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corruptedspacecore · 7 years ago

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Honestly, posts like this make me want to throw up. The problem is this isn’t just some touchy-feely thing. These people actually believe in literal magic. All that magical quantum energy astrological tarot healing witchy psychic fairy crap. Hey, I suppose that’s all well and good if you want to just take an 11th-century approach to the world, when humans couldn’t be bothered to actually figure out how anything worked. Or...

- Maybe that feeling is just emotions, sentimental or otherwise, which affect your perception of sensations, which are processed in your brain. If you feel strongly about books and antiques, being around them might make you feel differently. The same applies to “haunted” places. If you think a place is haunted, you’ll probably feel very strange. It’s the power of your brain’s ability to trick you.

- There’s probably a reason. Maybe it’s something you unconsciously remember, or that appeals to your brain somehow, or that looks nice, or maybe you’re just curious.

- Who wouldn’t get inner peace looking up at the night sky? Space is full of wonders. Everything you see, you see as it looked in the past because it takes so long for the light to get here. That’s how vast the distances are. Some things you see as they looked before there were humans on Earth. Not to mention all the other amazing things out there. And forests are nice. Again, they’re feelings. Humans spent eons looking at the sky, it’s no wonder we feel connected to it.

- While “Fairy Circles” have long been difficult to pin down as to what may cause them, here’s one theory: “...The distinct vegetation patterns are a population-level consequence of competition for scarce water, as the plants "organise" themselves to maximise access to scarce resources. The circular barren patches capture water which then flows to the outer edges of the ring. More water available increases biomass and roots which leads to the soil becoming looser. The less dense soil allows more water to penetrate and feed the vegetation, creating a feedback loop supporting the plants at the edge of the circle.”

- Emotions and pleasant stimuli again. Not magic.

- Once again, probably emotions. But at the same time, thunderstorms tend to involve lightning, and lightning is created by the building of charged particles in the air. In other words, energy. But that ain’t magic.

- That... that’s just a tall tree. Maybe it got a little more water or sun than the others, or better nutrients in that spot.

- I’m sure burning some stuff smells nice, which will trigger pleasant emotions. Some of it might clear the sinuses. Some of it might actually make you feel better via their chemicals. In any case, not magic.

- Butterflies don’t appear out of nowhere, you just notice them, usualyl when nearby or in your face. No butterly, or anything for that matter, has been observed to come out of nowhere. That does not happen. Just because you don’t notice something right away, that doesn’t mean it’s magic.

All those and other things are just minor little things about the world. They’re feelings, observations, curiosities, emotions, and more. We already know or have a good idea of why many of these things happen, and how. And we know how the brain works, generally. How it’s able to trick us, how it can be stimulated, how it can affect how we perceive the world and sensations. Whatever the causes of any of these and other things may be, we’ll figure it out by actually studying them and the world around us, not standing around saying it’s magic. And just because we don’t have an absolute answer, that doesn’t mean it’s magic.

This kind of stuff, magical thinking, annoys me so much because it throws us back to a stone-age way of understanding the world, or a lack of understanding. When you decide something is magic based on practically no evidence at all, what good does that do? Humanity mostly left magical thinking behind, and we’ve come a long way. Should we have kept trying to treat diseases with spells and prayer, or beheading people because we thought there was a deity to please?

But of course, humanity can’t let go. We’ve been saddled with magical thinking in the form of many religions and cults still, and now there are people all over who fancy themselves capable of working magic, who trust unproven, often disproven, and sometimes dangerous alternative medicines. People who are being fleeced by so-called psychics who prey on the gullible while collecting their cash. People who still think astrology is a thing that works.

See, if any of this works, it’s not going to be magic. “Magic” has never been the conclusion of any study or scientific endeavour. Even if astrology were real, it was work for some physical reason. If ghosts were real, that would be a very real part of the cosmos. If magic spells worked, it would be by some fascinating physical means. In my view, calling it magic, or supernatural, is a cop-out. It’s a way of having to avoid doing any real work to figure out the world, to avoid having to really think about things. It cheapens reality, and it cheapens the true splendor of the cosmos.

