Random Thoughts

OK. Been hitting it pretty good for the past few days and here's what I remember rambling about.

Hostage. This is a movie that was made in some kind of bizzaro world. Peep this, there's bad guys in a house with hostages, killing cops and doing other bad guy things. Well, Bruce Willis arrives on scene. Look out bad guys! Wait, what's he doing? What? Huh? He's talking to them. Yeah, not shooting them, not blowing them up, not punching them. Just a bunch of "We're gonna get through this." and "What can I do to help resolve this situation" and "No one's going to die today." shit. Up is down, black is white.
They threw some Bruce violence at the end but there wasn't much and it really seemed like an afterthought.

What else this movie reminded of was the other really shitty movie I watched. XXX: State of the Union. Wow. What a piece of shit. I hated the first XXX and was amazed that they were going to make a second one. But Ice Cube is in it and Samuel L. Jackson returns so I thought it might be one of those fun bad movies.

Nope.

If this one thing this and other movies like it (including Hostage) taught me was how SWAT or whatever elite teams with body armor and cool guns really get their ass kicked in every movie. Let's look at this one: Team of Navy SEALS with all the top equipment vs. a ragtag bunch of ghetto car thieves. Hmm. Yep, 'bangers take them down easily. Stupid military training. It's no match for growing up in the 'hood, biznatch. I keeps it reals.

Also, there was a tankjacking in it. Ludacris was talking to Ice Cube and he said "Shit, if it got wheels then we can jack it!" Umm, hey there scholar, um, yeah, tanks don't have wheels. Otherwise they'd be trucks. Sooo, they actually ran jacks under the tank, lifted it up and cut open the top hatch to steal it. While dudes were in it.

Bonus Head points to anyone who can tell me what item was used in both Assault on Precinct 13 (the remake) and Hostage to fuck up those pussy highly-trained assault teams.

Moving on, another thing I hate 99% of the questions asked at the end of a scientific talk. Man, I always think "What a complete douchebag."
The questions that irritate me the most usually fall into a couple of categories:

1) "Look how smart I am."
Usually a junior scientist (grad student or postdoc). In these cases, typically it's a talk somewhat related to a person's subfield so they feel the need to bring up a point that has made in the literature or use certain buzzwords that the speaker may not have used. It often has only a tangential relationship to the matter at hand. They're not really asking a question here, they're dazzling you with how brilliant they are because they managed to take a class or read a paper or two. The best ones in this category are the ones where it's obvious the person is asking the speaker a question they got from one of the speaker's papers about their research that has already been answered in the fucking paper the student already fucking read!

2) "Did you try..."
These are just what you would guess. At the end of a long, involved talk someone will ask "That's interesting, but did you try using X to test for Y in the presence of Z?" These questions really piss me off. I want to say "Yeah, I did but I didn't feel like fucking telling you... douchebag." Seriously I just told you about my entire project. I told you everything I did. You're an asshole.
These questions sometimes fall into the above category but they're so annoying that they deserve their own number. Typically these are from people that can't think of a good question but still feel the need to hear themselve talk. And usually it's an obvious "next step" of the project. Good job jerkoff! You've managed to figure out elementary experimental design. Your future is bright.

3) "Is there a reason you're omitting..."
Usually these are from senior scientists. Basically the talk is about something in their field and either opposes their view or doesn't take their obviously brilliant work into account enough so they feel the need to bring it up. For example, the other day I was at a fantastic talk that looked at processes in the cortex and midbrain. The guy said right at the beginning of the talk that he wanted to look at these two structures because of blah, blah, blah. At the end of the talk some guy asked "Is there a reason you've ommitted the thalamus?" and proceeded to rant on for about three inutes about how it's so important blah, blah, blah. He even cited some work. Can you guess what he worked on? Yep, thalamus. Can you guess who's work he cited? Yep, his own.
What an ass.

4) "I'm the host but..."
These are up there in pissing me off. This one is unique to senior scientists. Here, the host that brought the speaker in, or the people that will be interacting with the speaker do this. They usually share common scientific interests. So it's the end of the talk, I have to piss, and my back and brain hurts from sitting here listening to this shit for the past hour or so. Then all of a sudden these people get in a long ass discussion about the impact of the work, future directions, etc.
C'mon asshole, you've either had an hour meeting with him before the talk, are scheduled for a meeting after the talk, or are going to dinner with him later. Save it for then, fuckwad.

OK, that's about it.
Two last things. One, the second showing of It's always Sunny in Pliladelphia was pretty much as shitty as the first. Don't ever watch this show.
Second, Weeds on Showtime (I think) is a fucking awesome show. More on this later.