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We all laugh about how ridiculous the gun control talking points are and that, if challenged, they buckle under the pressure of having to provide actual facts to back their arguments, but this video really […]
The post The Liberal Argument for Gun Control: Animated appeared first on Bearing Arms.
via Bearing Arms
The Liberal Argument for Gun Control: Animated
Howard Stern put one gun-control nut in his place, but it wasn’t a caller, it was his longtime producer Gary Dell’Abate! Bababooey, as listeners may know him, got into it with the famous shock jock […]
The post Howard Stern Knocks Out Anti-Gun Producer With the Truth appeared first on Bearing Arms.
via Bearing Arms
Howard Stern Knocks Out Anti-Gun Producer With the Truth
Here it is, the first trailer for Doctor Strange. We see the accident that ends his medical career and hear him get a rousing pep talk from Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One. Life just gets better and better for him, doesn’t it?
We’ll obviously have more information once we have time to comb through every frame, but for now we’ll just say it’s not totally shocking that so much of this trailer comes from the beginning of the movie, since they just finished filming a week and a half ago. Once you know that, the fact that any of the effects were ready for this trailer is even more impressive.
via Gizmodo
Watch Stephen Strange Become Doctor Strange in the First Trailer
As one of the most beloved franchises of all time, The Force Awakens was scrutinized to a degree usually reserved for Pynchon novels by grad students (a treatment Rogue One is already getting as well). As a result, there’s a lot we now know about even the most minute details from the film, and Screen Rant points out ten of the best in a new video.
Much like Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad, Poe Dameron was originally supposed to die early on in The Force Awakens. Oscar Isaacs managed to convince JJ Abrams to have the character stick around—and become a fan-favorite, as well as the source of a great deal of slash fiction. Likewise, Luke and Maz both had expanded roles in earlier drafts of the film, but their screen time was cut so that audiences could feel more attachment to the new heroes.
What shocked me—shocked me even more than learning that Kylo Ren’s weird helmet ashtray might be the remains of his victims—was realizing there’s a pretty glaring inconsistency in the film: C3PO’s arm! For most of the film, 3PO has a new matte red arm that’s pretty easy to notice against an all-gold body. It doesn’t look so hot. And in his final scene, the droid’s gold arm is restored. As it turns out, C3PO’s actor—Anthony Daniels—was no fan of the red arm either, and he and Abrams struck this exact compromise.
Watch below for even more interesting tidbits about the film’s backstory. Or don’t, if you’re some kind of traitor.
via Gizmodo
10 Hidden Secrets in Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Crash reports are nearly impossible for most of us to understand, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make sense of them. Over on MacIssues, they point to a few things to look for in those crash reports on OS X so you can actually figure out the problem.
Obviously, there’s no single way to diagnose a problem, but there are some key words to look for. For example, “Abort” is a good term to search for to see why a crash happened, and from there you can pinpoint what the issue might be. Perhaps more important is the “Application Specific Information” section of a crash report, which is where you’ll get a slightly more specific diagnosis. In the MacIssues example, they found that a cache file was the culprit behind the crash, so it was pretty easy to troubleshoot the problem from there. If you have a program on OS X that’s crashing a lot and you simply can’t wait for the developer to respond to troubleshooting emails, being able to read that crash report is a useful skill. Head over to MacIssues for a nice overview of what you’ll want to look for.
Using the OS X crash reporter to diagnose a program failure | MacIssues
via Lifehacker
What to Look for in OS X Crash Reporter When Diagnosing a Crash
Funny, bloody action flick pits a killing machine against a telekinetic Russian gangster.
via Ars Technica
Review: Hardcore Henry is the crazy cyborg beatdown movie you always wanted
Twenty six hundred years ago, a band of Judahite soldiers kept watch on their kingdom’s southern border in the final days before Jerusalem was sacked by Nebuchadnezzar. They left behind numerous inscriptions—and now, a groundbreaking digital analysis has revealed how many writers penned them. The research and innovative technology behind it stand to teach us about the origins of the Bible itself.
