Showing posts with label greatness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label greatness. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Holy Shit, Minecraft!

Notch

That guy up there is Markus Persson, better known by his alias, "Notch." In May of 2009, Notch went to the forums of TIGSource, a meeting place for indie game developers and players. He'd been working on a new concept, inspired by Dwarf Fortress and Infiniminer, and he had a working build ready for feedback. It was rudimentary at best -- you had an infinite number of blocks and a small area to work in, and the point was to just...go to town building whatever you wanted.
Minecraft Classic
BUT WAT ABOUT MY GRAFIX?

But goddamn, was that promising. People got excited. They built statues, pixel art, the U.S.S. friggin' Enterprise, and whatever else came to mind. When they built something, they became proud and shared it with their friends. Word started to spread. This early version of Notch's vision came to be known as Minecraft Classic. Within a year, Indev (short for "in development") followed, bringing with it key features that would catapult Minecraft into the legendary role it plays today.
Minecraft 3x3 Crafting Grid
Like mining. And crafting.

I first learned of Minecraft around this time. I saw an introductory video from YouTube gamer SeaNanners, wherein he showcased the early crafting process. First, he punched a tree to get a log. Then, he used the crafting menu to turn the log into planks, which he used to build a crafting table. This gave him a 3x3 grid rather than a 2x2 grid. Then, he turned some of the planks into sticks, formed tools in the grid with sticks and planks, and I gasped aloud. The implications of this system were immediately apparent to me, and I purchased the game the moment the video ended.
Shut up and take my money
Artist's rendition

What Minecraft offers is nearly infinite creativity with a side of adventure. There are monsters, and you can deal with them by creating, not just taking what the developer gives you and clicking until they die. You build your base. You build your weapons. You build your armor. You mine your own resources. It's the purest form of a video game sandbox that has ever been. Word of the game spread like wildfire as players shared their creations and experiences.
Minecraft penises
Which, let's be honest, were inevitably phallic in nature.

Meanwhile, Notch quit his day job and formed a company called Mojang. Continued success meant he could hire more programmers to add features and hammer out bugs. Groundbreaking success meant he could hand over the reins to said programmers and start working on other projects.

When I say "groundbreaking," I want you to understand just how much I mean it. As of this month, Minecraft is the single best selling PC game of all time. It sold more than the notoriously addictive World of Warcraft. More than Starcraft, which launched an entirely new genre of spectator sports. Across all platforms, Minecraft (so far) is the third best selling video game of all time. It's behind Wii Sports (whose numbers aren't going anywhere anymore) and freaking Tetris. It's sold more copies that Super goddamn Mario Brothers, which was bundled with the NES (the system that singlehandedly pulled the game industry out of the abyss).
Minecraft pixel art
Nintendo's role is not lost on Minecrafters

Thanks to Minecraft, YouTube went from a hub of cat videos to a hub of Let's Play videos about Minecraft. It launched incredibly successful careers for people who now spend their days recording and editing their own gameplay videos. It is impossible to overstate just how monumentally Minecraft altered the gaming landscape. And it all started with just...a guy. For fun.

Holy shit.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Holy Shit, Turing!

Alan Turing
I briefly mentioned Alan Turing in his capacity as a code breaker during World War II, but I didn't really elaborate. How about I do that now?

Turing was a goddamn genius. He had a mind that handled intricate logic the way most of us handle tying our shoes. During World War II, he helped build the framework for what would eventually become computers, and he did so in an effort to decode the German Enigma Machine. When his efforts paid off, he moved on to a more difficult version used by the Nazi navy, and he did that part himself. Because he felt like it.
Bombe
How hard could it be?

When the war ended, he decided to continue working on this newfangled "computer" idea, and it's largely because of that decision that you're reading this post today. At one point during his research, a strange question arose. He and his team were creating machines with stored memory. Machines that employed logic with relatively little input from users. The question was, "At what point can these machines be considered intelligent?"

