Whether you’re atheist, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Muslim, liberal, conservative, republican, democrat, communist or any other faith or ideology, I wish you all the merriest Christmas and the happiest new year.
Peter Jackson will do it after all!
I used to enjoy computer games. Having a small child means time becomes a lot more valuable, and one of the casualties for me was the gaming. I’m still interested in the gaming industry though, so some announcements catch my attention.
One of the problems I always had with games which try to present a reality containing actual humans was that the humans never looked quite right. That lack of rightness had a fundamental psychological effect which made it difficult to believe in the characters you were seeing. This isn’t just a problem in gaming; animated movies have the same problem, which is why the more successful computer animated movies are those that don’t have too many humans, or that make the human characters ‘cartoony’.
For example, Polar Express was a good movie, but it tried too hard to make the human characters look really human, and it didn’t quite work. The animated Tom Hanks just looked slightly wrong.
What I didn’t know until today was that this phenomenon has a name. It’s been called the “uncanny valley”, the point where human likeness is almost, but not quite reached. And apparenty the valley has been bridged. According to the chief honcho at game developer Quantic Dream – “I can officially announce that there is no uncanny valley any more, not in real-time.”.
I’m skeptical until they release a demo, but it has to happen at some point.
In a recent interview with the BBC, Richard Dawkins defined himself as a “Cultural Christian”. In his terms this means he’s interested in Christian traditions such as Christmas carols but he doesn’t have the underlying belief.
So can you be a Christian atheist? I’m not so sure. It’s all a question of definitions, but in my mind a “Christian” is someone who believe that Jesus Christ was the son of god, and by implication that a god exists. Therefore, cultural or otherwise, I am not a Christian.
Being interested in a particular tradition does not immediately make you part of the belief system behind that tradition. Enjoying Christmas carols doesn’t make me a Christian, it just means I enjoy some of the music that was inspired by Christianity. I’m sure there are Buddhists who enjoy Sarah Maclachlan’s beautiful rendition of Silent Night, but they wouldn’t call themselves Buddhist Christians.
I love Christmas, but I’m not a Christian, Yom Kippur fascinates me but I’m not Jewish, I enjoy the festival of light but I’m not Hindu, I dress my son up at Halloween but I don’t believe in witches.
By calling himself a cultural Christian, Dawkins is effectively redefining the word Christian, or maybe creating a new definition when used in conjunction with the word cultural. Either way, it doesn’t sit quite right with me.
For many years now I’ve been asking people if they remember a cartoon show from the 70s with a dog who could turn invisible except for his hat and said “This is ridicalicalicalous”. Whenever I’ve talked about this people have looked at me like I’m crazy and nobody has remembered the show.
I finally found it while looking for something else on Wikipedia. The show was called Goober and the Ghost Chasers, and seemed to be a blatant rip-off of Scooby Doo. Here’s a video of the opening sequence.
I’m just glad the show exists and I’m not crazy.
This is going to be a rambling mish-mash kind of post, but it’s my blog and I can do what I want.
After around thirty eight centimetres of snow in three days, Montreal is in recovery mode. The streets are still a mess but the snow clearers are out spending seventeen million dollars on the cleanup operation. The fact that I almost never drive anywhere means I’ve been loving it. Truly a winter wonderland, and even now that the snow has started getting dirty it’s still prettier than bare streets. Even digging the car out twice was enjoyable in a very strenuous way. I must confess that I haven’t been walking to work though, mostly because I’ve had a cold but also because it’s very difficult to walk on uncleared sidewalks. Maybe I should get snowshoes…
For my wife, the snow came at a bad time, she had to take Aidan to two doctors’ appointments yesterday. I knew after driving in that mess she would be completely frazzled when she got home so I tidied the place up a bit, got the teacups ready and prepared Aidan a snacky supper. I also built a fire.
I love living in a place with a fireplace, and having a father-in-law who generously provides us with wood is an added bonus. The only problem is that unless we have the windows open, the smoke from the fire refuses to go up the chimney. This means we have a nice toasty fire going, but the cold air coming in through the windows negates it. We could close the doors on the fireplace but that sort of defeats the purpose. I obviously need to study the physics of chimneys.
So we spent the evening sitting in front of a nice fire, feeling slightly chilly and eating sushi. We should’ve been getting the house ready for Aidan’s birthday party at the weekend, but procrastination won yet again.