https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/15081757/download.mp3

https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/15081820/download.mp3

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/15081886

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/15081844


Hey Cogs!

Just a few links to my podcasts.  I'm trying to go regular, so send me your ideas!

Andrew and I talk about the new Solo movie, some girl from Game of Thrones, Trollhunters, and the effects of a car starting.

No.  I am not going to show you nude photos of Hillary Clinton.
BUT
During the 1940's to the 1970's Harvard university had a bizarre requirement for all incoming freshman; they asked all young men and women enrolled in their first year to pose nude.
Thousands of pictures were taken of such students as Diane Sawyer, George Bush, and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Back in 1995 NYT reporter Ron Rosenbaum found out this story and was the first to report it.
I like to bring it up because some students are now complaining that they have to use clear plastic back packs and say they are an "invasion of privacy".  And while this was voluntary...it would not be very acceptable now.
The reasoning behind this strange request was that a scientist of psychology, William Herbert Sheldon, believed he could study, track, and research diseases such as rickets, scoliosis, and other posture issues.
Sheldons written works infered something else...an attempt to study the correlation between a persons body shape and their intelligence.

And no written permission of any kind was given by the students. 
And then there were rumors of break-ins at the university where the photos were stored, with many pilfered photos supposedly ending up on the black market...

“You always thought when you did it that one day they’d come back to haunt you. That 25 years later, when your husband was running for President, they’d show up in Penthouse,” confessed Sally Quinn who graduated from a Seven Sisters college, Smith in 1963.

I could put all I've spoken on my new podcast into a nice, typed, friendly fonted little package!
But I won't.
Please, enjoy the sultry sound of my voice as I explain and find no good reason why you shouldn't kill yourself.
And on that note...I beg you to email me, come up with response letters, your own podcast rebuttals, all to prove me wrong!

Enjoy.

I hate to wade into this, but I feel some of the hysteria warrants it.
I’ll preface this by saying that murder is a horrid thing, and our children do need to be protected against that.
There are approximately 25 million high school students in the US right now (it is lower than that, but I’m also including and private schools which for some reason are treated as a different stat).
In all of the school shootings (CNN alleges 17, though that could be greater or lower depending on the criteria; the FBI cites a mass shooting as having more than four victims.  Chicago has nothing but mass shootings outside of schools), there have been roughly 20 deaths.  But I’m going to go ahead and pump that number up to one thousand.
Statistically that means that the total deaths caused by mass shootings to teenagers comes out to 0.00004%.
Some would say that number needs to be zero, and I would like to agree.
What is killing teens more and more is texting while driving. 
However I don’t  think gun control is going to be the most logical way to do that.
Some people will trot out Australia, and how their gun violence has gone down.  And it is true…their GUN violence HAS gone down….but their violent crime rate stayed the same.
What does that mean?
Well, imagine suicide was an epidemic, so they passed laws that made ropes illegal.  The statistics for rope suicides would go down, right?
Yes.  But people were still killing themselves at the same rate.  They just used different methods.
Now, I know already, some of you are saying “Well, that’s a bit of a straw man false equivalency” yet the argument will still be made “Well at least they didn’t use a gun.”
Australias crime levels didn’t go down.  Their violent crime didn’t go down.  Their murder rate stayed the same.  So how were guns the problem if nothing actually changed?
Change certain gun laws, sure.  Do background checks AND actually do them (not like the 82 times Cruz was reported to the police, and the laws that prevented his mental illness from being added to the gun registry websites used for background checks).
But a criminal, by definition, does not obey the law.  And, law, is mainly a reactionary method.  We don’t have a “pre-crime” unit like in that Tom Cruise movie (terribly adapted from a Phillip K. Dick novel).  We could increase the punishments for crimes already committed as a preventative measure, maybe.  But what does that yield?  Should we bring back public execution as a method of behavior method?

I want a solution.  You want a solution.  We’re both coming at the problem from different angles.  Me wanting to keep my (non existent guns because I don’t own any) guns is not going to stop a school shooting.  You banning guns is not going to stop a pre meditated attack.  And even if all guns were banned there are people who will use other methods just as deadly or worse (nail bombs, home made flame throwers*, home made cyanide gas*).

We need to focus less on “taking away” or “making new laws” and figure out predictive methods.
It’s no surprise to me that out of the 27 mass shooters in the last few years came from fatherless homes.  I mainly came from a fatherless home and the most influential person in my life was Optimus Prime.  How many of my friends who didn’t have fathers loved Arnold Schwarzenegger movies where everything was solved at the end of a gun (not blaming violent movies on violent people, or even Hollywood). 

