GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Will The Future Be Godless?

I love this cartoon. I think it epitomizes the tension between scientific and technological advancements and the retrograde nature of religion.

WARNING: Russian Teams Dominate Collegiate Prestigious International Programming Contest Standings

Things that make you go hmmmm! The ICPC 2018 (ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest) was just held last week and the results could be ominous for future technological success by the United States.

The top 2 places were taken by two teams from Russia: Moscow State University (#1) and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (#2). Teams from China, Japan and South Korea rounded out the rest of the top 5. The highest an American team placed was #10 (University of Central Florida), which just edged out #11, which was from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Of the 13 teams in the top tier, 4 were from Russia and 3 were from China.

Jus' saying...

#AlteredCarbon is Now Streaming on Netflix!

The screen adaptation of the Richard K. Morgan novel Altered Carbon is now available on Netflix!
The ten episodes of the first season are titled:

1. "Out of the Past" (pilot directed by Miguel Sapochnik)
2. "Fallen Angel"
3. "In a Lonely Place"
4. "Force of Evil"
5. "The Wrong Man"
6. "Man with My Face"
7. "Nora Inu"
8. "Clash by Night"
9. "Rage in Heaven"
10. "The Killers"

I have been waiting a long time for this! Happily, it is getting very good reviews and it is apparently a high-budget, high-quality entry into the televised science fiction and fantasy canon which includes such award-winning shows like Game of Thrones (HBO), The Handmaid's Tale (Hulu) and The Expanse (SyFy).

The book is one of my favorites (see review) and is the first in a trilogy, so perhaps we have two more seasons to go?

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: "Nones" Projected To Be Plurality In 2035

By 2030 the largest religious affiliation in the United States is predicted to be "none." A computer science professor has analyzed poll responses from the General Social Survey to this question "What is your religious preference: is it Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, some other religion, or no religion?" since 1972 and he makes the above prediction that America is becoming increasingly less religious and that sometime in the next two decades the non-religious will be the largest single religious group in the country.

In fact he says this is probably an under-estimate, for the following reasons:

1. Survey results like these are subject to social desirability bias, which is the tendency of respondents to shade their answers in the direction they think is more socially acceptable. To the degree that apostasy is stigmatized, we expect these reports to underestimate the number of Nones. As the visibility of nonreligious people increases, they might be more willing to be counted; in that case, the trends would go faster than predicted.

1. The trends for Protestants and Nones have apparent points of inflection near 1990. Predictions that include earlier data are likely to underestimate future trends. If we use only data since 1990 to generate predictions, we expect the fraction of Nones to exceed 40 percent within 20 years.

So even though it seems to godless people like yours truly that "believers" are trampling the rights of non-believers. Or at the very least the concerns of believers "trump" those of non-believers, it appears as if the tide will turn in the future.

REPORT: Many Los Angeles Area STEM Jobs In 2016-2021 Will Not Require 4-Year Degrees

Interesting report from the Center for a Competitive Workforce about a potential talent shortage in the Los Angeles county area in the near future. Many people think that STEM technical jobs require a 4-year degree, but this report says that there will be many "middle skills" job openings in the Los Angeles area that will not.

In the region there will be approximately 67,450 job openings over the next five years for the 20 occupations examined in the report.  But, according to the latest data available, from the academic year 2014-15, there were fewer than 27,000 career education award earners in the greater Los Angeles Basin. And only about 7,800 awards were conferred in programs training relevant to the 20 target occupations. 

If this trend continues without our region’s talent development systems and institutions responding in kind, especially the community colleges which are the primary suppliers of this middle skill talent, then the demand in the region will not be met over the next five years.

One key takeaway from the report is that local community colleges in Los Angeles will only provide 58% of the people with associates degrees or certificates that the area will likely need to fill these jobs in the near future.

