Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Reality vs. fantasy: a visual metaphor

Via PZ, a YouTube clip of a martial arts "master" who seems to have watched too many Shaw Brothers wire-fu movies from the seventies, and who thinks he can vanquish all comers by the use of his "qi". In the video on Pharyngula, you can see him goofily flapping his arms in the general direction of a host of "opponents" who are all several feet away, obligingly falling down, or pretending to convulse as if their bodies are taking vicious blows.

Then, said "master" decides to prove his skills in the real world by taking on a practitioner of regular old-fashioned martial arts...and gets pwned in most humiliating fashion. Go to Pharyngula to see the whole video with the ridiculous wannabe-Jedi playfighting, followed by the real thing. The clip below is of the "master"'s sad defeat, from a better, clearer angle. (Don't watch it if the sight of a poor idiot taking a few kicks to the face might upset you. Good grief, I studied tae-kwon-do when in college in Houston, and even today I could block better than this guy. But then, I would know to block rather than just relying on my magical force field.)

The whole ludicrous farce is, as PZ has also pointed out, a grim metaphor for the dire consequences of rejecting reality in favor of irrational fantasy. As people in the US continue to turn their backs on science and empirical truth, so shall we find our collective asses handed to us when other countries who don't disdain things like evolution, global warming, or any other ideologically incorrect science, race ahead of us intellectually, economically, and in overall quality of life for their citizens.

2 comments:

  1. (Ass-kicking aside) that is just beautiful. I believe some of those in the east call this "karma", although I prefer the more traditional English phrase "just desserts".

    ReplyDelete
  2. It is jaw dropping to see illustrated the effect of woo on a non-believer.
    This is the kung-fu version of Randi overdosing on homeopathy sleeping pills.

    ReplyDelete

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