And so the concept of realistic artificial intelligence was born. Turing even gave us a way to determine when we were approaching or crossing that threshold. He got the idea from a party game where two people would go out of sight and type answers to a series of questions, trying to imitate each other so that the rest of the group can't tell who's who.
Face/Off
The game was adapted into film in 1997

The Turing Test is like that, except one of the two players is not a human. The best way to go about it, Turing argued, would be to create a child-like computer then subject it to an education of sorts. And that's what people did. Chatter bots are all based on the principle of the Turing Test. They learn new tricks by talking to people. None of them have quite gotten the hang of it, though.

Well, until last week. At the University of Reading, a chatter bot named Eugene managed to convince a third of a panel of judges that it was a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy. Granted, there are some concerns about the methods, the judges, and the parameters. But the test itself was never a dichotomy so much as a general idea of where the fine line is between a machine and a mind. What Eugene tells us is that, while we might not have created a mind yet, we're very close.
Eugene Goostman
And it doesn't at all resemble the terrifying love child of Macauley Culkin and Heinrich Himmler

As for Turing, he became the victim of archaic moral legislation. Alan Turing was a gay man, which was not something you wanted to be in the United Kingdom back in his day. It was illegal for him to be who he was. One day, his house was robbed, so he called the police. It came out while they were interviewing him that he was in a relationship with a man. He was promptly arrested and convicted of "indecency." His punishment was a combination of probation and chemical castration, as well as the revocation of his security clearance. This effectively ended his career.

Two years later, Alan Turing imitated his favorite fairy tale (Snow White) by lacing an apple with cyanide and eating it, killing himself. And that's how Britain showed its appreciation for one of the greatest minds their country had ever produced. A mind that not only laid the groundwork for modern computer science, but saved countless lives by taking the enigma out of the Enigma machine. It only took them 55 years to apologize for the way they treated him. Then 4 more for the Queen to give him a pardon.

Holy shit.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Holy Shit, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck

I was, maybe, a bit too kind to Erwin Rommel when I wrote about him. He did some great deeds for a Nazi, but in the end he was, after all, a Nazi. Maybe he wasn't a model citizen in the modern, not-complicit-in-a-brutal-dictatorship sense of the word.

If you want an example of what a bold and decent person does against the rise of National Socialism, maybe a better choice would be Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. Lettow-Vorbeck was a hero to the German people after World War I. He led the only successful invasion of Imperial British soil during that conflict, and he did so by waging what has been described as the greatest guerrilla operation in history.
Gorilla Operation
There are other contenders.

He led about 14,000 men in East Africa on a campaign that was meant solely to divert as much resources as possible away from the Allies on the Western Front. That way, he reasoned, the folks in the thick of the war could get the important fighting done. There was essentially no hope of success, and Lettow-Vorbeck proved it by surrendering entirely undefeated under orders from high command after the Armistice.

While he was in command, more than half of his men were native Africans. He lived in a different time -- when the White Man's Burden was considered progressive -- and yet, he showed a remarkable amount of tolerance and even respect for other races. He spoke fluent Swahili and named black soldiers as officers, a rarity at the time. When questioned, he firmly stated, "We are all Africans here."
Book of Mormon
A bunch of white kids would say the same thing years later in the Book of Mormon. The musical. Not the book.

After the war, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck became involved in politics. He is chiefly known today as a vehement opponent of Adolf Hitler during his rise to power. He was one of Hitler's chief adversaries, and when the Führer offered him an ambassadorship as an olive branch in 1938, rumor has it that his response was, "Go fuck yourself." Imagine saying that to Hitler near the peak of his power. Even better, Lettow-Vorbeck's nephew was asked about the incident decades later, he said, "I don't think he put it that politely."
Andy from Parks and Rec
And everybody was like "OOOOOH YOU GOT SERVED MEIN FÜHRER!"