I think the shift has to come culturally, and it will take a long time.   I think that interference at early instances are our only hope at reducing gun crime.  In Canada we have lower gun crime (but still existent), and I think that is largely due to the common belief that being angry and choosing death is not a solution.  Maybe we need to move in more of a meritocracy concept, where instead of pushing the idea of violence as a means to solve our problems (as antifa, school shooters, violent criminals), we push the “I’m going to go and do better than you just to throw it in your face.”
Anecdotal time:
I was horribly bullied when I was young.  Many times, bleeding into the ground while feet kicked me and blows rained down from above, I wished I had had a gun.
I had plenty of access to guns, I grew up in a rural area.
Instead I chose to be smug.  I chose to be “better”, smarter.  I wouldn’t kill them…I would eviscerate them intellectually.  Still they called me stupid, still they called me names.
It didn’t get rid of my anger, but I feel that it was still a safer alternative.
Maybe we need to foster that.  Maybe we need to foster that “good” competition that forces us to be better people.  Maybe we need to bring back actual trophies for achievement.  Maybe we need to tell the slow kid to get moving.  Maybe we need to tell the “loser” great try, try harder so you can throw it in their face.
It may not be good sportsmanship, but maybe things won’t end with a gun.

I don’t think change is going to come at the behest of a shaved headed teenager who was in a building a quarter of a mile away during a shooting.  No matter how many people march in the streets, gun owners and sympathizers as well as the indifferent, will make more of a change while voting than throwing a concert will.
Passing laws are going to make people hide their guns, not get rid of them.  You'll turn ordinary people into criminals because of mistrust.
And who will be left with all the guns?  The criminals and "racist" cops.

Maybe that’s just me.
Send me your thoughts.  I want a solution as much as you do.

*These things are frighteningly easy to make.

I'm not a Star Wars fan at all, but even I cringed at what I heard they did in Force Awakens.  The problem wasn't that they "took risks", the problem was they ignored the rules the original films established.  Just like how the fans got angry at the prequels and their mitichlorians garbage; it went against the established rules of the Star Wars universe.
I love the epic poem Beowulf because of its amazing plot twist; no weapon can harm Grendel.  None.  Not a single one.  If you had an AR-15 it wouldn't do anything to him, he'd shrug it off.
Beowulf rips off Grendels arm and beats him with it, and Grendel runs off into the woods to bleed to death.
Now THAT is good storytelling!
In the movie, no weapon can kill Grendel.  Except the convenient magical weapon  that can.
Now THAT is bad storytelling.  It's a plot device, like kryptonite but for bad writing.
I have seen fan made films that use the source material faithfully and have enjoyed them MORE than the original films.  How can swaths of writers create entire book series faithful to the rules of the Star Wars universe and keep fans entertained, but the new "risk taking" movies can't?
That was the issue.  Not the risk taking.
Kylo Ren as an actually compelling Bad Guy, and why the Mask Makes Sense.
Kylo wants to emulate his grandfather.  My own kids used to walk around with canes to act like their great grandfather.  Many people wear things they don't need in order to emulate power.  And that's the one interesting part of Kylo's character; he is an empty shell trying to BE someone.  Under the mask he is nothing...and he knows this.  He has no tragic backstory (even the tacked on Luke murder attempt), only envy.  He has Han Solo, a famous criminal as a father, and a Princess as a mother.  He has their identity to contend with and none of his own.  His character is Envy and Wrath, both hollow pursuits towards fulfillment but dogmatically obeyed.
That is why he is an actually compelling villain.  Villains don't need character arcs.

Apparently there is a fan edit of The Last Jedi that has all the women removed.
Regardless of the polarisation of the fan edit...does it work?
The machete watching order eliminated the need to see ep. 1, and the Jar Jar edit took him completely out of the movie without affecting plot.
My question is; if the female fan edit is still coherent, is this misogyny of the fans? Or is this failure of the writers to actually include a female character that is integral? If the latter, it just proves a point...that the characters were tacked on to appeal to a narrative instead of serving a story.
Basically, did they "Indiana Jones: Raiders of the lost Ark" it? (The Germans would have died without Indy interfering, rendering him useless as a character)
Thoughts?

Some of us will do almost anything for attention...even USE A HOT ROD ASSOCIATION AND THE OLYMPICS TO DO IT!
See the trend destroying issues destroying America...you can't miss it!