Inconsistency in one of my favourite films

I'm a total comic book buff. I immensely enjoy reading comic books, and enjoy films based on comic book super heroes even more. Of course, not all super heroes and not all films, but most.
One of my favourite series is the uncanny X-men. I love the concept and the characters. Of course, the storyline of who is/was/will be an Xman and who killed whom when and who became evil and who became good etc. is all lost on me. But the films they made based on the series were pretty neat.
I liked X2 in which magneto showed off his kick-ass power, and Scott Summers continued to retain the pussy wimp impression he created in part 1.
While watching the movie on the telly the other day, I noticed a glaring flaw in the precursor of one of my favourite sequences of the film. The sequence I am referring to is where Magneto extracts the liquid metal from the guard's blood (with one of my favourite dialogues - "There's something different about you today... what could it be? Too much iron in your blood!!"). Then in a blatant display of his awesome power, Magneto manipulates the small metal ball to totally destroy his prison and escape from there with consummate ease! In this scene Magneto also demonstrates his ability to sense metal in his vicinity.
The whole premise of the scene is that in magneto's prison, there are no metallic objects because in his vicinity, they will serve as instruments of his freedom (as it eventually turns out). Hence everybody is forced to pass the metal detector before entering, and other such precautions.
The precursor scene I am referring to, which totally deflated this great concept was where Magneto is interrogated by Col. William Stryker (the stout obnoxious goateed guy with halitosis no doubt!). Stryker is wearing metal framed glasses. I guess the metal detectors screwed up there eh? Also Stryker, who supposedly "designed" the metal-less prison, forgot the metal in his eye glass frame. But worst of all - Eric Lancsher, the famed and powerful Magneto himself, temporarily was unable to sense (or see for that matter) the metal that could have liberated him much much sooner.
What could be the reason? My guess is Stryker's halitosis. It must have a neurotoxic effect which mixes up sensory nerve input and confuses all beings in a 5 yard radius :)
Otherwise a nice enjoyable movie.

p.s. Another one of my favourite dialogues -
Pyro (to magneto) - They say you're the bad guy...
Magneto - Is that what they say?

more stupid TV adverts

There are levels of stupidity in adverts. Some are just mildly irritating, and you don't really mind them on the telly in small doses. But then there are those which are totally unbearable - they make you scramble madly for the remote control and desperately try to flip the channel to anything else.
On the channels I frequent nowadays, there's a couple of adverts that I just have to mention. One is for a brand of salty biscuits/crackers called 50-50. And boy oh boy is it's advert ever so stupid. For the life of me, I can't figure out what exactly is the connection between the advert and the product.

Here's the advert in short -
Typical Bollywood/South Indian film hero jumps in between damsel in distress and 2 goons obviously up to no good. He points a revolver at them and flips open the bullet compartment to discover there's one bullet. "One Bullettahhh!" he exclaims as the goons start laughing. He then smiles, flips a massively oversized razor blade hung in a chain around his neck, forth with the muzzle of his gun, and as the blade whips through the air, he fires the bullet at the blade. Bullet hits the edge of the blade, splits into 2, hits and kills 2 goons. Bog cheers from audience in the cinema! 2 bozos in the cinema exclaim "is this a cinema or a circus". Hero on the screen says "India bloe to 50-50 (translated to If it's India, it's 50-50)" takes tiny bites from 2 biscuits in his hands and that's the end of the advert.

Even writing about it here tested my restraint - to not scream out loud at how violated I feel for having so many precious minutes of my life wasted by watching such total irrelevant nonsense!

And the amazing part is that they can afford to show it innumerable times at primetime - it must cost them a bundle, surely. And not even once in the whole campaign (there have been related adverts of comparable levels of stupidity for the same product in the recent past) did I ever feel like buying the biscuits, and I wouldn't probably even try them if they were offered to me. In such cases I look at the bright side - somebody is getting rich in the ad agency :)

The other advert which has very climbed out of relative obscurity into the category of fingernails on the blackboard is that for a pizza chain called Somkin' Joe's.
This is the one which initiates my mad scramble for the remote control. It pisses me off if I don't get the remote in time for me to avoid the mindnumbingly irritating crap mini-jingle at the end - "smokin joes pizza - yum yum yum yum". If I don't get to the remote in time, I instinctively look for the ice-pick... to shove it through my eye into my brain.

This proves how dangerous it can be to have sadists in decision-making positions in ad agencies and brand management departments in big companies!

Define Life - expanding my understanding

In my previous posts, Define Life and Define Life - another perspective, I have talked about how life may exist in places we never looked for it before, perhaps even right before our very eyes. Recently I watched a talk at the Museum of Natural History in London, about the Drake equation. The Drake equation predicts the possibility of life existing in the universe at the moment, and of we discovering it. Making a few assumptions, it seems to predict that life does indeed exist in the universe, depending on the value of how many years it takes for a civilazation to discover and communicate using radio waves.
After the talk I spoke with the gentleman delivering the talk. I discussed my views and discovered one missing piece of the puzzle, which I had disregarded. One of the defining characteristics of life has to be the ability to reproduce itself. Ummm... that's probably what distinguishes us from a test tube filled with a slowly-reacting chemical mixture. Point acknowledged - it was not what I had considered earlier. Of course, does it mean that Mules, for example, or sterile worker bees are not alive as well? Probably not examples in the same league, I accept, but something to think about none-the-less.
Another aspect which we need to consider is limitations of perception. Apart from the fact that we would only be able to comprehend life existing in up to 3 dimensions, the question of time is also a relevant one. Does time pass really slowly for creatures with small life spans? And does time pass quickly for creatures with long life spans? For example, do protozoans, bacteria etc perveive things much quicker? Do flies see things moving more slowly than humans do? Is that why they are able to flay their wings at such an incredible rate? Is that why they are able to move out of the way before getting swatted?
Turning that on its head - are we unable to perceive some forms of life because our perception of the way the universe is changing is just not in sync with their lifecycles? Are we missing out on life forms that exist for only fractions of seconds and are gone before we can detect them? Ae we unable to detect life forms that change extremely slowly and therefore we don't notice even though they might be right before our eyes? To them, we possibly might be super-short-life-spanned beings which they don't even register. Imagine beings for whom thousands of years register only as a second. Impossible? Definitely possible, I think. No evidence... that's true. But possible? Yes.
More later...

the return of the blogger

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote. A major battle won, a full rush against a seemingly impregnable wall and a standstill. That's in short what happened over the past month and half.
The most concerning part - that of the future of my relationship has now been resolved for the better, and I am hopeful that this time it will be stronger for it.
The other part - that of me winning a way of sticking around this time, has not quite panned out the way I had wished. All my attempts to get work there were stymied by seemingly impassible layers of bureaucratic nonsense, sheer bad luck and perhaps a total lack of capability on my behalf.
Now I am back home after a month and a half away from work. And there's still no assured opportunity to get back to her. A few glimmers of hope still linger, as does the warmth radiated by the reassuring cushions of back-up plans.
At the moment, it looks likely that I will return to a place of a prior assignment in the UK rather soon. So keeping my digits juxtaposed in hope for it to work out that way.
Future posts will attempt to return to normalcy and more exploratory thoughts - a rather welcome change from the dredges of the mess that way my personal life in December and January.
Come back soon for a change of scenery and tone of my posts on this blog.