We thought lightning was magic. Then we figured out how it works. We thought volcanoes were angry lava gods. Then we figured out the internal structure of the earth and how it works. We thought various mental conditions were posessions and other entities. Then we founded psychology. We thought the Earth was a unique, special place. Then we discovered a far more complex universe full of so many stars, planets, and moons, who knows what wonders are on them. We marveled at those stones that appeared to slide themselves across salt flats. Was it magic? No, it was ice sheets that formed and dragged the rocks along. That’s even more interesting than just saying magic. Whatever causes fairy circles, I bet it’s pretty neat.

Look, I’m not saying there aren’t strange things that happen. There are so many incredible things out there yet to be discovered or understood. But we’re not going to understand them by chalking it up to magic. It’s a pointless term, a useless concept. As for science, it’s not a static body of knowledge, but a method for figuring things out, a tool. And already it’s helped us to find out so many amazing things that we never would have known if we stayed huddled in our churches, reciting scripture and burning witches. There’s superstition, and there’s the real world. I prefer the real world, as revealed by the endeavor of science, by the unquenchable curiosity of people who were not content to stop at “magic.”

Light rays, photons, don’t have mass. They travel at incredibly fast speeds. It’s possible for us to travel nearly as fast as light as we want. The faster we go, the more massive we get, the more energy we need to accelerate. Once we get closer to light speed, things will look so damn weird, it’s hard to explain. But we’ll never be able to go as fast as light. To do so would mean that we’d have infinite mass, and would need infinite energy. Not only that, but time would stop. From the perspective of light, their journeys, whether it’s 8 light minutes or 25,000 light years, is instantaneous. Photons can do that because they have no mass. We can’t because we have mass. While that means it’s impossible for us to go at light speed, time dilation still affects things at high speeds. It’s actually possible for us to time-travel. Just go fast enough for long enough, and when you stop, turn around, and then go fast again back to Earth, you’ll arrive hundreds, thousands, even many millions of years into Earth’s future, even though only a few years or decades will have passed for you. You could travel a good clip of the speed of light and circumnavigate the observable universe, and thanks to time dilation, it’ll only take half a century or so for you, according to the clocks on your ship. But when you get back to earth, the Sun and Earth will be dead, with billions of years having passed. This effect is felt even by our satellites. When you use your GPS to find your way to the nearest magic gathering, that GPS is only able to work because the satellites correct for time dilation, due to the speeds they orbit at. Gravity affects the flow of time, too. Time passes faster for your head than it does for your feet when you stand up.

That’s real. That's proven. That’s what we've figured out through science. It’s been demonstrated again and again through repeated experiments, and it’s well-supported by mathematics, the only branch of science where things can be absolutely proven. Mathematics, which also predicted black holes, which we eventually discovered. Black holes, which are horrifying wonders of gravity and time, where the entire mass of a star, or many stars, is squeezed into an infinitely tiny space called a singularity. Where a spherical void, the event horizon, is bigger than a solar system and pulls in even light rays. Gravity so strong that it practically stops time, and if you were to watch someone fall into the event horizon, they would appear to stop and never actually fall in, while they would see time fly by outside, as everything they’ve known closes into a tiny lens and darkness takes over.

That is far better, far more fascinating and amazing than any fairytale humans have ever conceived. It’s more incredible than any claim of magic. Without a scientific or physical context and told to a more ignorant generation of humans, it might even seem like magic. But it’s not magic. It’s real.

Finally, while I’m sure there are many potential things to list, here are but two huge things that would make me believe in magic:

- Working spells for doing things that either can’t happen naturally or that don’t happen by chance. Ones that have been tested under the most rigorous scientific standards and repeatedly demonstrated to work nearly every time, and with all other possible explanations tested and found not to work.

- Actual, real things appearing literally out of nowhere. Physical objects manifesting from thin air. Done under laboratory conditions and repeated numerous times. Bonus if this is done via an aforementioned spell or something. Captured on camera and all manner of other instrumentation, from many angles, and verified not to be fake by the best scientists.

