#you could draw a two axis diagram of the responses

[creacherviolence]

I love horror stories centered around hubris.

Sure, hopping in a death trap and taking a slow joyride to the soggy depths of hell is arguably the fucking stupidest series of life choices possible. And sure, the majority of these men spent decades hoarding wealth and said wealth made them feel invincible. They disturbed an antique mass gravesite for their own personal enjoyment. And yet, there's this sort of cognitive dissonance surrounding the conversation.

In a work of fiction, the plot would be perfectly set up for them to "have it coming." It's got all the tropes. A dangerous, spooky setting at the bottom of the ocean. Rich men with little regard for human life. Hubris, in their own arrogant assumption that enormous wealth gave them godlike invulnerability. Hubris again, underestimating the raw power of the ocean. Disrespecting the dead, whose ghosts have haunted the world for over a century in the form of a story we never stopped telling. Ghosts who were innocent victims of the same hubris: The Unsinkable's dire shortage of lifeboats and other emergency supplies. It's like it was written to be a story about bad men who get their comeuppance. It's irony layered in irony like a goddamn metaphor ratatouille.

But can anyone have that coming?

Who gets to decide what is justice and what is tragedy?

There is no author figure outside the extremely predictable consequences of their own actions. There's nobody on the other side of the plot typing out a heavy-handed morality tale. There's no intent to force the reader to decide between empathy and condemnation because this is the news and not a short story in literature class. The whole thing is built like a sick twin of some lost Ray Bradbury tale but it isn't.

And not only is it real, it's happening right now. I don't know how long an actual event needs to cook before it becomes modern mythos, but it sure as shit is longer than yesterday. Though some facts are lost to the water, the broad strokes of the sinking of the Titanic are largely known. The events in the sub are a complete mystery because Schrödinger's boxheads are still nowhere to be found.

Now, maybe analyzing the last moments of the missing-presumed-dead like a piece of literature is in poor taste. But I think the most chilling, the most compelling part of this whole shitshow, is how quickly someone can change from a person into a story. Both immortalized and already dead before they even knew they were doomed.

[rassilon-imprimatur]

‘The School of Doom,’ by Lance Parkin

(Originally published in Myth Makers # 12, “The School of Doom” is set within the time intermission in Parkin’s Father Time, and stars the amnesiac Eighth Doctor and his adopted daughter (and biological daughter from the future) Miranda. Besides being a lot of fun and a dive into one of my favorite corners of Dr. Who ever, the story also adds yet another layer of mystery and excitement to the Four Elementals of the Post-War universe. A big thank you Richard Salter, former Myth Makers editor, for sharing this story with me! Please enjoy!) 

It was a foreboding place, a vast complex behind an unclimbable metal fence.

There was only one entrance, a vast wrought iron set of gates. The gates gaped open, like the black toothed mouth of some terrible creature. Its throat was a long tarmac drive, leading to the heart, a collection of ugly, squared-off, brick buildings. To add to the effect, the September sky was grey, oppressive.

The Doctor was smiling at his daughter, Miranda. ‘You look nervous.’

‘Of course I’m not,’ she replied.

‘Just remember those exercises I taught you to bring your adrenaline and breathing under control.’

‘I don’t need them, I’m not nervous.’

The Doctor nodded.

‘Were you nervous on your first day at big school?’ she asked.

The Doctor couldn’t look at her. ‘Probably,’ he said at last. ‘Don’t worry, though – everyone’s in the same boat.’ Miranda looked around. There was a steady stream of children her age. There was a range of emotions on display – but there was a common theme. There was straightforward nervousness, shyness, a couple were laughing, but that looked like a display of bravado. But the Doctor was right – everyone was a little scared.

She got out the car and set out to follow them down the drive. At the end of the long walk, by the entrance to the largest building, there was a teacher – or at least someone in a dark suit who she took to be a teacher – greeting everyone in turn and handing them a sheet of paper.

