Russia building an Amusement Park of Doom -- For Real.

Patriot Park is the world's first military themed amusement park, a sprawling, 5,5000 hectare, $363 million dollar installation being built outside Moscow.

Now this is what I'm talking about: an amusement park with enough heavy weaponry to really bring the doom.

Over 5000 military designs to choose from. As Foxtrot Alpha notes, there's even a motocross.

What could possibly go wrong?

And... it's coming.

Fallout Four.

Inspired: Tank in a tennis match

This is too funny. Love the last line.

It's so good I hesitate to point out that the M1-Abrams was not a WWII tank and didn't enter service until 1980. But like Slartibardfasts name, that is not important...

Jurassic World: Dumbed Down Amusement Park of Doom

Dinosaurs. Amusement Park. Tourists. Disaster.

Jurassic World has them all.

Naturally, I had to see it.

I'm a fan of both Michael Crichton's original book and the first film. Crichton was a smart cookie, with an incredible imagination and insatiable curiosity. He dove into multiple fields, from economics to genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and the airline industry. Then he concocted stories around what he'd learned. Every book has an aside where the characters will slip into essay mode:

Bob and Ted take cover as the mysterious gunmen close in. Bullets ricochet off crates.

Bob: Dammit! Why are they trying to kill us over this DNA sample?

Ted: Well, Bob, it all started back in the 1970s, when biologists Allan M. Maxam and Walter Gilbert…

But he made it interesting.

Some people can't stand that sort of thing, and understandably so. I always found the background info he slipped in fascinating, and the story sugar coated the pill. He may not have gotten everything right (there's a lot of controversy around his book tackling climate change; he did have a contrarian streak) all the time, but he was never dull.

Even though Crichton had nothing to do with the film, I still had high hopes for Jurassic World. Surely they'd be able to build off his solid, high concept foundations.

The beginning of the movie holds much promise, and the loving Peter Jackson-esque pans over the park get your hopes up for the disaster to come. There are unquestionably great action sequences when it does: you can especially look forward to a rolling glass ball with the soft chewy children centre.

Some of the characters are annoying, true, but that's just makes it all the better when they're eaten.

Unfortunately the final act unravels into outright farce.

Chris Pratt plays Owen Grady, the affable yet bad-ass Raptor Whisperer. He's got an easy going charisma that could easily carry an iconic character like Indiana Jones. Pratt's on his way to being a full fledged Movie Star, someone who can put butts in seats just by showing up on the screen. He doesn't need to act so much as show up and be himself, like Harrison Ford and Arnold have done to great box office effect.

The other actors are okay, but their roles don't give them many opportunities to shine. The billionaire owner of the Park, Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan) was interesting, but his role gets cut short. I wanted to see more of his eccentric Indian billionaire helicopter pilot cowboy, but sadly it wasn't to be.

In a call out to the earlier films, B. D. Wong returns as a shifty scientist who's gone bad and sold out. He should know that's dangerous, given Newman's unpleasant fate, but greed can override common sense, particularly if it helps set up a sequel.

Bryce Dallas Howard plays Claire Dearing, the uptight park manager, who initially clashes with the laid back Owen. The frisson predictably leads in a romantic direction. Claire is a buttoned down exec type who likes life itemized on a ledger, but she soon finds herself with more than budget issues on her plate. She rises to the action occasion, which is great, but in one of the key scenes of the film, she prioritizes fashion over being practical. It's like self-preservation lost out to Manolo's.

It was an unintentionally jaw dropping moment, and not in a 'wow, those look like real dinosaurs' kind of way.

The film tries to flesh out Claire's character by throwing in her two nephews (someone and another kid), who do double duty as McGuffins that must be rescued. We get to see that Claire cares. Sort of. After a bit and mostly because we need Claire to get down into the jungle and out of the air conditioned control room, which is a boring place with lots of screens and comfortable chairs and nerds.

Claire dragoons Owen to the task, because he's Mr. Great Outdoors, and our odd couple set off across dino island to find The Lost Boys. It reminded me briefly of The African Queen for some strange reason, but Humphrey Boggart and Katharine Hepburn they are not.