Pretty cool guy, right? Well, here's the thing: the guy was a major warhawk. He disobeyed direct orders by the governor of German East Africa in order to engage the British. The governor wanted to remain neutral in the war, because he rightly feared that war would destroy any positive change Germany brought to the region in favor of starvation and violence. That's exactly what happened, and Lettow-Vorbeck shrugged it off as an unfortunate fact of war. Add to that the fact that he regularly (albeit strategically) denied food to civilians so that his army could stay in the fight and he doesn't seem all that terrific.

That's the problem with heroes. They're all so human, and they all have to live in the real world.

Still, he told Hitler to go fuck himself. Major props for that one, right?

Holy shit.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Holy Shit, John D. Rockefeller!

John D. Rockefeller

Let's talk about wealth. You know how we like to use the phrase "filthy rich?" Well, if wealth is filth, then John D. Rockefeller could single-handedly destroy Captain Planet by the sheer weight of his putrescence.
Captain Planet vs. Hitler
Though to be fair, Hitler almost destroyed him with a rude glance.

The man was moneyed. Big time. You think you have a wealthy relative? Your cousin or uncle who started a business and owns a McMansion? Pah. Plebe. Rockefeller could buy most small cities if he had been so inclined. He could have swooped in on his hometown of Cleveland, for example, and bought every single building within the city limits. Probably. I didn't look that up, it just seemed right. Sue me.

You think Bill Gates has wealth? Well, he does. He is currently the richest man on the planet, valued at over 72 Billion Dollars. That's after he gave much of his fortune away to charity. But adjusted for inflation, Bill Gates did not have as much money as John D. Rockefeller. Not by a loooooooooooong shot. Adjusted for inflation, Rockefeller was worth about 665 Billion Dollars. More than NINE TIMES as much as Bill Gates.
Bill Gates frowning
Sorry, William.

You know how Occupy Wall Street took "We are the 99 percent" as their rallying cry? The "1%" in the time of Rockefeller...was Rockefeller. He was the sole member of the top 1% of wealth-holders in America. In fact, since he personally controlled 1.53% of the GDP of the United States, he could have legitimately claimed to be both a part of the 1% and joined in the chant, "We are the 99%." Because he was both.

To the great benefit of society, Rockefeller poured a massive amount of money back where it was needed through charitable giving. He was, in many ways, the founder of modern philanthropy. There's a good reason you hear the name Rockefeller fairly often, whether it's related to medicine, the arts, or education. His money played a key role in the establishment of as Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Brown, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, and Vassar, as well as a number of historically black colleges. In his early days, he was a Lincoln-supporter and a die-hard abolitionist.

Of course, on the other hand, he was also a die-hard capitalist, which meant crushing his competition underfoot when they didn't measure up and leaving them destitute. That's business, to be sure, but there weren't as many protections against monopolies back then. Rockefeller was one of the classic Robber Barons of the 19th Century who, intentionally or not, set about establishing a new type of aristocracy through their control of the economy. Anyone who ended up starving, they argued, was simply a victim of evolution. They called it Social Darwinism, and it was based on a fundamentally flawed understanding of the works of Charles Darwin.
Charlie Darwin facepalm
Come on, guys, I said natural selection.

A number of new regulations and New Deals came along that would help to mitigate the control of the Robber Barons and give the middle class a stronger ground to stand on, but my personal favorite was a proposal (watered down before passing and later repealed) called the Wealth Tax Act. If it had been made into a law, it would have charged a staggering 79% tax on the top earners in America. The threshold for this tax bracket, though, was high. So high, in fact, that it would effectively be levied only to a single person. They could have just called it the John D. Rockefeller Tax.

Holy shit.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Holy Shit, Shakespeare!

Shakespeare
So William Shakespeare was this guy who wrote a lot. You may have heard of him if you've ever taken an English class. Or are in any way culturally literate. Or if you've just had one or two conversations. He comes up sometimes.

