Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 1 Dec 2015Blue’s back with more sweet, sweet prehistory! Today, Bruce explores the wonders of life.
April 20, 2020
Prehistory Summarized: Early Life
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April 14, 2020
History Summarized: England
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 10 Apr 2020English history has a reputation for being nigh incomprehensible — what with all the kings, civil wars, succession crises, and slapfights with France. But with the right perspective (and a little royal-restraint), England can become quite a straightforward story. So let’s take a look at this slice of Britain, and see how it grew into the master of the Isles.
SOURCES & Further Reading: “History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts”, lecture series for The Great Courses by Robert Bucholz, a great look at Renaissance and Early Imperial England.
“Ten Minute History of England and Britain” Parts 1-18, by History Matters, a lengthy chronicle of English history from the Roman conquest through the Union of the Crowns. Good watch if you have the time.
Foundation by Peter Ackroyd, the first book in a mammoth 6-volume History of England, which covers everything up to the death of Henry VII. If you really want to dig into English history, this is the book for you.This video was edited by Sophia Ricciardi AKA “Indigo”. https://www.sophiakricci.com/
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April 13, 2020
Prehistory Summarized: The Early Universe
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 23 Sep 2015Blue hits us with some physics! Hold onto your butts. That butt is made of star stuff, ya know. It’s very special. Be proud of that butt. It was forged in the heart of a supernova.
Anyway, yeah, physics.
Guest starring yours truly! Watch out for my extremely subtle and unobtrusive cameos.
The ninja thing is a reference to earlier videos. I think he shows up in the College video and the one about The Borgias.
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April 7, 2020
If you don’t have an [N95-equivalent mask] … dress up as a ninja
I first saw this years ago and thought it was amusing but probably useless. However, according to data at this site (which may or may not be authoritative), a cotton T-shirt is far better than nothing as far as DIY masks are concerned:
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April 4, 2020
QotD: The danger of studying philosophy
I quickly learned that […] many of my professors valued paradoxical and obscure arguments. And I got pretty good at making them. In an essay on Wallace Stevens, I concluded by asserting, “If everything is nothing, then that nothingness is everything. For poetry to encompass one, it encompasses the other. When Stevens’s mind of winter descends into the inescapable nothingness of his subjectivity, he has claimed for himself the totality of everything.” I don’t know what this means. But I wrote it and I was rewarded for it.
I knew my analysis of Wallace Stevens would please my professor, but I was bothered by a nagging thought that I really didn’t understand Wallace Stevens. I wondered if my graduate school training just amounted to a parlor trick. Last year, at my high school, the students enjoyed arguing if a hotdog is a sandwich, the millennial equivalent of asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The hotdog question made its way to the whiteboard in our staff lounge. By the time I arrived, my colleagues had written their responses. Some argued that a hot dog is not a sandwich because a sandwich requires two pieces of bread and a hotdog bun isn’t supposed to separate. Others averred that it most definitely is a sandwich: Meat between bread is a sandwich, end of story. I saw these responses and thought, “Simpletons!” before putting my graduate education to work: “In order to determine if a ‘hotdog is a sandwich,’ we must first determine the proper understanding of ‘is’ for if we do not grasp the ontological necessity of being itself, we fall into an abyss wherein ‘being’ is and is not itself and thus a hotdog is and is not a sandwich for it is and is not its very self.” I was quite amused by the whole situation until a colleague told me that a student had seen the whiteboard and said he wanted to study philosophy so that he could write like me.
S. A. Dance, “Incomprehension 501: Intro to Graduate School”, Quillette, 2018-03-06.
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March 30, 2020
Renaissance Antics – History Hijinks
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 27 Mar 2020The Italian Renaissance is known for its fancy art and ginormous domes, but what about the visionaries behind it? In this ~~fancy new series~~ we’ll discuss the antics of the period’s most famous artists.
Sources & Further Reading: Brunelleschi’s Dome by King, Leonardo Da Vinci by Isaacson, Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography, and Artemisia Gentileschi by Garrard.
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.
This video was edited by Sophia Ricciardi, AKA “Indigo” https://www.sophiakricci.com/PATREON: https://www.Patreon.com/OSP
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March 29, 2020
Armchair Classics: The Epic Of Gilgamesh
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 17 Aug 2015CONTENT DISCLAIMER: This video no longer meets my standards of quality for historical research and presentation. I made this one in the days long past, when the question of “How do I make an entertaining and historically interesting video” was answered by “IDK, memes I guess?”. Take the video above with a grain of salt and enjoy the jokes for now. We have a replacement planned, so stay tuned.
Hailing from Mesopotamia, it’s the Epic Of Gilgamesh!
Gregory brings you yet another dose of knowledge from the comfort of his comfy chair.
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March 28, 2020
QotD: A man’s view of home decoration projects
Potentially offensive language warning — hence the NSFW tag — so the QotD is below the fold:
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March 22, 2020
QotD: The notion of Hell
I know we all follow the theological debates within Catholicism about which saint got in touch with which angel to channel which biblical dead person — don’t they have a show on CNN that goes over each week’s highlights? — but one thing you never do, in Catholicism, Protestantism, or Pentecostal Snake-Handlingism, for that matter, is say there’s no hell.