Except, no. I still wouldn’t believe in magic, because those things wouldn’t be magic, they would be a part of our cosmos, and occur via whatever the workings of the cosmos are. If those and other extraordinary claims proved to be real, their true explanations would be far more complex and interesting than “magic.”

#personal

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duhragonball · 4 years ago

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Battle Tendency Liveblog: JJBA Ch. 88-93

Hey, guess what this post is all about? Here’s a hint:

In St. Moriz, Switzerland, the gang have tracked down the address to which Esidisi had tried to mail the Red Stone of Aja. Turns out it’s some spooky abandoned mansion with all the windows boarded up. It’s the perfect hideout for a supervillain who doesn’t want to be bothered by nosy neighbors or pesky sunlight.

Actually, now that I think about it, I’m not sure why Esidisi expected the mailman to deliver his package to an empty building. Maybe he figured Kars could just barge into the St. Moriz post office and find it.

Another weird thing: Joseph opens this chapter with a monologue about the setting, then teases a cat, then provides exposition about the poison ring on his heart, and then Lisa Lisa calls him over to check out the mansion they’ve found. It seems kind of strange that he was just monologueing the whole time, unless that’s supposed to be the joke.

Anyway, now they have to figure out their next move. Caesar wants to go to the manion at once to attack Kars before sundown. They know he’s in there, and he’s alone, because he said Wammu was away during their last encounter. So it’ll be four on one, and they’ll have the advantage because the sun’s out. But Joseph disagrees. Kars has lived like this for thousands of years. He would be expecting his enemies to attack him during the day, and it’s a safe bet that he’s laid all sorts of traps and precautions to protect himself. So why play into his hands? Joseph wants to wait, although I’m not sure attacking at night would be any easier. Maybe he wants the Pillar Men to come to them?

Actually, that makes a lot of sense. Joseph has to fight Wammu in about five days, in order to get the antidote to the poison ring. They have the Aja Stone, so maybe it makes sense to play keep-away until the big Joseph/Wammu fight. Joseph can kill Wammu (hopefully), and that leaves Kars isolated. From there on, they can stick together, and wait for Kars to come to them, confident that their combined power can defeat him. There’s a lot that could go wrong with such a strategy, but it minimizes the risks.

But Caesar is adamant about going after Kars immediately. They know where he is, so how can they wait another moment? He speaks of the curse of the Stone Mask, that got their grandfathers killed, but Joseph finds that talk dumb. Family legacies don’t mean anything against your own life in the here and now. It’s stupid to get killed over something like that, he says, and that pisses Caesar off.

He fights with Joseph, then angrily goes off to storm Kars’ lair alone. I could show the part where he fights Joseph, but I think this panel is a lot more powerful, because Lisa Lisa orders him to stay, and he defies her. Caesar’s always held Lisa Lisa in such high regard, but this time, he just can’t respect her wishes. She orders Messina to follow him and stop him before he can go inside the mansion, then explains to Joseph why this is so important to Caesar.

Okay, to this whole Caesar Fights Alone arc is extremely full of “rhymes” with other JoJo parts. Let me just get a couple out of the way before we get down to business. The Part 1 references in Battle Tendency should be obvious, but in this case, Will Zeppeli has everything to do with Caesar’s determination to kill Kars. Also, when discussing an attack on the mansion, Joseph likens a daylight assault to “a butterly landing on a spider’s web”, which is Jolyne Kujo’s entire wardrobe in prose. So that’s Part 6.

But, more importantly, this flashback of Caesar’s origin story might as well be the blueprint for all of the flashback origins we see in Part 5. The story of Caesar doesn’t exactly line up with any of the Vento Aureo cast, but it has an extremely similar feel. A young boy loses his family, goes down a dark path, and then has a revelatory experience. And Caesar’s from Naples, just like Giorno Giovanna and most of Bruno’s team.

The story is this: Caesar’s father, Mario Zeppeli, was a widower and a good parent, until one day he just ghosted all his kids. He left them plenty of money, but a wicked cousin swindled it away. Neighbors and friends took care of the Zeppeli kids, but Caesar himself became embittered and eventually ended up in an orphanage, and then later he became a street tough in Rome, not unlike a young Speedwagon in London. Caesar resented his father for abandoning the family, and assumed that Mario had left them to pursue some pleasurable life with a woman. He resolved to hunt down Mario and kill him for this, sort of like “A Boy Named Sue”, but when he finally found Mario Zeppeli, he saw him going down into the basement of the Roman Colosseum instead of some brothel.