I could talk about how Shakespeare was the most influential writer of all time. I could talk about how he coined thousands of words and phrases that we still use today. I could talk about how there is almost literally no work of fiction written in English (or possibly other languages) since the Elizabethan Era that is not, in some way, informed and inspired by Shakespeare. But that's not my style.
People's Daily Newspaper Building
I prefer a subtle approach to comedy.

Nah, I'm gonna talk about genitals. Because that's the way the Bard would have wanted it. He was, after all, a product of his time. And his time was bawdy. They don't tell you that in school because it's uncomfortable to acknowledge, but as Terry Pratchett put it, "Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them."

Take, for example, the word "nothing." Because Elizabethans apparently had the anatomical knowledge of a 12-year-old boy, "nothing" became slang for "the nothing that is between a woman's legs." Which means that Much Ado about Nothing may as well be called Much Ado about Beatrice's Vagina.

And don't think it's limited to the comedies. Take a look at this scene from Hamlet, possibly the most famous tragedy ever written (the relevant part starts at about 4:56):



If you missed that, here's a transcript:
Tenth Doctor Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia: No, my lord.
Tenth Doctor Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap.
Ophelia: Ay, my lord.
Tenth Doctor Hamlet: Did you think I meant cunt...ry matters?
Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord.
Tenth Doctor Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between maid's legs.
Ophelia: What is, my lord?
Tenth Doctor Hamlet: Nothing.
Ophelia: You are merry, my lord?
You get the idea. Or maybe you don't. Hamlet is basically being a frat boy. Everything Ophelia says, he twists it around and makes it about her genitals. And David Tennant's delivery on the "country matters" line might be the least subtle that it's ever been. I leave Ophelia's "merry" line in the transcript there because that's part of the fun. "Merry" is an Elizabethan slang term for "horny." Hamlet harps on her privates over and over, and she responds by more or less saying, "Jesus, somebody's frisky today."
Shakespeare Collection
That's his merry face.

So don't think of Shakespeare the way you've been taught. I'd wager that you could find similar scenes in all of his plays. I'd do it now, but nobody's gonna stick around that long. Maybe I'll make a series out of Shakespeare's dirty jokes. The man's plays were performed in a brothel. I mean, honestly, how prim and proper could he be?

And yes, that is true. The Rose was both a brothel and a theatre.

Holy shit.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Holy Shit, Donkey Kong!

Nintendo Logo

In 1981, Nintendo was known primarily as a toy company that produced trading cards in Japan. In fact, they were barely known at all in the West. They began producing arcade games in the '70s, but they enjoyed limited success until Shigeru Miyamoto burst onto the scene.
Shigeru Miyamoto
He and Gaben are the patron saints of gaming nowadays.


Shigeru Miyamoto created Donkey Kong, and from there went on to become the single most influential figure in console gaming history. Donkey Kong started as a licensed Popeye game, but the licensing situation didn't work out. So the team had to come up with new characters. They called the hero "Mr. Video," a name which would change to Jumpman shortly afterward. When the Nintendo of America team was confronted with an angry landlord demanding their late rent, they averted his wrath by telling him they'd name their new hero after him. The landlord, Mario Segale, agreed to back down.
Mario
That name should be familiar to you.


The villain, they decided, would be a King Kong knockoff named Donkey Kong. The name basically came from a linguistic misunderstanding. "Donkey" is an obscure, archaic slang term for a stupid or foolish person. Miyamoto found that definition, coupled it with a word he understood to mean "giant ape," and called it a day. The American team thought it was hilarious, and the name stuck.

You know who didn't think it was hilarious? Universal Studios. As they understood it, they owned the rights to King Kong ever since they fought a court battle over the issue in 1975, and Nintendo was using a blatant knock-off character to reap enormous profits without paying them one red cent. Or even yen.

King Kong
I'd like to believe this is the face the studio heads made.


So they took this little toy company to court. It had all the workings of a classic David and Goliath battle. There is speculation that Universal's legal department figured Nintendo would just settle to avoid a costly battle, but Nintendo's legal team had done its research pretty well. When they got to court, they made an elegantly simple argument.