As she got nearer, Miranda got a good look at him. He was of average height, and looked very smart in his black suit and pressed shirt. He had neat black hair, greying at the temples and a small, pointed beard. But that wasn’t what Miranda concentrated on – she was struck by his eyes. They were black, but they burned into her, like he could read her mind. Like black lasers.

He smiled, but there was no warmth in it. ‘Hello, Miranda, my dear. I am the Headmaster.’

The Doctor watched his daughter walk down the school drive, saw her pass into the main building. But there was something wrong. As ever, he couldn’t tell precisely what was out of place, but there was something in that building that needed his attention.

He slipped out of the car, forgetting in his haste to close the door properly.

The assembly hall wasn’t quite large enough to hold every pupil in the school, but there must have been five or six hundred people here. About a third of those would be first years, like Miranda – and they were easy enough to spot, because they needed to be told where to sit. It had already taken five or six minutes for everyone to find their seat. Miranda was sitting down, looking around the hall. There were old photographs and even paintings – previous headmasters, old sports teams, a couple of the ex-pupils who had gone on to bigger and better things. All the pictures were hung up really high, leaving the impression that the mundane world of the school was slightly beneath them, now. The people in the pictures certainly looked serene compared with the bustle on the assembly room’s floor.

A group of teachers were watching the pupils struggling to find their place. They sat together on a raised stage at the front of the hall. Behind them, and above them, in an old, carved chair that looked like it had been salvaged from a church, was the headmaster. He looked down on proceedings with what seemed like Olympian detachment.

He was looking at her. And once he realised she’d seen him, he didn’t look away, not for a moment or two.

The Doctor used the sonic suitcase to open the door to the Headmaster’s office. Everyone was in main assembly, and he’d hear them come out of there, so he knew he had a few minutes at least.

There was a small reception area – a big oak desk for the Headmaster’s secretary. A place for naughty boys and girls or parents to wait until they were called into the office itself.

The office lay beyond a thick wooden door. The Doctor tried the handle, but the door was locked. The sonic suitcase wouldn’t open it, either, which was unusual, but not unprecedented.

The Doctor knelt down and tried to peek through the keyhole. There was nothing behind there. It wasn’t that the keyhole was blocked up. There was literally nothing beyond the door.

The Doctor stood up, and wondered what to do next.

On the whole, British schools, even the very best-equipped, shouldn’t have interstitial space-time voids. As the Doctor understood it, such things couldn’t exist in nature.

‘Obedience,’ the Headmaster said. ‘Obedience is the key to this school’s success. You children are among the finest minds in the land. You are the future leaders, academics and captains of industry. You are all very gifted, or you wouldn’t be here. But always remember that those gifts mustn’t be squandered, they must be harnessed. You must learn that there are rules, and that there are rules for a reason, however strange and arbitrary they might sometimes seem. But for the brightest students, those that apply themselves, those who show excellence in whatever field, there will be rewards beyond measure.’

Miranda was listening, honestly she was, but not as intently as some of the other children seemed to be. She only perked up when the Headmaster stopped speaking, and the other children and teachers applauded his little speech.

From there, it was simple enough. Everyone’s name was called out in turn, and they were told which class they would be in. As Miranda’s surname began with a W, she would have to wait for ages to find out where she was going.

The Doctor had managed to get the door open. Beyond it was solid darkness. A wall of black, but a wall with no substance to it.

Instinctively, the Doctor reached in.

His hand vanished into the void, but – to his relief - he could still feel it. It was cold, but there was something there, just on the edge of his perception. It just wasn’t in front of him. He raised his hand, but it didn’t move up, or left or right, or down. He swished his hand around.

It was almost as though his hand was moving forwards or backwards in time. Almost. This was difficult to explain. Not up. Not down… not in any of the three dimensions. Or the fourth.

The Doctor turned his hand again, marvelling as it moved along an entirely new axis. It was like discovering an entirely new colour, then trying to describe it. It wasn’t turning… or pitching or yawing. He’d have to come up with a new word.