“It’s well understood that the Bible was not composed in real time but was probably written and edited later,” Arie Shaus, a mathematician at Tel Aviv University told Gizmodo. “The question is, when exactly?”
Shaus is one of several mathematicians and archaeologists trying to broach that question in a radical manner: by using machine learning tools to determine how many people were literate in ancient times. Their first major analysis, which appears today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, suggests that the ability to read and write was widespread throughout the Kingdom of Judah, setting the stage for the compilation of Biblical texts.
Although parts of this conclusion remain controversial, the technology behind the study could revolutionize our understanding of literacy and education in Biblical times.
Most scholars agree that the earliest Biblical texts—including the Book of Joshua, Judges, and the two Books of Kings—took shape during what’s known as the late First Temple Period, before Jerusalem fell to the Babylonian king in 586 BCE. But the circumstances surrounding the writing of these texts, including when they were first penned and by how many authors, remain unclear. Curiously enough, texts that have nothing to do with the Bible may shed light on the matter.
For instance, during this time period people wrote a wide variety of information down on ceramic pottery shards called ostraca. “These texts are very mundane in nature,” Shaus said, citing military commands and supply orders as some of the more popular topics of discussion.
Aside from how much wine Judahite soldiers required, however, there’s another layer of information we can extract from ostraca: how many people knew how to write. That’s exactly what Shaus and his colleagues did, analyzing a group of 16 well-preserved ceramic shards from a remote military fortress located near the southern border of Judah. Most of these ostraca date to around 600 BCE, practically the eve of the kingdom’s fall.
The first step of this analysis involved the researchers using novel image processing tools to restore characters that had been partially rubbed away. They then developed machine learning algorithms that could compare and contrast the shape of the ancient Hebrew characters in order to identify statistically distinct handwritings. In principle, this is similar to the algorithms tech companies use for digital signature detection.
“Handwriting analysis is a big area that’s seen a lot of research in recent years,” Shaus said. “Nevertheless, we had to develop our own tools and this was quite challenging. The medium is very deteriorated and so is the writing.”
Eventually, the team devised a handwriting recognition tool that worked beautifully on modern Hebrew, and they decided to put it to the test on ancient inscriptions. All in all, their analysis revealed at least six different authors behind the 16 ostraca. Examining the contents of the text itself, the researchers concluded that these authors spanned the entire military chain of command. “The commander down to the lowest water master could all communicate in writing,” Shaus said. “This was an extremely surprising result.”
It’s a result that the researchers say points to a “proliferation of literacy” throughout Judahite society by 600 BCE, implying that the educational infrastructure to support Bible writing almost certainly existed.
But not everyone is comfortable with all aspects of this conclusion.
“This is a highly innovative and important study,” Christopher Rollston, an expert on archaeology and Bible studies at George Washington University told Gizmodo, noting that there’s ample archaeological evidence portions of the Bible were written as early as 800 BCE. But who was really able to write at that time?
“I think that literacy was confined to elites, basically scribes, high military officials, and priests,” Rollston said, adding that by the late First Temple Period, it’s possible reading and writing had spread to more of this upper class.
Perhaps the most important aspect of Shaus’ work is the introduction of sophisticated image recognition technology to the study of ancient texts. The Tel Aviv research group is keen to share their tools for reconstructing letters and deciphering handwriting with other archaeologists. By applying these methods more broadly, we might be able to hone in on when, where, and by whom history’s most enduring book was first written down.
“We’re bringing new evidence to the game,” Shaus said. “Now, we’ll see what else comes out.”
via Gizmodo
Artificial Intelligence Sheds New Light on the Origins of the Bible
So, the Rogue One trailer hit the web earlier this week, and it looks awesome. There’s all the hallmarks of the original trilogy, on a war footing, and that means plenty of Original trilogy stormtroopers.