And we already know what’s down under the Colesseum: The three Pillar Men. While following Mario, Caesar discovered the Pillar Men in the wall, and noticed a diamond in Kars’ hand. This was a trap, though, and Mario had to shove Caesar out of the way and get pulled in himself. As Mario explained, the Pillar Men use those precious objects to get humans to take a closer look, and then all these hooks come out to pull them in to be absorbed. This is how the Pillar Men feed during their “hibernation” in the stone.

As he died, Mario pleaded with Caesar to inform a woman named Lisa Lisa in Venice, and to warn her that the Pillar Men would awaken soon. But Mario had no idea that he was speaking to his own son, and it finally dawned on Caesar that Mario had left the family because he knew how dangerous this whole business was, and he had wanted to keep his kids out of it. Awestruck, Caesar suddenly gained a new appreciation for his father, and ended up taking up Mario’s cause.

Which is... a whole lot like the dynamic between Jotaro and Jolyne in Stone Ocean. So there’s some more Part 6 for you. And Mario’s sacrifice resembles Joseph Joestar’s rescue of the Invisible Baby in Part 4. Josuke observed that no one would go so far to save someone they didn’t even know, but Mario Zeppeli did.

The flashback ends with Mario’s death, but it’s not hard to work out the rest of Caesar’s backstory. He went to Venice as instructed, but he must have also told Lisa Lisa that he was Mario’s son, and she must have recognized his nascent Ripple abilities. Eager for help against the Pillar Men threat, she took him on as her student, and trained him through the late 1930′s. And she must have filled him in on how Mario became a Ripple warrior, following in the footsteps of Caesar’s grandfather, Will.

Then Speedwagon and Joseph came to Italy to join forces with Caesar, and it makes some sense why Caesar didn’t respect Joseph very much. The Caesar we see in the flashback looks a lot like Joseph in the early chapters of Part 2: A tough guy, with natural Hamon talents, but no formal training, and no understanding of all the lore surrounding it. Caesar saw Joseph as a reflection of himself at 16, and he must not have liked it at all. Also, this must have made Caesar resentful, because he knew his grandfather died to save Jonathan Joestar, but seeing Joseph probably made him question if that sacrifice was justified.

What confuses me is how all of this European lore gels with the North American lore we saw at the beginning of Part 2. I mean, Speedwagon discovered a Pillar Man in Mexico, and the first thing he did was to call in Straizo. Meanwhile, Lisa Lisa and the Zeppelis had been aware of the other Pillar Men in Rome this whole time. It just seems a bit weird, although Straizo’s sudden betrayal might explain the communication breakdown.

Oh, I should probably also mention something I forgot to bring up earlier: The Pillar Men can’t be destroyed by the Ripple while they’re in their stone forms. Caesar told Speedwagon that he had tried it before, and I’m sure Mario must have done the same.

Anyway, now that Joseph knows the whole story of Caesar, he changes his tune and wants to join Caesar on this daring daylight raid on the mansion. He figures that a man like Caesar must have a solid plan to deal with any traps inside the building. And maybe he does, except Caesar can’t even get to the door, because someone’s attacking him in the front yard. Turns out it’s Wammu, not Kars, and his “Wind Mode” allows him to refract sunlight around himself for a short time, making him nearly invisible and also letting him land a surprise attack on the good guys. When Messina catches up to Caesar, Wammu manages to lop off one of his arms.

So the situation is a lot more perilous than anyone expected. If Caesar even had a plan, it didn’t involve fighting Wammu outdoors. Undaunted, he releases a volley of soap bubbles charged with Hamon energy. This is a jacked-up variation of his Bubble Launcher technique, but this time the bubbles won’t burst because of all the Ripple power he put into them, and they also spin rapidly like little blades. Wammu’s “wind suit” works against him in this case, because the air currents just drag the “soap cutters” even closer to his body.