He realised he was grinning.

A moment later, before he could stop himself, he’d leapt straight through the door, and gyred into the fifth dimension.

‘You’re only supposed to put a tick by the ones you’re interested in,’ Miss Hargrave told Miranda. ‘You’ve ticked almost all of them.’

‘I’m interested in all of the ones I ticked,’ Miranda insisted.

‘Everyone puts swimming and chess,’ Miss Hargrave said. ‘Hands up the people that did.’

Most hands went up.

‘I’m sorry, Miss, but I was on the swimming and chess teams at primary school.’

‘I see. You’ve not put down for any languages. Or the science club.’

‘No. I think I’d probably be a bit too advanced for them.’ ‘You think you’d be wasting your time in my French class?’

‘I’m already fluent,’ Miranda said.

‘Are you?’

‘Not just in French.’

Miranda looked around. Some of the other pupils were laughing a little nervously.

‘I mean… I’m not sure I’ll learn something.’

The Doctor was disappointed to find himself in a perfectly ordinary Headmaster’s Office, or at least something doing a very good impression of one.

A large oil painting of the current Headmaster in academic robes glowered down at him as he began a quick search of the room. There was a grandfather clock in one corner… but there was something odd about it. Something wrong with the way it had been made – it didn’t look quite finished.

Opening the desk he found a glowing sphere, the size of a cricket ball. Space twisted around it.

‘A dimensional stabiliser,’ the Doctor heard himself saying. It was responsible for moving the office into the fifth dimension. No-one native to Earth could possibly enter the room while it was active.

He picked it up, found it responding to his thoughts. He could hear it talking to him. Yapping, like a loyal dog.

The Doctor asked it to go into standby mode, then slipped it into his pocket.

He quickly found a set of official school notebooks, like registers. But they were full of mathematics symbols, what looked like Greek writing, and a number of very interesting drawings. One looked remarkably like a scale diagram of a black hole. Another was a spiral, like a five dimensional whirlpool.

The Doctor scowled – he knew he should be able to read this, but he couldn’t. If it had been Greek, it wouldn’t be a problem. And he wasn’t sure he could ever decipher it – very few of the symbols were repeated. If it was an alphabet, it was a huge one.

‘It’s called the omegabet,’ a voice told him. ‘It has a million letters…’

‘…but only five vowels,’ the Doctor completed.

‘So you do remember?’

The Doctor frowned. ‘No…’

Then he turned. The Headmaster was there, covering him with what looked for all the world like a laser pistol. ‘

I knew you’d track me down, my dear Doctor. But you’re in the same boat, aren’t you?’

‘Boat?’

‘Where are you from, Doctor?’

‘I don’t know,’ the Doctor admitted.

‘Not this planet, though?’

‘No…’

‘Neither am I. We’re from the same place. Something’s happened to time. Something’s happened to… to…’ The headmaster squeezed his eyes together, tried to concentrate. ‘Wherever we came from, it’s gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘It never existed. That’s my theory.’

‘Of course it existed. Otherwise, how could we exist?’ ‘It’s paradoxical, it’s mindbending and upsetting. But… it’s exciting. Liberating. Full of potential. We can push things further, how far only depends on us.’

The Doctor looked at this strange man. He wasn’t a tall man, but there was something about him – his bearing, those eyes. He was a born leader.

‘And where do you want to “push things”?’ the Doctor asked, already suspecting what the answer would be.

‘If we don’t take control, someone else will,’ the headmaster insisted. ‘This is a perfect opportunity.’

Miranda and Miss Hargrave had been arguing with each other in French for five minutes, now. The rest of the class were utterly bored. Miranda told Miss Hargrave as much.

‘You will study French!’ Miss Hargrave told her, in French. ‘You will learn!’

‘I don’t want to!’ Miranda replied, fluently. ‘I don’t need to.’