Worse, Vincent D'Onofrio shows up as Hoskins, a villainous representative of the military-industrial complex angling to weaponize velociraptors. He's all sneers and scenery chewing, so obviously evil he's got a goatee. D'Onofrio does it well (he's a very good actor) but the evil plan he's been saddled with by the writers makes no sense at all. None. Zero. Nada. Honestly, it's one of the stupidest plans I've ever seen in a movie. He's going to use the raptors as weapons, you see. Just release them and hope they'll go after the deadliest predator on the island rather than the thousands of soft, yummy tourists.

I kid you not.

The 'plan' (sort like the Cylons had a plan) depends entirely on wishful thinking, as Hoskins has no means of controlling the beasts without the help of Owen, Chris Pratt's dino-whisperer. Owen is essential to the plan, but that doesn't stop Hoskins from threatening to proceed, with or without the guy.

Hoskins just has the worst people management skills. He needs to watch some HR videos.

If only Owen had said no. What would Hoskins have done but blubber and beg? He should have called Hoskin's bluff, but then, he's an action man and not the brightest bulb in the box. But he does empathize with the raptor urge to… unh unh, yeah baby. This emotional connection to our proto-terror birds, being recognized as the raptor Alpha, is key to the film's climax, in which Owen must out macho Indominus.

Fortunately, the evil, genetically engineered megaraptor, Indominus Rex, is much smarter than the bumbling, corpulent Hoskins. And most of the other humans on the island. As an effective, relatively competent villain, Indomo wrecks havoc all over the park, threatening the lives of all twenty-thousand tourists who are packed into Isla Nubar's posh resort.

Yum yum.

Be a good time for the smarter tourists to start moving inward, towards the center of the crowd. After all, Indomo is likely to be full after the first hundred tourists or so, right? Just how many people can it and a half-dozen escaped velociraptors eat?

The director, Colin Trevorrow, said in interviews that he wanted the dinosaurs to act like real animals, not cartoon monsters. Quelle surprise! I had no idea, as he has well-fed winged dinos (or near enough to dinos) go on a crazed orgy of violence against hapless tourists. Why? Because cool action sequence!

And it was.

Although I have to mention that one poor soul is treated to the most outlandishly elongated death sequence I've ever seen, and all to no end. This sort of thing is usually reserved for the worst of the worst villains. It didn't justify anything, paid nothing back, and offered no comeuppance. It was just gleeful indulgence in the sadistic torture and killing of an utterly hapless person for the purpose of our entertainment. Hey, I'm down with that, I watch plenty of violence on screen, but this was just weird.

Which brings us to the final act. Turn off your brain before it begins, because it's utterly preposterous.

Yes, I know, we're not supposed to demand sense from a movie about an amusement park filled with genetically engineered dinosaurs. I get it. People have analyzed the costs, and the economics of such a park just wouldn't work out. It's silly to begin with. Honestly, though, my standards really aren't that high for logic. But there were just too many blackboard scratching moments that took me out of the movie.

If you engage your inner eleven year old and suspend disbelief, you'll likely enjoy this action packed summer blockbuster. But be forewarned: there are speed bumps for your brain. Script logic hiccups. If you don't turn off your noggin', you'll start asking questions and won't be able to stop.

It didn't have to be like that.

The first movie proved you could have a smart script and dinosaurs in the same movie. The IQ of the series dropped with each outing. The first one had chaos theory and amber and DNA extraction and cleverness up the whazoo. What does this one have? Hackneyed ideas of weaponized raptors with no control mechanisms, a clunky plot, and characters so smart they run from T-Rex's wearing high heels.

They could have had electrical implants in the heads of the raptors, stimulating nerves to control their behaviour. Scientists are already doing this sort of experimentation with insects, using impulses to direct the bugs left and right. Crichton even wrote about controlling human behavior with implants in The Terminal Man. So it's not like a more sensible, logical, compelling foundation couldn't have been laid if they'd bothered. It'd be smarter, more interesting, and add another angle to the franchise.

Whatever.

Programmed… for Death!

io9 has an article about how organisms are programmed to age and die as an evolutionary adaptation.

One of the researchers, Bar-Yam, believes that this aging process may be reversed. From what I've read, however, this is highly unlikely ('all the low hanging fruit have been picked'), but it's certainly an interesting idea.

