regard. There have been enough massacres and victims. I'd rather not have anyone I know (or don't) to end up a statistic for some maniac's kill spree. As a grad student on a campus with some incidents of crime (including an on campus murder, an armed robbery, and other things), I'd feel better at least knowing what to do if this happened.

We often take safety for granted. But we face death from countless unexpected statistical things without realizing it. Sometimes, the odds are low and we don't often think about it (getting struck by meteor, hit by lightning, etc.) but the familiar places and things we do can also be dangerous. Cars alone annually kill about as many Americans as Vietnam did in 10 years. Most accidents occur close to home. Likewise, these horrible massacres happened at places where people felt complacement. Not to say you have to live your life in constant paranoia, but knowing how to react can save your life (and others). Life is a game of statistics, and we can't control all of them. We can, however, alter some odds in our favor. Knowing how to react at least gives you a literal fighting chance.

Battlestar Galactica was an awesome show. Until that suck-tastic ending last night. The first hour (all the battles and action scenes) was good, then it literally spired into a pile of horse manure that even a literal Deus Ex Machina wouldn't save.

Doctor Bizarro's opening shots were aimed at fish in a barrel: Eragon and Twilight. Next up, I'll be covering one of the clusterfucks of science fiction, both in terms of writing and adaptation failure: "Battlefield Earth" by L. Ron Hubbard. If there is a form of literary sodomy worse than this (and there is, thanks to Marquis de Sade), we take the column to a new low. I am not going to watch the movie, thankfully, but the book itself is worth at least a bath in holy water and month of therapy. After Hubbard comes Ringo's "Ghost," so I'll need to dunk my head in some ice water soon enough.

I've been seriously considering which works may be worth revising, retouching, and rewriting for some kind of eventual publication. Some works require a bit of chapter revisions and grammar tightening. I'd say I-War, Father of Lights, and possibly NE could suffice for that. On the tier below that are short ideas that need to be expanded or redone. I'd put Tabernacle, Shores of Eternity, and Daughter of the Machine here. Of the three, "Daughter of the Machine" I think has the most flexible and easy to retool/rewrite. I'd also like to retouch a lot of the issues: certain sociologies, retcon the Combine-verse stories a bit, harden the scifi a bit more, breach a minor story related fourth wall incident, and extend the length. I'd also like to make some more action and fight scenes based around the setting. Parkour chases and brutal fights are well suited for an advanced city-state in the midst of upheaval. Several of the 'barbarians' will also be fleshed out, as will a more thorough recolonization effort.

Today, I come with a proclamation made after careful consideration. A plan that's not just borderline masochistic, but more sanity-rending than a Great Old One. The plan to do a new series of satirical reviews.

Some of you may know satirical reviewers who cover videogames (Angry Videogame Nerd), crappy movies/cartoons (Nostalgia Critic and MST3K), bad comics, and other detritus. But how many ones are there who review bad books in a similar way?

I have been considering this. The basic program format may be a column, mp3/podcast, and/or a video file. I've been playing around with Microsoft Movie Maker, so may get something to work video-wise.

The title would be entitled "Dr. Bizarro's Bookshelf of Horrors." A mad scientist would go through crappy books in an attempt to drive himself and the rest of humanity even more insane by spreading around bad titles. So, what kind of bad books would be fodder for it? I don't just mean bad books in the sense of poorly written or unoriginal crap, but also things truly horrible (like 'Mein Kampf').

Here's a list of targets I've been considering so far:
Badly Written:
-Twilight
-Eragon
-Anything by John Ringo

Plain Horrible:
-Mein Kampf
-The Turner Diaries
-Anything by Julius Evola

Any suggestions for bad books? Or even good ones to review?

Awesomeness has a new form. The XM29 OICW concept rises again! Not the most practical weapon, but definitely overwhelming awesome.

Valentine's Day is always a good time to shop for weapons. After acquiring a new training naginata and wushu rope dart, turned my attention back to the ranged ones. I would love to try out some more firearms. Lately, had an interest in the Beretta Cx4 Storm, a longarm with a rifle stock, but takes pistol caliber rounds. You might remember this as the latest standard gun of the crew on "Battlestar Galactica." Despite the 'real life' one being a bizarre semi-auto pistol carbine amalgam, a few series its in have shown it to be fully automatic (which is an error). At least BSG is getting more awesome lately. Sad there's only 10 episodes left.

Saw Dollhouse, and was not too impressed by it. Is Joss Whedon loosing it? I hope Episode 2 is better.

Now a completely random post on the spirit of the day: Love. Specifically, dolphin love.. 7 years ago, a dolphin raped swimmers off the UK's coast. Yeah. I wish I could make this up.

There's also the kamikaze porn star for added strangeness. Yes, that's right. A porn star who deliberately crashed their plane into a corrupt politician and crime boss's estate trying to kill him. In the 1970s. Glad I was born in the following decade.

Another bit of interest: Currently working on a paper on nanoelectronics. Specifically, nanomechanical memory. The basic idea is the configuration of microscopic switches and levers can store information on a level smaller than your CMOS transistor based computer can. Getting a new PC, but sadly, it won't be a nanotech-augmented supercomputer. At least not until we exhaust CMOS in the next decade. MRAM or graphene remain other top competitors for replacing CMOS and ensuring Moore's Law continues well into the future.

Speaking of science fiction, I've had an idea for a scifi project of my own. Not a novel or RPG setting or wargame, but instead a TV series. The summary would be:

"The post-organic descendants of humanity and other species have abandoned their universe of origin. For countless eons since humans first took to space, the universe has been expanding rapidly. As matter moves away from itself, the formation of new stars became a much slower and rarer occurrence. The yellow stars became red giants, but as time went on, less newer ones could take their place. The second law of thermodynamics was taking its toll on the universe. Most of the known civilizations in the universe fled to others. The most advanced ones went first, and they were soon followed by the vast majority of sapients in the universe.

Now, all that remains of the grand civilizations are ruins and pathetic enclaves clustering around the few warm spots. All that remains of the galaxy are a pathetic cluster of red dwarf stars. One by one the red dwarf stars finally extinguish themselves. While the most powerful entities have moved on, some near-baseline humans remain. As the warm places remain, the remains of civilization struggle to eke out a living amongst the dying embers, clinging to technologies they barely comprehend. Soon, a final reckoning will come. The last suns will burn out, and the heat-death of the universe will claim its final victims.

But as the suns fade, a desperate hope emerges from an isolated system. A posthuman artifact has been uncovered, an ancient wormhole generator. Lacking the resources to repair it fully, the small society launches a war of aggression against its equally desperate neighbors, hoping to acquire the resources it needs. Compounding this situation are a fleet of armed refugees fleeing the destruction of their own star, who seek another warm place to live, and will take it by force if necessary. The stage is set. The cosmic clock winds down. The final passion play of Terran society begins."

The working title is "Terminus Est." The idea is a group of desperate civilizations of survivors gathering around red dwarf stars as the entropy heat death of the universe comes ever closer, and one by one the few dim red dwarf stars flicker out. The previous greater civilizations, comprised of posthumans, AIs (from Turing to archais), and the majority of baselines had left the universe for others. The few that stayed behind now face the consequences of their ancestors' decisions.