‘You are a disruptive element. You must bow to our will!’ Miranda felt a little startled by that. ‘Pardon?’ she said. The others in the class weren’t following this at all.

Miss Hargrave’s eyes were like… they were like black lasers. They bored into Miranda, who felt her mind slipping away. It was weird, like being really tired. But a moment ago, she’d been…

The Doctor was edging back towards the door.

‘We can’t do this alone. We have to recruit other… other people like us. We’d also need to root ourselves into this reality. I don’t know how yet, but we don’t have long. I don’t think there are many of us left. It’s why you’re special. It’s why your daughter is so special.’

‘Miranda’s adopted, she’s -’

‘I know who Miranda is, Doctor. I know the truth. There’s no need to hide it from me. I know.’

The Doctor tapped his lip. Until the Headmaster had mentioned Miranda this had been a game. But he was threatening her, now.

‘And you’d be our leader?’

‘We would have a universe, Doctor. A whole universe. The whole of space and time. Even I don’t think I could rule all that alone. We’d need an army, and what better place to raise an army than here on Earth?’

‘Then we’d divide up the universe between the three of us?’

‘Four. There’s another.’

‘Another time traveller?’

‘Someone else like us.’

‘But you said yourself that you don’t know what we are.’ ‘Precisely. But I know what I am not. I’m not a slave, not a servant, not a subject. I was born to rule, as were you. It’s our birthright, Doctor.’

‘…birthright, Miranda.’

She couldn’t make out the words. Not properly.

‘Genetic destiny… can’t fight it…. it’s our duty….’

Miranda was aware she’d slumped. Fainted. She could feel the cold parquet floor against her cheek. Her eyes were open, but they were sightless.

She tried to concentrate.

A year ago, she’d gone on holiday with the Doctor and Debbie. The Doctor had just adopted her, after a legal battle she didn’t fully understand. They’d gone to the sea to celebrate. Australia. Wasn’t it?

White sand. Blue sea. She’d been swimming, showing off. She’d got out of her depth.

Then the wave had come. It had been vast, and caught her out. She’d not had time to breathe, not even to close her eyes. Suddenly the world was blue, the whole world was blue and she was being swept along.

She tried to swim, but none of the rules of swimming seemed to apply. Nothing she did made any difference. And a moment later, the wave had passed over her, and she was alive. A little humbled, and very keen to get back to the beach and her father and his companion. But also, for a moment, she was invincible.

She could see again. Miss Hargrave was right in front of her face, staring down at her, trying to control her, trying to destroy her.

‘Not even the ocean could drown me,’ Miranda told her.

The Headmaster faltered, distracted.

‘No! You will obey me!’

The Doctor took his chance, and a step forward. He batted the gun from the Headmaster’s hand, catching it, slipping it in his pocket in one movement.

‘No!’ the Headmaster said again, lunging forward, grabbing for the Doctor’s coat.

They wrestled for a moment, but the Headmaster was surprisingly strong, and pushed both hands into the Doctor’s coat pocket. A moment later, he had his hand round something. He took what he thought was the pistol out.

It was the dimensional stabiliser.

The Headmaster stood there, aware how foolish he looked, pointing the thing at the Doctor as if it was a gun.

The Doctor asked the dimensional stabiliser very nicely to take the Headmaster away from here, and to make sure he never came back.

And, like a loyal dog, the sphere did just that.

The Doctor looked up at the clock. Twenty to four. Time flies, he thought. Probably a side effect of all that dimension-bending. He was meant to be picking up Miranda in five minutes!

‘How was your first day at school?’ the Doctor asked nonchalantly, five minutes later, opening the car door for his daughter.

‘Oh… fairly uneventful,’ Miranda told him. ‘My French teacher and I hit it off on the wrong note, but by the end of the lesson she was almost a different person. What have you been doing with yourself?’

‘I met an old school friend,’ the Doctor said.

‘Oh. Right. Will you be meeting him again?’