Life extension always reminds me of Isaac Asimov, who described a struggle between long lived, risk adverse Spacers and their more numerous, shorter lived, breeder adversaries, known as the Settlers, in his Robot novels. The robots, naturally, were produced by the aloof, elitist Spacers, who needed manpower. Rather than opening up their perfectly ordered new worlds to immigration and letting in the teeming masses from the overcrowded, dying earth, they made synthetic laborers.

It's a fascinating series, and later in life he connected it to Foundation.

As we see demographic transition accelerate and life extension technology becomes a reality, will the world split into fecund, short lived societies and long lived, sterile immortal ones? Or will it be class based? Isn't that the dream of every despot? To rule for all eternity, forever on top, with disposable masses crushed beneath. Which just reminds me of Stargate.

One thing Asimov showed quite well is how changes in one area (say, life span) will affect many others. He was a writer who explored consequences.

Game of Thrones: The Mother's Mercy Review

Season Five ended on a high. At the top of a cliff. Or rather dangling from one.

It's all about revenge.

Brienne finally had hers: she executes 'King' Stannis to avenge the death of Renly Baratheon, whom she was sworn to protect. It restores her personal honor and lets poor Renly rest easy.

At the same time, her revenge drove her to kill the one man capable (supposedly) of saving the world. So there is, or was, a potential, possible down side. A world destroying biggie of a down side, really, had the prophecy not been bogus. And she missed out on saving Sansa, which was more important, as Stannis would have just frozen to death anyway.

Fortunately Sansa's got agency of her own.

I must admit I thought Stannis' final fall would be dragged out over a few more episodes, during which he'd become increasingly disillusioned and demented before being ignominiously decapitated.

But like Stannis, the show runners felt the need to keep… pushing… forward.

His end resolves the moral dilemma presented by the prophecy promoted by Melisandra, that Stannis, being the one true king, was the only one who could save the world from the White Walkers, and because of that, human sacrifice was justified.

That meant the 'good guys' who were going to save the world were justified in burning heretics alive and sacrificing little kids. After all, magic worked. It wasn't just loony superstition. In Martin's fantasy world, the Carthaginians would have been right to burn kids alive to guarantee victory over Rome.

Except it doesn't work.

Not in the real world, and apparently not in the fantasy world either.

If it did, well, again, there's the moral dilemma. What lessons do you draw from a show that endorses human sacrifice? Sure, it's a fantasy world, but part of the reason we tell stories is to illustrate how to live a good life.

We learn from stories.

Having Stannis victorious after sacrificing Shireen, indeed, BECAUSE of sacrificing her, would be rather problematic, even for a cable show. People would go, 'ew'.

Even within the fantasy world, the burning seems to have freaked out his sell swords, who deserted Stannis, taking all the horses. Realization finally hits Mel in the face: this guy is a loser. She quickly abandoned ship, leaving Stannis to lead his soldiers to their inevitable deaths.

Nasty.

A colossal waste of manpower and lives.

Stannis' final battle was utterly pointless, an exercise in form, a front. Good manners. Doing his duty mattered more than the life of his daughter, his soldiers, or even his own.

It is possible Stannis is still alive, of course, as the final blow was not shown. Why she'd refrain from killing him I don't know, given how she'd sworn on her honor to do so, but it would serve as a nice opposite to Arya's indulgence in sadism. Martin likes to juxtapose things, both themes and characters, so having one chose the higher path while the other takes the low road would make sense. Think Varys vs. Littlefinger, Cersei vs. Ned, Thorne vs. Jon, Mel vs. Onion, and Slave Owner Dude vs. Danny.

I'm just not sure it would make sense for Brienne in this situation.

So the new question is: where does Melisandra go from here? It's now evident that Stannis' death, perhaps his whole journey, is a learning point for her. It may instigate character growth. That or she's soon for the grave as well.

She's the one who pushed Stannis to burn people alive. She promised he'd win the throne.

And she was dead wrong.

It says something about the nature of magic in the World of Westeros. Spells may work, but prophecies are still written by lawyers. What you think you're getting is not what you really get.

What was the fine print at the bottom of all her fire visions? Was she simply so blinded by her own biases, her own faith in Stannis, that she ignored her god's message? Or is her god wrong? Is she a false prophet?

Where Stannis was always riven by doubt, she was certain. Now, she's been shaken.

