Topic: Episode #356

[indieseoul]

Hello from Seoul! I have listened to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe non stop for the last year and a half. Since Korea was mentioned in this episode I was wondering how many forum members here live in Korea?

Now about the "baby powder" pills I have to agree with what was said on the podcast and what other forum members have said about the issue. I sincerely doubt that this story has any truth to it other than the fact that placentas are used in China as a form of medicine. Journalism practices in Korea are shoddy at best. They are always making exaggerated claims about foreigners and this seems to be just another example. Whenever Korea needs an ego boost they bring out the tired yet popular notion that foreigners are evil and are causing all sorts of social problems. It's just more fear mongering from the racist Korean media that was then spread by the equally racist western media.  It's really a shame that journalists do not need to prove anything to write a story. It would be nice if journalists had standards and employed the scientific method once in awhile.

Anyway love the podcast and I have been telling all of my friends that SGU is an essential podcast! Keep up the great work guys and thank you for all that you do. By the way when is the next 24 hour episode going to be held?  LOL I really enjoyed that and even tried to skype in to say hello. SGU is big in Korea!

[arthwollipot]

I just want to mention here that there are search engines (such as duckduckgo.com) that never personalise your results so that you always get a genuine reflection of what "google rank" used to be.

[Henning]

By the time CG animators are done with a scene, we have touched every single frame. It's not like you can just capture our work at a higher frame rate... like acting. It has to be set up just for that camera at that frame rate. 48 frames a second doubles that amount of tedious work. I weep to hear of it. I'm agin' it!

[Shadow Of A Doubt]

But that means twice the money per film! 

[Silly Llama]

I once heard a story about customized Google searches, quite possibly not true, that really made me laugh.  Someone was at a conference about racism/sexism and the speaker said, among other things, that even Google was racist because whenever he started to search for "black women" it would suggest "black girl porn" after he had written the word "black".  Wanting to see this for herself a member of the audience tried it on her home computer only to get completely different results.  She then realized that it only did it for the speaker because he was always searching for "black girl porn" and so Google assumed he would again.

[If this story came from SGU I'm going to feel really foolish.]

[GodSlayer]

I once heard a story about customized Google searches, quite possibly not true, that really made me laugh.  Someone was at a conference about racism/sexism and the speaker said, among other things, that even Google was racist because whenever he started to search for "black women" it would suggest "black girl porn" after he had written the word "black".  Wanting to see this for herself a member of the audience tried it on her home computer only to get completely different results.  She then realized that it only did it for the speaker because he was always searching for "black girl porn" and so Google assumed he would again.

[If this story came from SGU I'm going to feel really foolish.]

never heard it before.

[rwh]

So is anyone a bigger fan than Bob?  In which previous episode did they discuss high frame rates looking like soap operas?

Rebecca: We were talking about frame rate and how the higher frame rates look like soap operas and it's very difficult for audiences to get over that idea. I don't remember what spurred us to talking about it, it wasn't, The Hobbit stuff wasn't on the scene yet.

B: Right.

R: Bigger fans than Bob can probably find the episode and let us know what we were talking about.

I don't think there's a transcript for that episode yet so googling won't help... I guess it's grey-matter only on this one.

-Rob

[Thorloar]

I actually heard that (frame rate story) on Skeptics With a K about a week before this episode and haven't heard the SGU gang talk about this. I could have missed it, but it would be funny if Rebecca heard it as well and internalized the content.     

[donmac]

On the High Frame Rate (HFR) film discussion, although not as good as true HFR there is a simulated version of this in a lot of HDTV sets now.  They are LCD or LED models running at either 120Hz or 240Hz and have a built-in frame interpolation feature that averages the frames on either side to create a new frame in the middle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_interpolation

I have an 120Hz model of one of these sets and the interpolation feature on it has 3 levels as well as an "Off" setting (when "Off" it'll just repeat the same frame X number of times to get up to 120 frames/second).  At the highest setting, it greatly reduces motion blur and seems more 3-dimensional too, but also takes on the so called "soap opera" effect (I personally think it would be better to call it the "hyper-real" effect).  I tend to leave it at the lowest of the 3 settings because there I think it's a good balance between reduction of blur while not getting distractingly hyper-real.  However, for CG movies such as a Pixar film, I switch it to the highest setting because the feature really shines in those films.

And if HFR films became the norm, I think leaving the interpolation feature on max setting may become necessary in order to then not be too distracted by the Low Frame Rate flaws in older movies.

[arthwollipot]

I actually heard that (frame rate story) on Skeptics With a K about a week before this episode and haven't heard the SGU gang talk about this. I could have missed it, but it would be funny if Rebecca heard it as well and internalized the content.   

I agree. It was the Merseyside guys who were talking about the high frame rate looking like soap opera. I think from memory it was Marsh's unsupported theory.

[rwh]

Transcript is done, in the usual place.  Thanks to Thejmii for help on this one; it's much easier when it's a team effort.

Cheers,

Rob