The Doctor smiled. ‘I doubt I’ve seen the last of him.

[infotainmentplus-blog]

Understanding color accuracy in mobile devices (part 1 of 3) This year a quarter of the world’s population will watch video on their smartphones, according to global market research firm eMarketer. Similar studies over the past few years have consistently shown the growing importance of mobile devices in delivering all sorts of entertainment content to viewers worldwide. While the conventional television model isn’t exactly dead, we can’t deny the fact that more and more of us are watching our favorite movies, sitcoms, sporting events, and news broadcasts on screens that comfortably fit into our hands. And yet, while TV buyers have scoured published specs to find those products that deliver the most accurate, faithful-to-the-original images, there’s been relatively little attention paid to this when it comes to our phones, tablets, and other small screens. This is particularly true when it comes to specs and best practices related to delivering accurate color, in part because it’s a subject that’s poorly understood by most viewers. This is the first in a three-part series of articles intended to change that. Little attention has been paid to identifying those mobile products that deliver the most faithful-to-the-original and accurate images. We’re going to be taking a look at just what it takes in order to deliver accurate (or at least good-looking) color to you, the viewer. To do that, though, we’ll first have to review just how color works, and how our eyes and brains deliver this perception to us. Because in the end, that’s all that color is; it’s just a perception, something created entirely within our visual systems, with no more objective physical existence or significance than the taste of a favorite dessert. After we get through the basics of the perception of color, the next two in this series will cover what a display device needs to be capable of in order to provide good color, and then how the entire content delivery chain, and specifically the notion of proper color management, work with the display device to ensure the best and most accurate representation possible. So let’s start out with the basics. As was just noted, color doesn’t really have any physical existence. Rather than saying “that apple is red,” it’s more accurate to say that “that apple looks red to me.” This is because the perception of color is something that’s created wholly within the visual system, in response to the stimulus of visible light (which itself is just that narrow slice of the EM spectrum that our eyes happen to be set up to detect; there’s nothing otherwise special about it). We are able to perceive different colors because our eyes contain three different types of receptor cells – the cone cells – each of which is sensitive to a somewhat different range of wavelengths. (A fourth type of receptor, the rod cells, have more to do with vision in low-light situations, and don’t contribute at all to color vision.) The relative sensitivities of the short-, medium-, and long-wavelength cone cells of the human eye. It’s very common to think of these three types as being the “red,” “green,” and “blue” cones, and that they correspond to the three primary colors we’re used to in displays, but that’s really a misconception. The response curve of each of the three is pretty broad, and each covers more wavelengths than we’d associate with just one color. It’s better to refer to them as the long-, medium-, and short-wavelength cells. (And note that in the case of the long-wavelength cones, the ones that some would call the “red” ones, the peak sensitivity is actually in the yellow range!). How the visual system distinguishes different colors, then, is basically by measuring the degree to which each type of cone is stimulated by the light striking it. Each has no ability to distinguish the wavelengths of light within its range; a strong deep red source, for instance, might stimulate the “long” cones to the same degree as a weaker yellow light. The two could only be distinguished by looking at the degree to which both the long- and medium-wavelength cones are being stimulated. (Note that the short-wavelength cones – the “blue” receptors – have practically no sensitivity here, so they don’t enter into the perception of these colors.) You can look at each type of cone as generating a “meter reading” determined by the total light within its range of coverage, and together it’s these three values that permit the visual system to distinguish color. This means that any system we create to represent color numerically has to be three-dimensional – in other words, to cover the full range of colors, you’re going to have to provide three numbers. These aren’t, though, RGB values or any other simple system that just gives the relative levels of three “primary” colors. We’ll be getting to primaries in just a minute; first, though, let’s take a quick look at how color is commonly represented in a 3-D space. Any system we create to represent color numerically has to be three-dimensional – in other words, to cover the full range of colors, you're going to have to provide three numbers. The sensitivity curves for the three types of color receptors in the eye can