More movie press photos saved from the trash bin

FROM THE DUMPSTER OUTSIDE JASON’S WINDOW – A while ago I posted some Star Trek (mostly from the fourth movie — Star Trek: The One With the Whales) press photos. They had been saved from a general purging of the newspaper office where I work, which is undergoing a renovation and cleaning for the first time in a couple of decades.

Rather than have some of these precious geek culture relics go in the dumpster, I slipped them in my briefcase. Again, click to enbiggen:

Star Wars: Episode VI: Revenge Return of the Jedi (1983)

You know, we saw a lot of the forest moon of Endor, but never Endor itself. Maybe there were some cool creatures on the planet proper; instead, we were saddled with primitive teddy bears in the final installment of the original Star Wars saga (The Luke Skywalker Trilogy).By all accounts, the costume designers were frustrated. The Ewoks were made of five pieces that had to be stitched on to the little people (under 4-feet, 6-inches — George Lucas wasn’t an equal opportunity employer on this one). The heads were sculpted, and the various tidbits of hoods and other clothing were designed to cover the seams. For all the rambling I’ve done on this blag recently about Star Trek, I just want to go on record as saying Star Wars is definitely superior — despite the cuddly forest warriors from Return of the Jedi and Jake Lloyd.

The Fugitive (1993)

Run, Harrison, run! With roles as Han Solo, Indiana Jones, Rick Deckard, and Jack Ryan, Harrison Ford easily goes down in the geek cannon as perhaps the geek hero. The Fugitive was far from my favorite movie, but there’s no denying that Ford’s acting was head and shoulders above his performance in Jedi. Of course, for my money, it’s all about Indiana Jones. Too bad I didn’t stumble across any old black and white glossies of Ford in the fedora.

The X-Files (1993)

If you were one of those sniveling nitwits constantly worrying about whether Mulder and Scully would ever get it on, you missed the point of the updated pulp paranoia stories that were The X-Files. Forget for a moment the messes that were seasons 5-7. Remember the good times — the monster-of-the-week episodes, the early black oil plot, the mystery surrounding Mulder’s sister, the horrible anti-science message, and the lazy skepticism-cum-catholicism thrown into the mix. If only Chris Carter had remembered that the show wasn’t about some subtle social commentary or some deep Lost-before-Lost-came-along story arc. By the way, if you don’t know that a new X-Files movie is in production, you forfeit all your geek cred.

Rising Sun (1993)

I’ve never seen Rising Sun. Honestly, I don’t remember ever hearing buzz about Rising Sun, or trailers for Rising Sun, or meeting anyone who had known somebody who once lived next door to a guy who saw Rising Sun. Therefore, I have no clever comments about Rising Sun. However, I just had to save this photo from destruction because of the sheer awesome that is its juxtaposition. There’s James Bond standing next to Blade. The world doesn’t get much safer from psychos than that.

Logical fallacy of the day: Non causa pro causa

FROM JASON’S PILE O’ANNOYANCE – “We spent $23 million on an effort to control gun crime, and we’ve seen shooting deaths decrease by three percent this year,” says a local politician.

The problem is that there are no concrete facts tying the drop in violence to the crime-control program. There’s a fundamental disconnect between what did happen and what the people in charge want me to think happened.

Camouflage.

What if there were fewer fatal shootings because it was colder than normal, and criminals didn’t want to go outside? What if there were far more (criminal) gun-related injuries — which was the case where I live — but fewer deaths?

What if there were fewer gang shootings because the criminals became more organized? That’s certainly not an indication that the $23 million program worked.

This rant isn’t about gun crime, though. It’s about how politicians (and other stupid or dishonest people) use two types of fallacies: cum hoc ergo propter hoc and post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Both are Latin, and are subsets of the non causa pro causa fallacy — which as you could guess from the similarity to our word “cause” means roughly, “Dude, you totally haven’t shown me there’s a link between these two things.”

Cum hoc ergo propter hoc, or “they happened at the same time, so they’re linked,” is used in all kinds of fun but fallacious forum arguments. I know I’m guilty of doing this, too.

“iTunes is doing good business and CDs are failing, so online sales are killing CD sales.” I don’t have any solid facts to tie the two together. It’s just an assumption.

Here’s one that Jack Thompson would like ignorant, easily-swayed alarmists to believe:”Vidjagames are getting more violent and there are more school shootings, so kids playing the vidjagames are being trained to be more violent.”

(Editorial aside: If you don’t know what the vidjagames are, how did you get on my Internets? I suggest you seek counseling from the Fast Karate For the Gentleman podcast.)

Post hoc ergo propter hoc, or “this one thing happened and this other thing was the result” can be tricky. Sometimes something is the cause of an effect. The problem is when we forget to do due diligence and tie them together.

The textbook example: “I didn’t use deoderant, and it rained. Therefore, every time I don’t use deoderant, it will rain.”

The geek example: Well, we geeks are too smart for that, aren’t we? Science be praised.