Because that would be Jewish. The Jews have never cared that much about hell. They grudgingly admit that it’s probably there, but it’s just this place that, after you die, you feel intense shame before God for all the times you yelled at your wife or failed to stuff two dollars into the self-parking kiosk. The Hebrew word for hell is “Gehenna,” which is the name of the garbage dump outside Jerusalem that (a) smelled bad, and (b) was always on fire. I can imagine generations of parents using it as a threat to their unruly children: “If you don’t straighten up right this minute, I’m gonna throw you into the smelly garbage dump with the smoke cloud over it!”
So when the Christians come along, they take Gehenna and run with it. They use the name Gehenna to mean hell, and that’s not just trash burning out there, it’s demons and human souls, and it burns forever because it’s mixed with brimstone, which does indeed smell bad when you burn it. Actually brimstone turns red and burns blue, so if you’ve got brimstone out there, you’ve got a blood red gelatinous mass with a blue flame, or what the great preachers call …
The Lake of Fire.
[…]
At any rate, the reason the Catholic press got their cassocks in a bunch is that, over the past half century or so, a lot of theologians have been saying, “Maybe we got the whole hell thing wrong.” They’ve looked back over the appropriate scriptures and decided that, after you die, you don’t get thrown into the flaming garbage dump, you just vanish from all human history, as though you never existed. There’s no memory or trace of you, you’re erased from the universe.
And this might be what the Pope said he believes. After Eugenio reported their conversation, the Vatican scrambled around and issued statements saying that, no, the Pope didn’t go outside the catechism and they were just chewing the fat and please everybody let’s not get carried away. Yes, Gehenna is real. Yes, the Pope believes in hell. Yes, the Pope is Catholic.
Joe Bob Briggs, “Pope Forgets the Lake of Fire”, Taki’s Magazine, 2018-06-21.
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March 21, 2020
Modern Classics Summarized: Stranger In A Strange Land
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 20 Mar 2020This book is:
10% Mike
20% stars
15% concentrated power of mars
5% water
50% cult
and 100% topics that are very adultThis video was requested by our longtime patron Joshua A. Demic!
Can you use the “product of the times” defense if the book was wildly controversial for its time? Asking for a comment section…
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up. No, seriously. We REALLY MEAN IT.
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March 17, 2020
QotD: The luck of the Irish
Dan Savage, “Welcome Black”, AndrewSullivan.com, 2005-08-08.
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March 16, 2020
Cognitive dissonance, family style
Severian has some fun discussing current events with a nephew:
Image from Castle of Chaos – https://castleofchaos.com/blog/5-tips-for-surviving-a-zombie-apocalypse/
Just recently I had some fun with one of my nephews, who’s unexpectedly home for “Spring Break.”
Let’s take this Wuhan Flu thing seriously, I said. But since that hits a little too close to home, let’s pretend it’s a zombie outbreak. I want you to take it 100% seriously. The zombie virus has made it to our shores. It’s not too bad yet, but there’s definitely a walking dead situation. So … what do you want the government to do?
Nephew of course starts rattling off all the Chuck Norris fantasies young college guys have. Close the ports, call out the army, firebomb the streets wherever infected are sighted, yadda yadda. All of this is translated from the teenager, but you get the gist of it:
Me: Ok. Now, since we’ve stipulated that we’re taking this 100% seriously: Do you really want to give the government the power to do all that?
Nephew: Of course!
Me: Ok. Well then, do you really want to give Donald Trump the power to do that?
Nephew: Oh my god no!!! Orange Man bad!!!
Me: Now wait a minute, Nephew. You just said you’re taking this 100% seriously. You just said you want the government to have the power to set up flamethrower checkpoints on all major roads. Well, who is the current head of the government?
Nephew: But … but … but … Orange Man BAD!!!!
Me: Remember, Nephew, you promised to take this 100% seriously. So are you seriously telling me that the first thing you’d do, in the event of the zombie outbreak, is call an emergency presidential election, in the hopes that someone — Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, somebody — would win, so that the right kind of person could take all those measures you said were so very, very, very immediately necessary?
Nephew: Uhhhh … no, I guess not.
Me: So you do want to give Donald Trump that power, since he is, in fact, the current head of the United States government?
Nephew: Oh my god no! Orange Man BAAAAAAADDDD!!!!
Me: Well then I guess you’re just not serious about this zombie outbreak, are you?