be used to generate just such a 3-D space, in which any color can be described by three numbers. I won’t bore you with the details of the math, but basically you can take the distribution of a given light source and calculate the degree to which each of the three receptors (or at least the standard curves that describe how these cells work in the average person’s eyes) will be stimulated by that source. This set of numbers is called, appropriately enough, the tristimulus values for that light source, and they’re usually represented by the letters X, Y, and Z. The XYZ values usually aren’t all that useful unless you’re a color scientist needing to work with color mathematically, so they’re not commonly given. Instead, these values can be used to set up systems of chromaticity coordinates, such as the one shown in the following diagram. Shokabo The xy chromaticity coordinate chart This is a chart of the popular “Yxy” coordinate system, or at least two dimensions of it. The chart plots colors in terms of their x and y values – so where, you may ask, is the Y? These systems are typically defined so that the third dimension is luminance, or what most people would consider “brightness” or “intensity.” (Technically, “luminance” has a specific definition separate from these, but we don’t need to worry about that here.) The luminance or Y axis is at right angles to the other two, so you can imagine it as pointing right out of the screen as you’re viewing this chart. For now, the important thing to note is that the Y value is independent of the x and the “little” y, so we can talk about color on this chart without really worrying about “brightness” so much. A lot of displays, for instance, simply list their primaries in terms of their xy coordinates. Now that we have this chart to describe color, we can start talking about how different colors of light mix to produce the perception of other colors. Remember, all of this has been derived from how the eye perceives color and the sensitivities of the cells that get this job done for us, so using charts like this ought to be pretty useful in telling how we’re going to see various combinations of light. For instance, pick any color — any point within this diagram. Let’s say it’s a particular shade of greenish-yellow, and mark that location on the chart. Now we pick a second color — maybe a blue — and mark that location as well. If you draw a line connecting the two, you’ve just shown all of the colors that can be made by mixing them in various proportions. You can see what I mean in the image on the left below. A line between any two colors covers what you can make by mixing those two; add a third color, and the line becomes a triangle, covering the color gamut of those three primaries. Now, let’s add a third color; this time we’ll pick a deep red. Drawing the lines between it and the other two also shows the colors you can get by mixing the red with either the yellow or the blue. You also now have a triangle – and that encloses all of the colors you can make by mixing all three colors together! This is what’s meant by the color gamut provided by any such set of colors (of course, you would refer to the colors themselves as the “primaries” of that particular system). You may be wondering just what’s up here since the colors we chose were red, blue and yellow. What happened to the primaries being red, blue, and green, at least for our screens? There really isn't just one fixed set of colors that we should consider primaries. Red, green, and blue shades aren’t the only possible primaries, but they generally give the best gamut you’ll be able to cover with just three primary colors. While it’s true that we normally think of color displays as being “RGB” devices, the point here is that there really isn’t just one fixed set of colors that we should consider “primaries.” We use red, green, and blue for the most common additive primaries (the sort you use with light) because using shades of those colors give the best coverage in terms of the total color gamut, but notice that even the red, blue, and yellow set that we chose would be able to create a fair “full-color” gamut — you couldn’t get a really deep green out of this set, but you would be able to at least make enough green for pictures to look acceptable. Even if we do limit ourselves to the “RGB” set, keep in mind that there are lots of possible reds, greens, and blues to choose from. Nor is there any law that says you can only have three primaries, either. As noted, three is just the minimum number needed for anything like “full color” images, but systems with four, five, or even higher numbers of primaries have been demonstrated in various attempts to get a better color gamut. This should give us enough of an understanding of how color is produced, perceived, and measured so that we can now turn our attention to the devices that are going to be making color for us: the displays in our devices. The second part in this series will look at what’s needed there to deliver “good” color, and some of the unique challenges presented by mobile devices in terms of getting accurate color out of these screens. Had you come across these color graphs before? Did you know how to read them? , via Android Authority http://bit.ly/2mibikV