So yeah, shades of Part 7 and 8 here. I mean, Gyro Zeppeli’s real name is “Julius Caesar Zeppeli”, so it’s not hard to imagine anything Caesar says and does in Part 2 as a foreshadowing of Steel Ball Run. But he’s even using centrifugal force to strengthen his attacks, a precursor to the “Spin” techniques used by the Zeppelis in the SBR-verse.

I think the soap bubble thing speaks for itself. The “Soft and Wet” Stand in JoJolion uses soap bubbles too. But more than that, I think the Pillar Men have a great resemblance to the villain group in JoJolion. It’s like Araki was trying to come up with ideas for Part 8, and he looked at the Caesar/Wammu fight and decided he wanted More of That. Which is kind of amazing to me, because I always saw Battle Tendency as this “orphaned” JoJo arc, kind of isolated from the rest of the series, but now I’m starting to see that it’s more like a miniature model of the later parts.

Needless to say, this “Soap Cutter vs. Wind Mode” battle looks a lot like the Stand Battles featured in Part 3 and onward. Caesar expected to get to the mansion, only to find an “impossible” scenario: a warrior ambushing him outside. How can this be, when the Pillar Men can’t go out in the daylight? It’s because Wammu’s power lets him do this for short times, but until Caesar figures that out, it gives Wammu the advantage. Then Caesar responds with his own special ability, and uses Wammu’s own technique against him.

Speaking of Part 3, here’s a shot of Caesar following Wammu into the mansion, and confronting him at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Is Polnareff a secret Zeppeli? Who knows?

Wammu had to withdraw into the mansion to escape Caesar’s Soap Cutters, and he figures he has a chance to respond with his own big move, but Caesar’s not done coming after him. To get into the mansion, Wammu had to smash a hole in the wall, so Caesar uses the light coming in from that hole to his advantage. He surrounds Wammu with more soap bubbles, but this time they refract and reflect and focus the sunlight onto Wammu’s body.

To be honest, I forgot how much this fight kicks ass. The Pillar Men started out like big bad news, but Joseph crushed Esidisi, and now Caesar is really eating Wammu’s lunch here. Imagine how well the boys would have done if they had ganged up on a Pillar Man.

So Caesar’s got Wammu cornered, so he leaps in to finish him off with a Hamon attack...

And that turns out to be a huge mistake, because Caesar’s body provides just enough of a shadow for Wammu to recover and fire back with his own windstorm move. This is kind of like how Wammu first appeared. He made that hole, and when the German guy leaned in for a better look, he impaled him with his horn, then spun the horn around to spray blood on all the UV lamps.

Which says a lot about Wammu. Everyone talked about Kars setting up traps in this mansion to foil any daytime attacks, but we never actually saw any traps. Wammu is the trap. All he needs is a shadow and a moment to capitalize on it.

And that’s the fight. Caesar survived the Wind Storm, but he’s too badly hurt to continue. Wammu praises him for giving him the best fight he’s had in millennia, and he even worries about what might have happened if Kars had faced Caesar instead. Wammu thinks Kars still would have won, but he would have gotten hurt worse in the process. That’s saying something, because Wammu got pretty badly hurt himself, so how badly would Kars have fared against Caesar?

One thing that occurred to me while reading the manga for this is that Kars might actually be the weakest Pillar Man in the trio. He’s far above Santana, of course, but it seems pretty clear that Wammu’s the best fighter, and Esidisi’s death was a huge blow to Kars. As soon as he found out, he immediately resolved to kill Joseph because he was too dangerous a threat. This isn’t like when Vegeta loses a subordinate. If you beat Nappa, he’s only mildly impressed, because he’s so much stronger than Nappa that he still doesn’t see you as a threat.

I’d say the Pillar Men are much closer together in terms of power, but it feels like the pecking order is Wammu, then Esidisi, then Kars. Those blades of his are pretty cool-looking, but Wammu’s Wind Mode is much more versatile in a fight. Wammu practically said as much here, but his devotion to Kars prevents him from admitting that Kars would have gotten his ass kicked against Caesar.