King Kong is in the public domain. And what's more, Universal knew full well that he was. That's why they won the right to make a movie about him in the '70s. The judge ruled in favor of Nintendo, citing the ridiculousness of suing over a public domain character and the fact that Donkey Kong was different enough not to be confused with King Kong anyway.
Donkey Kong ending
I mean, the building he climbed wasn't even finished!

This was a massive, pivotal moment for Nintendo. It came on the heels of a massive crash in the home video game market, and it gave Nintendo the confidence to start pushing for a revival of the console. The very next year, the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in America, and the console market has enjoyed increasing success ever since.

If it weren't for a linguistic quirk and a frivolous lawsuit, Donkey Kong would not have served as the springboard that relaunched the game industry. We have this abused, rampaging, kidnapping ape to thank for everything from Super Mario Brothers to Pokémon, and maybe a lot more.

Holy Shit.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Holy Shit, Eyam!

Eyam

Remember the plague?

Well, the village of Eyam certainly does.

Eyam is a small village in central England with a population of around 1,000. It is best known for one of the boldest and most suicidal efforts to stop the Plague in British history. In 1665, a tailor in Eyam received a package of cloth from London that was full of Plague-infested fleas. Within a week, he was dead and the disease was spreading throughout the village. When residents began to consider fleeing to neighboring towns, the local rectors stepped in and asked everyone to voluntarily brave the horrific tempest of the plague and close themselves off from the outside world.
Yao Meme
How I would've reacted.

The town agreed. A system was established where merchants and couriers would drop supplies off at The Coolstone outside of town. Money for the shipment would be left there soaked in vinegar, which was believed to prevent infection. It may have actually been true - the acetic acid in vinegar does function as an antibacterial agent.
Malt vinegar and french fries
I'm sorry if the smell of my PLAGUE-PROOF FRIES bothers you.

Aside from that indirect exchange, Eyam ceased all contact with the outside world. The plague tore the village apart for fourteen months. Deaths were constant and well-documented. Families were asked to bury their own dead for fear of quickening the spread of the plague, and in one case that caused a woman to bury her husband and all six of her children over the span of eight days. Incredibly, she survived the pestilence, never even becoming ill.

After fourteen months, it became clear that the plague had run its course in Eyam, and the village opened its borders once again. When the plague hit, the population of Eyam was 350. When the quarantine ended, there were only 83 people left. Almost 80% of the people of Eyam died within about a year. There are debates over whether the decision even did any good to stem the tide of the plague, but I think we should just let them have that one. Give them an A for effort, if nothing else.
You tried.
Good hustle, you guys. I'm proud of you.

It's not every day that 350 people will accept horrific disease and almost certain death because it might help a bunch of people they probably don't even know. But that's exactly what happened in Eyam.

Holy shit.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Holy Shit, Rommel!

Erwin Rommel

If I asked you to pick a group of people that you could safely say were the worst people of all time, you would probably give me a funny look and start feeling vaguely uncomfortable. You know, the way you feel in front of your grandma just before you tell your friends you're sorry and she's from a different time. Eventually, after all the confusion was cleared up, we'd settle on the goddamn Nazis. Because fuck those guys, right?

At this point, I'd inject a little more awkwardness into the situation by telling you that one of the most virtuous heroes of World War II was, in fact, a high-ranking Nazi officer.

Erwin Rommel was a Field Marshal and commander of the Afrika Korps, Nazi Germany's colonial occupation of the rest of Europe's colonial occupations of North Africa. Despite belonging to the most comically (and tragically) evil political group of the 21st Century, the Afrika Korps is distinguished by the fact that they were the only division of the Nazi military to not be accused of war crimes.

Rommel and his Staff in North Africa
Way to not be evil, guys. Seriously, well done.

That was pretty much Rommel's doing. In addition to being acknowledged by both Axis and Allied leaders as one of the most brilliant strategic minds of the war, Rommel's humanitarianism in the face of brutal, horrific conflict and genocide is legendary. During the capture of France, Rommel received orders directly from goddamn Hitler to deport the Jewish population of the country and execute all Jewish prisoners, and Rommel just straight up ignored him.

