More Cephalopods!

So, I know I said I wouldn't do animal stuff for a while, but I had to pseudo-update the cephalopods section.

I recently started playing Crysis 2 on the PC, after having only played the first one for a short amount of time, and then, only in multiplayer. This time around, I started with the singleplayer. The story revolves around the "Post-Human Warriors" of the human race (easily identifiable by the suits they wear, the NanoSuit) fighting off at first enemies of the United States, and then, as the game progresses, aliens. Kinda. I'm still not sure if they're aliens from space or if they were previous inhabitants of earth who have been hibernating for many years.

NanoSuit 2.0. Quite nifty, eh?

The interesting thing about these aliens is that the various people you meet call them the Ceph. (See where this is going?) Before having seen one yet, or having it explained, I had entertained the idea in my head that they were cephalopods. Made it more fun for me. Little did I know, they actually are highly evolved versions of cephalopods, as the scientist you meet explains near the beginning of the game! Your fellow marines also call them "Squids" which I suppose is easier to shout than Ceph. Maybe a little more intimidating. But anyways, you spend most of the game saving New York City from Cephalopods! IT IS AWESOME!

This is a dead one. They gotz teh robot limbs! Also, he is now named Squishy. >>

Also, the game is quite fun, and the multiplayer is an improvement over the last one, so I suggest it to anyone. I understand the graphics to be better on the PC, but I don't know for sure. Just sayin', no xboxin on me.

Call of Duty 37: Where does it end?

For those of you who don't know, the newest installment in the Call of Duty series (the 8th, to be exact) is set to come out November of this year, and is titled Modern Warfare 3 (All the games in this series are usually reduced to their acronyms, in this case, MW3). This would make 3 years in a row that a new Call of Duty game has come out before the holiday season.

Normally, there would be a picture of the game here, but seeing as they haven't released that yet(probably not a good sign), and downloading a picture of a previous game was more effort than it was worth, you get a bird instead.

To be stated, games are typically expected to have at least a few years in between each other, for various reasons. Generally, releasing another sequel a year later implies that the game was rushed, probably simply a re-skinned version of the last game, that will probably leave the serious players of said series sadly disappointed.

Why would they release a game that was shoddily thrown together and makes all their serious fans consider suicide? Well, that's a complicated question with a complicated answer.

Money.

Okay, I guess that wasn't that complicated, but before you put on your hippy "evil corporations being evil" hats, let me explain a little. In recent years, particularly after the release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare(COD4), there has developed quite the different following behind the Call of Duty series. For lack of a better scientific term, I will use the socially recognized term, "Bro Movement". Thanks to this "Bro Movement," the companies making the games think that their games are still loved, when in reality, the people that will still play their games in a few years are now refering to the latest game, released last year, as Black (....). (The game is Call of Duty: Black Ops. Get creative with your rhyming, its a 4 letter word, you'll get it eventually.)

So, in short, the COD series has become a cool thing for everyone to enjoy. Which ruins video game quality.

                             For comedic relief, in between all my serious ranting.

Back to the corporations though. (Remember, still no hippy hats. Ever.) Now, if you aren't current on the Activision-Infinity Ward-Treyarch love triangle, just know for now that Treyarch isn't involved in MW3, which is a cause for rejoicing. However, Infinity Ward is "co-developing" the game with Sledgehammer. Nothing against Sledgehammer (mostly because this is the first time I've ever heard of them), but some speculation uncovers that this is probably just a show, both for legal reasons and to help sell the games.

I think that was all I had to rant about, good day to you all!

Also, for the record, I still play Call of Duty 4 on the computer, despite it being a dead game, thanks to 3 new titles that were far worse than it. I don't play any of the newer COD games anymore, unless I get desperately begged into getting xbox live again, then only MW2. No World at War or Black... yeah.

Ramblin' Man

Woah, I am long overdue to ramble about something. Fortunately, I don't bother to keep to a schedule, since no one reads it anyways, and that's way too cramping on my style!

So, for today, while the most readily available rant is that of the evilness of dolphins, the last post I made (in December) was about the slightly more evil cephalopods, so if anyone is reading sequentially, 2 animal rants in a row may be annoying. I don't want to scare myself away, after all. So, I'll just ramble aimlessly.

Less than Current Events
Woo! Go Egypt! Overthrowing a dictator can be difficult, but doing it with absolutely no blood shed whatsoever? Very impressive.

Wait, did I say "no blood shed"? I mean, really you guys? We were so proud...