We’ve already spent some time poring over it frame by frame, but I want to look closely at one thing: the armor those troopers are wearing, and what it means for anyone looking to construct a replica costume from the film.
From a costuming and armor perspective, Rogue One is going to be pretty exciting, because the original Stormtrooper armor is an iconic element of the Star Wars universe. For those of us who own Stormtrooper armor already (as opposed to armor from The Force Awakens or The Clone Wars), it’s giving it a new lease on life, especially in front of a generation that’s only seen The Force Awakens.
So, if you’ve built stormtrooper armor in the past, or if you followed my Stormtrooper build this past winter, you might have approached the trailer a little differently, at least on the third or fourth viewings. I wanted to take a close look at the stormtroopers used in this film to see how much they’ve changed since we last saw them on the big screen in 1983.
Stormtrooper armor changes in each Star Wars film: A New Hope troopers have grey frowns and trapezoidal handplates. Empire Strikes Back troopers have curved handplates, black frowns. Return of the Jedi troopers featured new helmet molds, trim around the chest plate, and a couple of other minor differences – all differences that came down to the production design of each film.
When we saw the first pictures from Rogue One in August of last year, we could tell that these troopers would have some small differences. Now that we have our first look at them, we can start to parse out what those differences are.
And, there are differences.
Here’s our first glimpse of the troopers, and we can see that they’re pretty much similar to the ones that we see in A New Hope. The helmet sports the same grey frown, and most of the parts look pretty similar. You can see that the napping trooper’s handplate is trapezoidal, which matches ANH’s troopers.
This makes sense, because the film takes place just before that film, and logically, the troopers would carry over a similar appearance.
Here’s the next shot, with Jyn Erso beating the crap out of an unlucky squad. Take a look at the guy on the ground, and you’ll see some interesting things with his set of armor. Undoubtably, these are ‘stunt’ suits, designed for on-screen action, as opposed to ‘hero’ suits, used for closeups.
There’s two things that I noticed from here:
The lack of connectors on the legs makes a bit of sense: the original stormtroopers were haphazardly put together, and if you look closely in ANH, you can see tape holding them shut, or just free floating.
The chest thing is new, though. Some costumers use elastic to hold those two parts together in early stormtrooper costumes, but it’s become far less common in recent years.
The next shot gives us a good look at the back of the armor, and you can pick out a couple of big differences. The kidney plate looks like it’s composed of more than one piece, like they have a plastic plate holding two sides together. The original was molded like that, but this looks like it’s a completely different part. (This is sort of how the TFA armor was assembled)
The other interesting thing here? It looks like the belts aren’t made of canvas, but of the same plastic that makes up the armor. That’s a pretty big change. An early fan sculpted kit known as FX Armor had extra strips of plastic that costumers used for belts – it was riveted to the belt’s front piece and connected with Vecro in in the back. This looks like it could be a similar setup. It makes a certain amount of sense: canvas sags a bit, and if you don’t match the color correctly, it looks strange. If your troopers are moving around a lot, you probably want that as solid as possible.
Other details: the mold on the back plate is sharp, better than some of the fan kits that I’ve seen. The shoulder straps look like they’re firmly connected from front to back plates, which is a minor (but again, completely logical change from the originals), while the details on the detonator look a bit more pronounced.
You can also see that the backs of the thighs are still splitting open on both of those troopers.
Poor troopers. There’s not much to see here, other than to see just what these actors were put through in the film. You certainly don’t want someone’s armor flying off on set.
One interesting thing here is the knees on the guy in the air: there’s a lot of black showing. Either this guy is a bit taller, or they’ve given them a bit more space to move around.
Now, here’s our first good glimpse of the front. One thing I haven’t noticed in ANY of these pictures is a holster, even though they’re carrying the usual E-11 blaster or a much larger rifle.
This shot shows off some more detail. Look again at the knees of that guy in front: there’s a good amount of space there, and on the left knee, the sniper plate is really far down, which leads me to think that these suits are designed for quite a bit more movement than we’ve seen troopers require in the past. Wearing this armor is tough for movement: if you don’t build your suit right, it’s hard to bend your knees and arms.