If you paid any attention whatsoever in history class, you know that most people couldn't get away with ignoring the Führer. What's more, he wrote letters to high command protesting the treatment of Jews in the Third Reich. You know, the same Reich that gave the whole "Holocaust" thing the green light. He also wrote letters protesting atrocities committed by the German Army, even seeking permission to punish the 2nd SS Panzer division for massacring a French town. Hitler told him it was none of his business, and historians tend to believe Rommel was lucky his head was still attached after that letter reached Berlin. Hitler wasn't exactly known for being reasonable.

Bodies at Bergen Belsen
Not pictured: Reason.

He didn't really change his tone. When he was ordered to beef up the security of the Atlantic Wall, he did so using French labor. That was normal, except the part where he absolutely insisted that the workers get paid.

Rommel was most well known for his steadfast (though ultimately doomed) defense of North Africa, for which he earned the nickname "Desert Fox." In addition to personally leading the charge in the hottest (as in violence, not temperature) parts of the battlefield and receiving multiple wounds as a result, he established his relationship in North Africa as one of the most anachronistically chivalrous military leaders in the world.
Rommel getting his car unstuck
He was also handy to have around in case of a flat

At one point, he and his staff found themselves suddenly deep behind enemy lines. They came upon a New Zealand Army field hospital, where any rational person would stay out of sight until they could get the hell out of dodge. Instead, he approached the hospital and made light conversation, asking how the soldiers and doctors were faring.

Caught off guard by the surreal nature of the situation, the British and Kiwis told Rommel that things were okay, they guessed, but they could sure use some bandages and medicine. Rommel said he'd see what he could do and drove off unmolested. A few days later, he came back with medical supplies and just gave them away.

Rommel grinning
Because otherwise they'd just go to Nazis. Like him.

Toward the end of his defensive campaign in Africa, Rommel started noticing some disturbing trends in the communications he shared with Hitler. As it turned out, Hitler didn't assign all that much value on human life, so whenever Rommel would suggest a course of action that favored small losses over tactical gains, he would be rebuffed. The relationship between the two would sour pretty severely when Hitler ordered him to hold his ground on numerous occasions in utterly hopeless battles, causing a tremendous loss of life just to stem the inevitable tide for a few extra hours.

Ultimately, Rommel's loss of respect for history's favorite villain would be his undoing. He got involved in a conspiracy that planned to make a very strong case for Hitler's removal. The planned argument was, "We just blew Hitler up with a briefcase bomb, so he's probably not capable of leading this country anymore. Also, we already took control of the military anyway. QED." The subconscious fidgeting of the officer sitting next to Hitler foiled the plot. He kicked the briefcase under the table, which deflected the blast just enough to avoid killing the Führer.

Hitler's near explosion experience
Personally, I blame Tom Cruise

In the aftermath, almost 5,000 people were killed by the Gestapo for taking part in the failed coup. Not Rommel, though. Rommel was universally praised as a hero by the German people, to such a great extent that Hitler feared they might rise up in support of the conspiracy just because he was involved. Instead of outing him and executing him, Hitler gave Rommel the option to commit suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule in exchange for a guarantee that his family would remain unharmed. Rommel agreed, then Hitler gave him an official state funeral, claiming that he died of old war wounds.

Rommel's funeral
Making someone praise you right after you try to blow them up is really a form of winning.

During the war, Winston Churchill called Erwin Rommel a "daring and skillful opponent." The British Parliament very nearly censured him for praising the enemy, but after the war it became clear that Erwin Rommel was a man well worth praising. Despite being a high ranking Nazi, he was one of the most effective advocates for human rights throughout the war.

Holy shit.

Edit: The guy was still a Nazi. Keep that in mind.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Holy Shit, the Green Revolution!