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March 15, 2020
QotD: The latest breakthrough in psychological therapy
All psychotherapy books bring up the Dodo Bird Verdict – the observation, confirmed in study after study, that all psychotherapies are about equally good, and the only things that matters are “nonspecific factors” like how much patients like their therapist. Some people might think this suggests our form of therapy will only be about as good as other forms. This, all therapy books agree, would be a foolish and perverse interpretation of these findings. The correct interpretation is that all previous forms of therapy must be equally wrong. The only reason they ever produce good results at all is because sometimes therapists accidentally stumble into using our form of therapy, without even knowing it. Since every form of therapy is about equally likely to stumble into using our form of therapy, every other form is equally good. But now that our form of therapy has been formalized and written up, there is no longer any need to stumble blindly! Everyone can just use our form of therapy all the time, for everything! Nobody has ever done a study of our form of therapy. But when they do, it’s going to be amazing! Nobody has even invented numbers high enough to express how big the effect size of our form of therapy is going to be!
Consider the case of Bob. Bob had some standard-issue psychological problem. He had been in and out of therapy for years, tried dozens of different medications, none of them had helped at all. Then he decided to try our form of therapy. In his first session, the therapist asked him “Have you ever considered that your problems might be because of [the kind of thing our form of therapy says all problems are because of]?” Bob started laughing and crying simultaneously, eventually breaking into a convulsive fit. After three minutes, he recovered and proceeded to tell a story of how [everything in his life was exactly in accordance with our form of therapy’s predictions] and he had always reacted by [doing exactly the kind of thing our form of therapy predicts that he would]. Now that all of this was out in consciousness, he no longer felt any desire to have psychological problems. In a followup session two weeks later, the therapist confirmed that he no longer had any psychological problems, and had become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and a renowned pentathlete.
Not every case goes this smoothly. Consider the case of Sarah. Sarah also has some standard-issue psychological problem. She had also been in and out of therapy for years, tried dozens of different medications, none of them had helped at all. Then she decided to try our form of therapy. In her first session, the therapist asked her “Have you ever considered that your problems might be because of [the kind of thing our form of therapy says all problems are because of]?” Sarah said “No, I don’t think they are.” The therapist asked “Are you sure you’re not just repressing the fact that they totally definitely are, for sure?” As soon as Sarah heard this, she gasped, and her eyes seemed to light up with an inner fire. Then she proceeded to tell a story of how [everything in her life was exactly in accordance with our form of therapy’s predictions] and she had always reacted by [doing exactly the kind of thing our form of therapy predicts that she would], only she was repressing this because she was scared of how powerful she would be if she recovered. Now that all of this was out in consciousness, she no longer felt any desire to have psychological problems. In a followup session two weeks later, the therapist confirmed that she no longer had any psychological problems, and had become the hand-picked successor to the Dalai Lama and the mother of five healthy children.
Previous forms of therapy have failed because they were ungrounded. They were ridiculous mental castles built in the clouds by armchair speculators. But our form of therapy is based on hard science! For example, it probably acts on synapses or the hippocampus or something. Here are three neuroscience papers which vaguely remind us of our form of therapy. One day, neuroscience will catch up to us and realize that the principles of our form of therapy are the principles that govern the organization of the entire brain – if not all of multicellular life.
Scott Alexander, “Book Review: All Therapy Books”, Slate Star Codex, 2019-11-21.
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March 14, 2020
History Summarized: Ethiopia
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 13 Mar 2020Ethiopian History gets started early and just keeps on going. From the dawn of humanity itself through the medieval period and into the modern day, the history of the kingdom at the end of the Blue Nile is full of surprises.
SOURCES & Further Reading: Harold Marcus A History of Ethiopia and John Jackson’s Ethiopia and the Origins of Civilization, see also Kenneth Vickery’s lecture “Ethiopia: Outpost of Christianity” and William Cook’s lecture “The Rock-Hewn Churches of Ethiopia” via The Great Courses.
This video was edited by Sophia Ricciardi AKA “Indigo”. https://www.sophiakricci.com/
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.
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March 10, 2020
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy turns 42
In The Register, Richard Speed notes a significant anniversary:
The weekend marked the 42nd anniversary of the first broadcast of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the hugely influential BBC radio show.
42 is a significant number for fans of the innovative series by Douglas Adams so (carefully) pour yourself a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, wrap yourself in a towel and join The Register for a trip back to 1978, when the BBC decided to do something quite different.
Writing in the introduction to the Pan Books’ 1985 publication of the radio scripts (which differ from the books, which differ from the television series, which differ from the film …), series producer Geoffrey Perkins described his first meeting with the author. Adams was giving a speech despite being aggressively heckled by the cast members of the Cambridge Footlights show he’d just directed.
He’d also elected to stand on a rickety chair to deliver the speech.
“Here,” recalled Perkins, “was someone prepared to stick his neck out further than most people, someone who would carry on in the face of adversity, and someone who would shortly fall off a chair.
“I was right on all three counts.”
Perkins went on to join the BBC, while Adams worked with the Monty Python team as well as contributing to Doctor Who as the 1970s went on. He pitched the idea for a science-fiction comedy radio series to radio producer Simon Brett. Brett recommended Perkins to the BBC as a potential producer and the series was given the go-ahead on 31 August 1977 (after the first episode was commissioned on 1 March 1977).
“We both owe him an enormous debt,” said Perkins of Brett.
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