The belt boxes also look different – they look longer, and placed a bit further away from the front than the original troopers. There’s also a weird line on the side (which we’ll see clearer in a bit.)
The cool thing about this picture? Variant trooper! During the Clone Wars tv series, Clone variants were a dime a dozen when it came to weird helmets and colors, and it looks like that’s extending over a bit to these guys on the tank: They’ve got a grey or blueish paint over their shoulders, and they’ve got a thing on their forehead. I’m sure we’ll get a better view of them when the toys start coming out.
Here’s another variant: an officer of some sort, looking much like one of the Sand troopers. He’s got a canvas-covered backpack with an antenna sticking out the back.
Also, a shout out to the Rebel Legion: they’re going to have a field day with all the new pilots and rebel officers coming in this movie. We in the 501st particularly like the ‘captured pilot’ look.
Back to the troopers – the guy with the red pauldron also has a canvas pack. The original sandtroopers just had plastic backbacks cobbled together from – I kid you not – tupperware.
Quick shot of the troopers running, which is probably why the armor’s designed the way it is: for movement. The trooper armor from ANH/ESB/ROTJ are notoriously hard to run or sit down in.
Also, there’s a glimpse of that tan trooper that is new. It’s hard to make out any detail (although a picture of the helmet surfaced a while ago), but they look quite a bit like Scout Troopers.
Here’s where we get our first really good look at the sides of this trooper. There’s some real differences here.
Where the Abs and Kidney plates are two separate parts in the original troopers, there’s either something connecting the two together, or the abs plate is one part that wraps around the actor. I’m not quite sure what to make of that line – it’s either something that’s holding up the belt, or its a seam (which is a weird one). We’ll have to wait until we get another, closer look to understand how that comes together.
It also looks like the butt plate on the trooper closest to us is a separate part from the kidney plate.
Another angle from that scene, and you can see a really thick connector between the back and abs plate. You can also see that the belt connects on the side, and that it really looks like it’s plastic. I’m also really thinking that that back kidney plate is more than one part.
This also gives us a good look at the shoulder straps in the back: There’s a triangle-ish thing connecting them which is completely new.
The trailer also gave us a good glimpse of the new special-ops type troopers. New helmet (which we’ve seen), but also some looks at the armor. They seem to have some sort of black pauldron and an ammo pack on their shoulders.
Back in February, I posted up a picture of what had been purported to be the new armor for these guys, which was basically the new helmet on top of regular, black stormtrooper armor. Now that we have a good look here, we can see that that’s certainly not the case. Every piece that I can see is really different: the shoulders, upper arms and forearms. To me, it looks really similar to the Republic Commando armor from the old video game.
Plus, they’ve got some some wicked looking guns. Again, we’ll likely get a really good look when the toys start to come out, and in other trailers.
So, what’s to make of all this, other than analyzing the trailer frame by frame again? There’s a couple of takeaways for costumers here.
For costumers like me and members of the 501st Legion, these troopers is another change that we can take a look into and deconstruct to make ourselves. The costuming community prides itself on going super accurate, and this represents a couple of new challenges to figure out. I have mixed feelings on the super accurate depictions, but I think that knowing the differences and looking at the different costumes with that level of detail only helps the final product.
With companies such as ANOVOS selling off-the-shelf kits, stormtrooper armor is getting really easy to purchase, and you’re going to see more of them at conventions and the like.
Is this enough to start building an RO Trooper? Maybe, but there’s still not a whole lot to go on. This is also just the first trailer for a movie coming out months from now: there’ll be plenty of other trailers to pore over before it hits theaters, and we’ll likely learn some other new things from those.
One thing is for sure: anyone who’s picked up a Stormtrooper kit will have a lot of fun on opening night at their local movie theater.
via Gizmodo
So You Want To Join The Empire: What We Learned About Those Rogue One Troopers in 13 Pictures