Wheat


When you think of a revolution, your mind will probably mosey its way into a battlefield, full of glory, gore, and lives laid down willingly for the righteous cause. This is not that kind of revolution. In fact, the Green Revolution was the exact opposite. It was centered not around death, but life.

The Green Revolution is most notable, for preventing hundreds of millions of deaths by starvation. It all started in the mid-1940s with an agronomist named Norman Borlaug. While many young American men were overseas causing brown stains in the pants of the Nazi and Imperial Japanese high command, Borlaug was receiving a Ph.D. in Plant Pathology and Genetics. When he finished, he took a research position in Mexico and started tinkering with wheat genes.

Norman Borlaug
That's his tinkering face.


After a few years, Borlaug had developed a new and dwarfish type of wheat. It was short and resistant to many diseases, so it ended up being a boon to Mexican agriculture. Seeing how well it was working, he figured, "What the hell? Let's keep this going."

That was one of the most important "What the hell"s in human history, made no less important by the fact that I just put the words in his mouth and he probably never said it like that. According to Malthusian population projections, the world - and India in particular - was due for a massive starvation epidemic around the 1980s.

Crowds in India
Because there's a friggin' lot of people there


Norman Borlaug came along with his dwarf wheat (and later dwarf rice), and suddenly there was just...food. Everywhere. The problem in India was that rice has a hard time growing high up on hills, because it has a tendency to blow over and break. The reduced height of Borlaug's crops, coupled with the resistance to blight, meant that new acreage could be opened up to farmland. Lots of it.

And open up it did. Between 1950 and 1984, the duration of the Green Revolution, world grain production exploded by over 250%. Instead of a catastrophic population collapse, the world's population grew by four billion. Four billion more people were born than died in a time that was supposed to be marked by fear, famine, and death.

Wheat yield growth over 50 years
Suck it, hunger.


You can argue that the Green Revolution only delayed the inevitable, perhaps even increasing the already horrific burden that the unsustainable human population places on the Earth, and you'd probably have a pretty good point. But it's hard to look at a man who won a Nobel Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom for pretty much single-handedly saving hundreds of millions of people from starvation as anything but a goddamn hero.

Holy shit.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Holy Shit, Moon Landings!



Let me just get this out of the way right off the bat: we put human beings into a small capsule attached to several enormous machines that create aimed and sustained explosions which carried them off of the goddamn planet all the way to the goddamn moon, both of which are in constant motion. They landed and walked on the surface of the moon, then came back home and survived re-entry. We did this six times, and for some reason we haven't even really tried to do it again in over 40 years.

The moon.
Look at her face. She misses us.


Holy shit.

There is no part of the concept of people walking the surface of the moon that is not profoundly incredible. Literally incredible to a lot of people. Otherwise we wouldn't have the conspiracy theories about it being a hoax. Which are just plain wrong.

Apollo 11, the first manned spacecraft to bring human beings to the moon, had less computing power than a modern graphing calculator. It traveled through 238,900 miles of pure nothing to deposit people onto the lunar surface. Imagine what we could do with the power we have today?

An iPod
Astronauts could pipe in some tunes!


And have you paid attention to rockets? Do you know what they are? They're pretty much the same thing as missiles. NASA managed to point one of those things at a moving target (albeit a big and predictable one) with enough accuracy and controlled chaos that they could not only fling astronauts to the moon, but do it safely.

Damn it.
Don't make a fart joke, don't make a fart joke, don't make a fart joke...


Neil Armstrong stepped out of the landing module and he was, by most definitions, an alien. Then he flubbed his line (no really, it was supposed to be "one small step for a man," which makes more sense), planted a flag too close to the landing site, picked up some rocks, and went back to Earth. And they made it. Safely. After knocking over the flag during takeoff. Don't worry, even the ones that weren't knocked over have been bleached white by the untempered radiation of the sun by now.

The real kicker for me, though, is the fact that the United States, the only country to have ever put human beings onto the surface of another celestial body, did so six times within a three year period, then never did it again. The entire time we were at it, the public, half awed by the monumental accomplishment they were witnessing, were clamoring about "more important problems back home." You hear the same argument today.