Hat/tip to KPCC

FILM REVIEW: Elysium

While I was in Los Angeles for my wedding anniversary last week The Other Half and I saw the movie Elysium, the follow-up film from Neill Blomkamp, who directed District 9. Elysium was one of my most highly anticipated films of summer 2013 because I was so charmed by Blomkamp's debut work.

However, his second film is not as well-received by critics (66% favorable) or audiences (70% favorable) as his first (critics 90%, audiences 79%). This is unfortunate, because Blomkamp is working with a bigger budget and bigger stars (Oscar winners Jodie Foster and Matt Damon). The star from District 9, Sharlto Copley also appears in Elysium, as one of the key bad guys in the piece. Copley is a quirky actor, and his casting as Kruger is one of the weak aspects of the film. He simply does not convey the sense of menace as one would expect in a summer blockbuster villain; he's more like the weird, homeless guy in the subway you want to avoid not because you're afraid of him, but because you're just grossed out or uncertain about the guy's boundaries.

There are other problems with the film as well. While it's great to see Jodie Foster working in films (especially after her infamous Golden Globes speech this year where she said she was quitting the business), her Delacourt is a corrupt, elitist bureaucrat with ice in her veins who is willing to do "whatever it takes" to defend her society's morally bankrupt way of life. But, the film doesn't do a good job of really exploring or explaining Delacourt's motives. Is it just a lust for power? One would hope that there is a more complex motive for Delacourt's action than the typical desire for control. Plus, what going on with her accent? (It sounds vaguely European mixed with South African). Copley's Kruger also sounds South African, which is not surprising to those of us who recognize him from District 9, but there's no explanation why a violent and unhinged mercenary has a South African accent.

I must say that generally the use of language is one of the strongest aspects of the film. Damon's blonde, blue-eyed Max is shown speaking fluent Spanish in his orphaned, youthful past and in his squalid, hellish present. This Spanish in a sea of brown bodies and faces is juxtaposed with Delacourt's smooth French in the well-manicured, very civilized (read: White and upper-class) on Elysium. Elysium, as we know from the trailers, and very early on in the movie, is a floating habitat that the select super-rich have created and retreated to, leaving a desperate and destitute Earth to the multitudinous, teeming hordes. The use of language as a proxy for class is deployed skillfully and quickly illustrates the bifurcated nature of life in the future that we the audience are going to be experiencing in Elysium.

The central tension in Elysium is whether our main character, Max (Damon) is going to be able to figure out a way to Get Up There (to Elysium) in order to have a chance of getting access to near-miraculous machines which can fix basically any health problem. The plot to get him up there ends up with Max having information uploaded into his brain that could potentially completely change the balance of power between Earth and Elysium. The fact that there are millions (if noy billions) of people on Earth who do not have access to basic necessities of life (food, water, shelter, health) while a coddled few have access to all these in addition to miraculous health care is a clear commentary on current political debates going on in America and elsewhere. However, as Alyssa Rosenberg cogently argues, the sharp political wit that was so present in District 9 doesn't make much sense in Elysium and ultimately disappoints viewers who were excited by the visionary nature of that film.

I don't want to reveal too much of the plot twists except to say that all though the action doesn't always make sense (Blomkamp apparently has a tenuous grasp on the Newtonian laws of motion and other aspects of physics which can be distracting) it is always compelling. A friend of mine who saw Elysium at a preview described it as "a cross between Jason Bourne meets Terminator 150 years in the future."

Title: Elysium.
Director: Neill Blomkamp.
Running Time: 1 hour, 49 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated R for strong bloody violence and language throughout.
Release Date: August 9, 2013.
Viewing Date: August 9, 2013.

Writing: B-.
Acting: C+.
Visuals: B+.
Impact: A-.

Overall Grade: B (3.0/4.0).

WATCH: Blind Man "Drives" Google's Driverless Car

This is pretty cool. One of Google's long-term projects is the development and deployment of driver-less cars. watch this cool video of a blind man behind the wheel as the car drive itself. Is this the future? As Ken Jennings said, "I for one, welcome our new computer overlords!"