If you didn't catch that last joke, visit this to learn more.

In related news, Ahmadinejad, "President" of Iran, said in a speech during the Egyptian revolution, that the Egyptian people should continue their struggle, because, paraphrasing, democracy is good, and so is freedom. Yes, the largest dictator in the Middle East, who, only a year and a half ago, forged election results to stay President and brutally put down riots over his forgery, told the Egyptian people that democracy and freedom are good.

Of course, not to be outdone, the Iranian people took to the streets to protest their dictator being in power after Egypt's success, and guess what? Not 24 hours after telling Egyptians to continue their struggle, he violently put down riots in his own country. Apparently, Democracy and Freedom are good ideals everywhere except Iran.

That looks long enough for me. I'll continue ranting at a later date, and eventually explain how dolphins are evil. Damn blowholes.
Also, if you found me interesting, give my friend Taylor a visit as well. He can be interesting, although he doesn't have pictures like I do!

NI!

Eh? Right? That's why I'm awesome. There also tends to be more pictures when I have a plan for a blog... so I'll have one before posting next time.

Cephalopods.

I'm here today to enlighten everyone to the first of many animals that people should be aware of.
Cephalopods.

Octopus! Terrifying Beast.

For those of you who don't know, Cephalopoda is a class in the phylum Mollusca that have adapted the normal molluscan characteristics to be hyper-lethal. Animals in this designation are octopuses, squid, cuttlefish, and nautiloids. In addition, cephies have large brains and well developed eyes, making them efficient hunters and killers.
To demonstrate how much they have evolved from their distant relative, the snail, I have a few diagrams.

Ignore the other lines. That'll teach Johnny...

 Notice on the clam the 3 main highlighted body parts. the Foot, which is used primarily for movement and digging through sand, the Mantle, which grows the shell and encases the body cavity, and the shell, which is to protect the snail.



Now, the squid. Being a cephalopod, squids have adapted the foot to be long tentacles with "suction cups" (the suction cups are also lined with tiny teeth for better grip) for catching prey. The mantle has been adapted for, get this, jet propulsion. More on that later.

Now you may be asking "Where's the shell on this?" For unknown reasons, mainly that it simply doesn't need a shell, the shell is either reduced  or eliminated from the anatomy entirely.


So, basically, these are mindless, intelligent, crazed killing machines. And jet power - they use JET PROPULSION. I mean, humans have only had jet-technology for 60 or so years. Cephies have had it for millions of years. Imagine how much they must have improved on it over this time. "Obviously, they can't fly through the air, or else we'd see them, right?" WRONG.
Active Camouflage.

Cephies have developed the ability to rapidly change the color of their skin to suit their immediate surroundings. While this primitive active camouflage may not be threatening, the idea of an intelligent being having millions of years to develop it is. If cephies have developed near-perfect invisibility, they could be flying around our world completely undetected. "But, hey, even if there is a super evolved form of a cuttlefish, we can prove that there isn't enough of them to be a significant threat, right? I mean, it's not like they have an army or anything..." Oh, voice of reason in my head, how stupid you are. Why do you think giant squid attack ships at sea? They're preparing their giant underlings for war.

One of the smaller giant squids.

 Not to mention they are already training the smaller cephalopods to destroy humanity. The octopus is ready to invade and destroy our food supplies by opening all our jars and infecting all our food!

Fuck yo' jar!

tl;dr, if you see a shimmer of light or if your neighbor looks suspiciously like a squid, don't be afraid to defend our world.

Nihilism

This post has been so long in the making, I almost forgot why I was doing it. I originally set out to gather a day's worth of evidence to settle a long standing argument that has come up, but I found the more I searched, the more information and debates spawned to be mulled over. Finally, after countless books read and countless philosophy professors consulted, I present the difference between nihilism and existential nihilism.
Nihlism is simply defined as "the philisophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more meaningful aspects of life." So, this can simply be the rejection of validity of any set standard or system. For instance, believing that there is no morality and that it can not be inherently right or wrong to commit a crime is moral nihilism. This also works in multiple other forms, including politcal nihilism, an entirely different concept altogether.
When the word "nihilism" is uttered, it is most often assumed to mean existential nihilism, which is the belief that, effectively, there is no meaning to life whatsoever.
These two are NOT the same.
Nihilism is not the belief that there is no meaning to life. But, the belief that there is no meaning to life is a form of nihilism. Just like Protestantism and Catholicism are forms of Christianity, but Christianity is NOT Protestantism.
On that note, if someone is inquiring as to your religion and you answer "Christian" but, upon being asked if Catholic or Protestant, you respond "No, I'm a Christian," I feel as if I have the right to be annoyed.
I digress, the point of this all being, if I say the words "moral nihilist" and someone tells me that's incorrect, I will gladly give the 132 pages of resources and notes that explain the exact difference.