Buzz Aldrin on the Moon
How is this not worthy of attention?


To which I like to say, "Are you fucking kidding me? Look at that shit. Look at what we did, America. Jesus. The moon. We went there." Saying that we shouldn't try exploring space until we've solved all of the problems on Earth is like saying you shouldn't try to get a job until you've figured out how to stop needing to eat. It's pure bullshit.

And seriously, look at that. It's a man on the moon.

Holy shit.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Holy Shit, Mister Rogers!

Fred Rogers

If you read this blog regularly, you may have noticed my propensity to point out a hidden side of famous people and events that may forever change your perception of them. This entry is not an example of that. This entry is about Fred "Mister" Rogers, the kindest, gentlest, and most worthy person to have walked the Earth in recent (if not all of) history.

Mister Rogers was a teacher, a minister, a songwriter, an author, and most famously the host of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, where he more or less single-handedly bestowed self-esteem upon millions of children over the show's 33-year run. He's the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Peabody Award, and honorary degrees from over 40 institutions. He did this all while remaining humble and down-to-earth, not because he made an effort but because he was always genuinely more interested in everyone else's stories.

But that's not even the impressive part.

Other people have earned honorary degrees and Peabodys and Medals of Freedom, and many of them maintained a healthy humility. What makes Fred Rogers unique is that as much as you dig, as far back into his history as you look, no matter how much you scrutinize, the man proved to be utterly incorrubtible. Every rumor to the contrary has proven to be categorically false.

Fred Rogers never served in the military and thus never racked up a large confirmed kill count. He  had no tattoos covering his arms - he simply liked wearing sweaters on television because his mother knitted them all for him. He was never accused or convicted of any crimes, and certainly not anything related to pedophilia. Even the famous image of him allegedly flipping off his audience was taken out of context. He was simply singing "Where is Thumbkin" with a group of kids.

Mister Rogers doing the Thumbkin song
I've got your Thumbkin right here.

You know what he did do, though? He saved public television. His testimony to a Senate committee on funding public television is widely regarded as the reason said committee decided to more than double PBS's share of the budget pie.

In case you think that was a fluke, The U.S. Supreme Court also cited his testimony on home video recording in their decision that ensured such things would always remain legal. So you have him to thank for your self-esteem, PBS, and your DVR.

It's Hilly's cat.
So...you're welcome?

Outside of his political influence, he made a personal impact on just about everyone he ever met. That includes ivy-league educated gorillas. Well, at least one of them, but I'm not sure how many gorillas have gone to Stanford on a full ride scholarship. Koko the gorilla was a dyed-in-the-wool fan of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and when he brought the show out to visit her she excitedly hugged him then started taking off his shoes like he did every day on the air.

Is that really so much to ask?
I can't really convey how happy this makes me in words

Gorillas weren't the only ones starstruck by his presence. When his car was stolen and he filed a police report, the story made headlines and within 48 hours, he found it returned to exactly the spot he had left it. In the dashboard was an apology note saying the thieves would never have taken the car if they'd known it belonged to him.

Finally (and maybe a bit less objectively), one of the most impressive ways Fred Rogers lived his life was how he handled his faith. He was a Presbyterian minister and was extraordinarily devout. He lived his life the way he believed he was meant to. An unfortunate side effect often found in that type of life is an intolerance for anyone who doesn't do likewise.

To this vice, as to all others, Mr. Rogers was immune. Fundamentalist ministers asked him to speak out against homosexuality, and his response was to say to both the ministers with rustled jimmies and the people who were the subjects of their ire, "God loves you just the way you are."

Fred Rogers was a man of enormous moral conviction, strength, and fathomless cultural power, and he used all of it not for personal gain, but to tell the world that no matter who they were, no matter what they've been through, no matter what they've done with their lives, someone out there loved them.

Holy shit.