I suspect that we'll see her team up now with Jon Snow. As a priestess, she can bring people back from the dead, and she needs that hero to save the world.

But if she does, she may find that Jon Snow is not as willing to compromise his morals when it comes to burning people alive.

Martin has to be given a lot of credit for zigging when people think he'll zag. Just when we think a story line will be wrapped up with a nice moral bow, he reverses, has the 'hero' beheaded, and the world thrown into chaos.

He does this just enough that, honestly, I don't feel I can predict which way things in the show will go. I knew Stannis would come to a dark end, but given all the prophecy stuff, thought he'd be at least around to meet the White Walkers. Of all the leaders in Westeros, he's the only one taking the threat seriously. Or even really aware of it.

The death of Jon Snow, betrayed by the short sighted Night's Watch, was a real jab to the heart. He was our leading man in the North, our young Santa Claus, the action man capable of fighting off the Walkers and Wights. His death leaves too big a hole in the show, and as such, I suspect he'll be back, either Berric Dondarian style, or like The Mountain. I suspect more like Berric, as The Mountain looks like he's pretty gross under that helmet, and it would dash Jon's sex appeal.

But the Night's Watch have really hobbled themselves with this one. Jon was a good leader, and he'd brought in the Wildlings to help resist the Walkers. Even killed one. Who will be liaison now between the two groups? Who can get them to cooperate, who isn't dead? To fulfill their anger, to sate their hate, they've slit their own throats.

That's the price of their revenge.

I'm not too concerned: Jon Snow will be back.

When Jamie and his neice/daughter left Dorne, you knew the instant she was given a kiss on the lips that she was doomed. Poisoned. I'd have thought they'd turn the ship around straight away for the antidote. You'd think the young prince would keep some on himself at all times, given how obsessed these Dorne nobles are with poisoning people. They seem to do it all the time, for kicks. They probably poison their sibling's birthday cakes, then give the antidote as a present.

You know, for fun.

As it is, the young prince is likely headed off into captivity, as a hostage for the Lannisters.

So her revenge will beget further revenge, and two nations will be plunged into war, just when everyone has to unite to oppose the Walkers, all because people are so consumed with anger and hate they can't see past it.

How ruinous revenge often is.

Arya's revenge upon Meryn Trant was initially satisfying, given he was a real monster, but as it went on, it became uglier and uglier. There's something dehumanizing about it, and how far Arya was willing to go. Not good for the soul to embrace hate so close. Still, you can entirely understand why she did it, that she had very good reasons for doing so, and that his death was deserved, even if the manner of it was, well, pretty horrible.

It was the way Joffrey deserved to go.

Be careful what you wish for. When we finally got a harsh punishment for a nasty piece of work, it has a vile after taste.

I suspect Arya will be descending into even darker places unless her blindness and the belief her actions almost got Jaqen killed brings her back from the brink. She's got more lessons to learn.



Cersei's walk of shame is undoubtably going to lead to a great big orgiastic feast of revenge. At least, I expect her to make a damn good try of it. She's going to be out for the High Sparrow's head, along with half the city. Especially with her undead Mountain as enforcer. I don't expect Tommen to survive it all. That hapless, sweet little kid isn't long for this world, thanks largely to the machinations of his mother. Cersei's flaws, one way or another, will be the cause of his death. Will she recognize the irony? Probably not.

Was her walk of shame the god's revenge for her impious actions? Can her punishment even be described as revenge, or should it be seen as medieval justice? Karma? Where do you draw the line?

At Winterfell, Theon/Reek grows some virtual balls and saves Sansa from that nasty little stable girl, Myranda, who wants revenge upon Sansa for muscling in on her hawt sadomasochistic Ramsay action. She goes spinning over the rail and meets swift justice at the hands of a paving stone.

Yay paving stone!

Then Sansa and Reek are off jumping into snow banks. I hope there's nothing sharp under all that fluffy white stuff.

If they're caught by Ramsay, well, there'll be more revenge to be meted out. Season long torture porn revenge. Maybe two seasons worth if he's really pissed.

It's one of the wheels that keeps Westeros spinning.

As much fun as it is hating the guy, I hope he meets Mr. Paving Stone soon.

Now it's back to the post-apocalypse, at least until next year.