So why is Kars in charge? Because he’s the brains of the outfit, naturally. Kars is the one who does all the R&D on these Stone Masks, and Esidisi basically admitted that he has no idea how the Red Stone of Aja will improve the Masks further. Kars understands the Stone Mask technology in ways they can’t even fathom, and his research promises to give them ultimate power, so they’ve been following his orders ever since.

Anyway, Caesar’s beaten, but he still won’t give up. He climbs up the stairs again to keep attacking Wammu, who just sort of stands there looking confused. Then Caesar grabs the piercing from Wammu’s lip, the one that contains the antidote Joseph needs. Wammu doesn’t understand this gesture either, so he just stands there and lets it happen.

This is kind of like when Joseph managed to land a decent blow on Wammu back in Rome, and then he started punching Wammu, only for Wammu to reveal that he allowed himself to be punched to punish himself for taking the hit earlier. I’m wondering if Caesar was counting on Wammu to do the same thing here.

Wammu asks why he would bother with this, and Caesar explains that this is his family’s true heritage. All along, Caesar has been planning to defeat the Pillar Men himself, to avenge his father and grandfather, and to break the curse on their family line. But now he realizes that he’s going to die too, just like they did. His fate is not to succeed where they failed, but instead it’s to carry on their tradition of rescuing others to carry on where they fell. Just as Will Zeppeli passed on his Hamon to Jonathan, Caesar uses the last of his own Ripple to deliver the antidote to Joseph.

So Caesar makes another soap bubble with his own blood, and puts his headband and the ring inside of it. Wammu considers interfering with this final gesture, but decides against it, because he respects Caesar as a warrior. So he just turns and leaves.

Then Joseph and Lisa Lisa show up. There’s no sign of Caesar or Wammu, but the blood bubble tells the whole story. Joseph is all emotional over this, but Lisa orders him to stay focused. They’re deep in enemy territory, and they can’t afford to grieve. Joseph is upset at first, but then he coolly observes that Lisa’s cigarette is backwards, a sign that she’s not as dispassionate about this as she would like to be. I love this scene. The wiggly lines on Lisa’s hands make the comic version better than the anime.

Then they finally notice blood trickling out from beneath a cross-shaped piece of wall. Well, I guess it’s from the wall, but it’s kind of hard to tell what this place looked like before. It fell on Caesar as he died, and now that Joseph and Lisa realize where he is, they both break down in tears.

I’m not a big fan of Caesar. He’s kind of a dick, and most of his more admirable qualities end up getting overshadowed by Joseph’s personal growth. For example, Joseph realizes in this part of the arc that he’s learned to read and empathize with Lisa’s feelings, something Caesar thought he couldn’t do earlier on. On the other hand, this fight marked the end of Caesar’s character arc, and it only happened because he brazenly wandered into a trap. Joseph might regret calling Caesar an idiot, but I think he had the right idea. It didn’t have to go down like this. They could have taken Wammu’s antidote ring some other time. As it is, Joseph still has to fight Wammu anyway, because Caesar’s no longer available to to do it.

However, I think of Caesar when I think about Part 3, because I see Stardust Crusaders as this final chapter of the curse of the Stone Masks, with Joseph coming back to wrap up the last loose end of that whole terrible business. Dio and the Pillar Men killed a lot of people, but Caesar’s the one Joseph actually knew personally. So when I see the Stardust Crusaders heading off to Egypt to wreck Dio’s shit, I tend to think of Caesar as one of the people Joseph is fighting for. I mean, his daughter’s life is on the line in Part 3, so that’s got to be much more important to him, but Caesar was the first friend he lost over these stupid masks, and that’s probably in the back of his mind throughout Part 3. All this trouble, because buttholes like Dio and Kars want to be bigger than everyone else. But their dreams are pathetic compared to the noble sacrifices made by men like Caesar Zeppeli.

Anyway, play the slow, sad part of Roundabout for Caesar.

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#jojo's bizarre adventure #battle tendency #joseph joestar #caesar zeppeli #lisa lisa #wammu #mario zeppeli #will a zeppeli #messina

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