Tetherd Cow Ahead

Yes, I know I’ve talked about it several times already, but this time it’s serious.

‘Cyber sickness’ warning ahead of 3D revolution’ screams the headline. Again, you will not be at all surprised to learn that it’s from the Melbourne Age.

Up to 10 per cent of people who watch 3D images on television, at the movies or while gaming suffer ”cyber sickness” symptoms such as blurred vision, nausea and dizziness, health experts have warned.

Those experts! If it wasn’t for them, the world would be a much cheerier place. But wait! It’s WORSE THAN YOU THINK:

But they say the number of people affected by cyber sickness could rise to unknown proportions with the advent of the 3D TV era…

Did you hear that? UNKNOWN PROPORTIONS! It could be a veritable cyber-sickness pandemic. Forget getting immunised for swine flu – if these experts are right we’ll all be taking major doses of stereoids to fend off the 3DTs.

The article gushes breathlessly onward:

Virtual reality pioneer Mark Pesce, an honorary lecturer at the University of Sydney, said the majority of occasional 3D viewers would love the experience, but he warned that the health effects of heavy use of 3D media – which trick the eye by changing the depth perception of a person’s vision – had not been tested.

Um… actually, that’s not how 3D works at all – there is no ‘tricking the eye by changing depth perception’ Mr… who wrote this damned thing… let’s just scroll back up to the by-line… oh, WHAT a surprise. It’s Stephen Cauchi, King of the the Non-News at the wheel again. Geez. Have they hired this guy specifically to reduce the Age’s credibility or something? ((I swear I’m not witch-hunting this guy. I literally did what I just wrote – I was reading the article and thought ‘Man this is terrible!’, looked at the byline…)) Anyway, to continue, 3D works by exploiting the effect of stereopsis which is the natural way we achieve depth perception. What Mr Cauchi just said is word fluff. It is completely free of actual meaning.

Like last post’s Government Weather Control article that we saw from Mr Cauchi, as the story continues the sensible people start to appear, and we find Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital ophthalmologist Lionel Kowal saying that the number of people who reported problems with 3D is ‘probably closer to 5 per cent than 10 per cent.’ Then, we hear from Kathryn Rose, an associate professor in orthoptics at the University of Sydney, who thinks that ‘about 3 per cent of the population would not be able to watch 3D TV’.

3 percent? 3 percent? Do I hear 2 percent? 2 percent over in the back? 1.5 percent? Can I get a 1?

The article ends with a quote from Newcastle University neurobiologis Alan Brichta:

‘Right now we don’t have all the information but my gut feeling says [cyber sickness] is not going to be a major issue.’

Are you with me here in this insanity, dear Acowlytes? We’ve gone from an epidemic of ‘cyber sickness’ of UNKNOWN PROPORTIONS to ‘er.. actually, not a major issue…’ in the space of one information-free waffle fest.

Like the Government Weather Control story, I propose this whole air-headed notion could have been summed up in one short sentence:

A tiny minority of people might find 3D media a little unsettling but most people won’t.

Again, short on pizazz, but it’s exactly the same content and it would have saved precious digital bits for something that was actually worth calling NEWS.

Sometimes teh stoopid in the world is so profound that I fear alien civilizations from other galaxies will first detect us not via radio transmissions or atmospheric chemistry signatures, but by the massive volume of idiot particles that we radiate out into space.

Take this latest ‘health’ warning from Samsung advising viewers of the potential hazards involved with watching 3D television.

If you experience any of the following symptoms, immediately stop watching 3D pictures and consult a medical specialist: (1) altered vision; (2) lightheadedness; (3) dizziness; (4) involuntary movements such as eye or muscle twitching; (5) confusion; (6) nausea; (7) loss of awareness; (8) convulsions; (9) cramps; and/or (10) disorientation.

I don’t know about you, but I frequently experience symptoms 2 through 7 (especially 5 & 6) while viewing normal 2D television, so on a 3D tv I’d be hard-pressed figuring out whether they were being caused by the 3D effect or the program content.

The Samsung advisory goes on to suggest that it is a bad idea to watch 3D tv ‘if you are in bad physical condition, need sleep or have been drinking alcohol’ instantly alienating about 75% of their possible customers. It also advises that you should not ‘place your television near open stairwells, cables, balconies or other objects that may cause you to injure yourself’.

So, to clarify: don’t watch 3D tv at the top of an open stairwell whilst drunk and sleep-deprived. It’s not the alcohol, the lack of sleep or the plummet to the marble foyer that need worry you – it’s that woo-eee-ooo spooky 3D vision!

You have been warned!

(Everyone probably knows someone who needs the kind of warning issued by Samsung, and therefore also needs a Simple Graphics Man coffee mug from the TCA Shoppe. Send them one today and help them avoid a horrible disfigurement!)

Good morning Acowlytes. As you no doubt know, 3D movies are all the rage at the moment, but have you ever wondered what the ‘D’ in 3D stands for? I bet you thought it was ‘Dimension’ didn’t you? But I’m here to tell you you are wrong – it stands for ‘Devil’. Yes, that’s right Cowpokes – 3D IS THE WORK OF SATAN!

Well, that’s the idea you get if you listen to the fucking stupid idiot media anyway, who will try and spin a panic story out of just about anything these days. Witness this piece of inane drivel from AFP which has been regurgitated by every undiscerning newspaper from here to Bullamakanka. ((Including the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age where I saw it – that’s right, I’m naming names)) The basic gist of it is that a Taiwanese man who went to see Avatar, died during the screening. ((Out of the tens of millions of people who’ve presumably seen it so far, one death seems to me to be on the low side)) The man, who had a known medical history of high blood pressure, was treated by an emergency room doctor who opined “It’s likely that the over-excitement from watching the movie triggered his symptoms.”

Oh whatever. I’m sure it was a tragic event for the guy’s family and all, but it’s hardly news. And the writer of the article knows it, so they tagged it with this frivolous and completely trivial factoid:

Film blogging sites ((‘Blogging Sites’ have become the modern equivalent of the old ‘Our sources’ – in other words, ‘We pulled some garbage that we want you to believe is ‘factual’ out of our asses and we’re giving them a diffuse, unspecified, unreliable provenance’)) have reported complaints of headaches, dizziness, nausea and blurry eyesight from viewers of Avatar and other movies rich in 3D imagery.

What are we supposed to infer from the conflation of these two globs of unrelated news-tainment other than that, if left unchecked, this newfangled 3D phenomenon is going to run amok and kill us all in our sleep with its boggly ‘comin’-at-ya’ tricks? Oooooo-eeeee-ooooo ((That’s a theremin playing…)) …. Maybe 3D is all, you know – dangerous and stuff…! Jesus H. Christ. No wonder the news media is losing credibility. If Mr Rupert Murdoch is hell bent on charging for online news, he’d better go hire some actual journalists to write his stories, otherwise I’m sticking with the mysterious ‘blogging sites’.

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PS – The Tetherd Cow Ahead ‘ShooWooWoo’ button and keyring, both available in the TCA Shoppe, are guaranteed to protect you against trauma or death resulting from the viewing of 3D movies. ((Guarantee does not extend to effects caused by the subject matter of said movies))

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