Game of Thrones: A Dance of Dragons

Stannis goes The Full Evil, and Danerys has a Kodak moment.

Both of these leaders have been struggling to balance their personal beliefs with the harsh demands of ruling the unruly.

Stannis, the stickler, often inflicts harsh punishments for crimes, and does so with unwavering certainty and not a jot of mercy.

He's also a grammar Nazi.

He's been chucking his morals away ever since he met Melissandre, who brings out the brother-killing-heathen-frying worst in him.

The Onion Knight, the angel of his better nature, finally lost the fight for Stannis' soul last night.

Heaven help anyone who uses improper conjugation now.

His character has been struggling between light and dark for several seasons now, and he's been frequently leaning dark. Certainly more than his closest rival, Danerys.

Speaking of whom, she soared last night.

Literally.

She climbed atop the back of her dragon and left her friends in the dust, to be murdered by the Harpies. Just kidding. I'm sure they're okay, even in the high casualty world of GoT.

Danny abolished slavery and imprisoned two of her dragons to prevent them from snacking on shepherd kids, but for the sake of social stability opened up the fighting pits again. She's trying to go along to get along, condoning and presiding over people hacking each other to death for her amusement, which repulses her.

That reaction would sadly have been atypical in the period we're looking at. Cruelty, torture, and violence were extremely common and accepted back then. People flocked to the Coloseum to see gladiators butcher each other, and animals tear criminals to pieces. Such games were enormously popular, and wouldn't be abandoned until the Christian movement began to take hold late in the era of the Roman Empire. Understandably so, as the Christians were often unwilling participants in the arena. By the time the more violent games were shut down, historian Matthew White estimates some 3.5 million people had died for amusement's sake.

And people criticize video games.

G.R.R. Martin is well versed in history and myth, so there's precedent for much of what we see in Game of Thrones. Agamemnon sacrificed a daughter on the way to Troy. Royal brothers frequently murdered each other, just as Stannis had Renly killed.

All the sadism we're seeing is a part of human history, and we do a disservice to our modern times by forgetting how far we've come. If anything, Martin and HBO are holding back.

Thankfully they didn't actually show footage of Shireen going up in flames.

Surprisingly, it was her religious fanatic mother who broke down and tried to intervene.

Burning people at the stake repulses us, as viewers. A thousand years ago, it was a form of entertainment. People would bring their kids to watch people being burned or drawn and quartered.

Stannis has a tragic aspect, like Shakespeare's MacBeth. He's a man who started out with potential, and a conscience, and let it whittle away.

There's no going back now. He's done. Committed to the dark side. Dead in the hearts of the audience.

He's going to come to a very bad end.

Too bad he's not Anakin Skywalker. That guy was forgiven for slaughtering younglings and worse.

Danny, on the other hand, still has potential. Paired with Tyrion, we're looking at Team Projection. These two are the ones our modern sensibilities map onto best, and they, along with Jon Snow, will be the ones who drive the show home and win the day. Everyone else is expendable. Except maybe Bran, who's busy turning into a tree. Don't ask.

What interests me now is the horrible moral calculus going on. Mel insists that only Stannis can stop the White Walkers. Since he must triumph to save humanity, any sacrifice to that end is justifiable, or so she would claim

Of course, that's the excuse that every fanatic uses. 'My cause is just so I can commit any sin I like.'

It's for truth and justice and the Westeros way, after all.

Is Martin going to pull the rug out from under this narrative?

We know the Lord of Light, or something, bestows power upon Mel and that drunk priest who's always resurrecting the poor guy who's always being hacked to bits by the Clegane Clan.

Is Rhulor or Ruhlyr or whatever it's called really the one true god, or just another supernatural dick who's yanking humanity's chain around, like the White Walkers are? Are we just looking at two adolescent gods who happen to be jerks?

Wasn't that a Star Trek episode?

I know Danny will be there for the final battle, along with Tyrion and Jon Snow. Even that significant touch by Jorah, the absent minded douche, will not stop her from attending.

I doubt Stannis will, but if he does, he'll die there.

The most interesting question to me, as far as Stan and Mel are concerned, is the validity of her prophecy: is Stan really necessary to stop the Walkers, is all of it a lie? Did he kill all those people for nothing?