Pop music will kill our culture.

A few months back, the interwebs were a' twitterin' about a possible quote from Justin Bieber, where in the pop star states; "I feel like the Kurt Cobain of my generation, but people just don't understand me." To start off with, what a remarkably stupid comment to make, especially for a pop star. Here are a few examples of where I believe they both are the same;

1.  They are both Pisces.
2.  Both have recorded music.
3.  They both died young.
4.  ???
5.  Profit.

Now of course, I was forced to avoid obvious similarities, such as both have 2 eyes. We don't need the list any longer, now do we?
 Now is a good time to point out that this quote is probably not true, and simply made up by the Bieber Report, what I believe is a Justin Bieber fan magazine/article/thing.

Oh, and scratch the third point, that is only tentative.



Picture courtesy of The High Definite (http://www.thehighdefinite.com/2010/09/quotes-from-this-morning/)

Now on to my next point of popular musicians pushing their way into an area of art they don't belong, I introduce everyone reading to the fabulous new Musical Insturment Museum in Scottsdale, Arizona!

Personally, I found much of the museum quite interesting, although with no real vested intrest in the items on display, I did find a slight bit of boredom in a few places *cough* Asian music *cough* However, despite all the wonderful items on display, I was quite shocked when I came to the end of the "Famous Musicians" section when I discovered a guitar from the Jonas Brothers. Now normally, I would only mildy rage over this travesty of modern music, but what really gets to me is that of all the insurments on display, of Santana, of John Lennon, of Eric Clapton, only 1 insturment is signed. Three guesses whose, first two don't count. Thats right, the Jonas Brothers are so pretentious, they believe that a museum wants their signed 2007 Les Paul Junior. Good going geniuses, no one cares about your horribly put together Disney-based-purity-ring-music or your crappy guitar. When music history is taught in 30 years, historians won't look back to Disney pop stars and think "What a glorious movement they started" they will think "Ugh, people BOUGHT that???" However, I am a fair person. I give everyone the option to choose for themselves, are these 2 songs really deserving to be on the same loop?


P.S. Feel Free to not listen, you already know the answer to my question.

The amount of pretentious snobbery among these musicians who are not only pop stars, but made by the Disney channel, is tremendous.
In other news, my post for Wednesday (which will be more timely placed on late Tuesday night, time constraints prevent me from doing the same for Monday) will be Aviation based, as to appease what I think is the larger portion of the people who could possibly read this. So all 3 of you will enjoy my post for Wednesday.

The beginning... and a7x

Hello to anyone who might decide to read, or just myself to look back and laugh at myself when I gain more wisdom. I plan on posting one of these at least 3 times a week until I decide its done or it depresses me too much when I realize no one reads it. For today's post, I've "reviewed" a relatively new album out, Avenged Sevenfold's Nightmare.
When I first heard the song "Nightmare" on the radio, it sounded like every other a7x song I had heard. As in, it didn't interest me in the slightest. However, recently, as I heard another song from the album, "Welcome to the Family," I began to show a little more interest, and then, upon closer inspection, found "Nightmare" was the number 1 song on the Billboard 200 in August. After buying the album, I've put it in my (small) list of albums I am willing to leave in my car to listen all the way through.
My favorite songs off of the mixed album are "Nightmare," "Welcome to the Family," "Fiction," and "Victim." "Fiction" and "Victim" are two of the slow songs on the album, and surprised me when I heard them. For an album that has really heavy and fast songs on the radio,  half the songs on the album were a welcome break from break-neck paced metal. "So Far Away" opens up to me similar to a Metallica song, making me think it was a cover, but I have yet to substantiate that idea. (I'm sure if you care to hear Metallica's music, you'll figure out what song it is, and if you don't like Metallica, you won't care anyways, so I won't bother sifting through a bunch of music I dislike to reference it properly).
All in all, this album morphs together really fast and hard songs and slow and beautiful songs. To any metal fan, or alternative rock fan, or, apparently, a large portion of the country, I would recommend acquiring this album.