My Review of the HBO documentary "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief"

By Tyler Goucher

Reporter

April 22, 2015

Filed under Opinions, Reviews

Bakersfield College Newspaper: The Renegade Rip

In the HBO documentary “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief”, Director Alex Gibney manages to give us an inside look at the controversial religion, which proved to be both interesting and deeply disturbing.

Throughout the course of the 2-hour long documentary, several ex-members are interviewed about their time spent as dedicated followers of the cult-like religion.

Paul Haggis, an award winning Writer/Director, talks about his time as a member of Scientology and how it took him over 20 years to realize just how corrupt and scandalous the leaders of the church were.

Jason Beghe, a seasoned actor, talks about how he went into the religion with a messed up head and came out even more messed up due to the mind games Scientology plays with its esteemed member’s heads.

Even some non-celebrity figures were interviewed in the documentary who were relatively high up in the organization who didn’t see the big picture of Scientology until they wasted years of their life and ridiculous amounts of money to find out they were pretty much studying the mind of a lunatic.

For a lot of ex-members, the story is very similar, in that they were so brainwashed for so long, that it took something very traumatic to snap them out of the spell they were put under by the extremely intelligent and manipulative L Ron Hubbard.

Hubbard was the founder of Scientology, but more important, he was an avid science fiction writer who wrote hundreds of short stories about fantastic ideas regarding mankind’s exploration to the stars and the idea that aliens inhabited the Earth long before we ever did. It’s interesting to think that a lot of what he wrote in his science fiction novels was transferred over to his book of Dianetics, which at the time was pretty much the “bible” of his soon-to-be religion, Scientology.

From the 1950’s to present day, the religion has grown in numbers and has gained a massive amount of celebrity members. The film depicts these members as the main reason why the religion has become such a controversial topic, and also why Scientology is worth billions of dollars. At one point, one of Hubbard’s ex-spouses says that he mentioned several times that “the only way to make real money in this world without the government taking it away from you, is to start a religion.”

And that’s exactly what he does, through many years of fighting the IRS to prove that they are a religious organization that should be tax exempt, the government finally caves and gives them what they want. Although the majority of the money goes toward building more churches and spreading the word of a science fiction writer, the leaders of the church still fight to make sure their public opinion is in a positive light. In fact, the film explains that Scientology, beyond any other religion, will go to considerable lengths to maintain a good public image.

Now I thought I knew a lot about Scientology and the shady nature of it’s so-called religious philosophy, but this film really does dive a lot deeper than I expected. I won’t spoil the details because I believe this is an important film for everyone to watch, but I will say that I have a newfound disgust toward Scientology, it’s founder and some of their oh-so famous members. I give “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief” 4 out 5 stars.

- See more at: http://www.therip.com/reviews/2015/04/22/going-clear-scientology-and-the-prison-of-belief-sheds-new-light-on-the-religion/#sthash.6Q2isxF6.dpuf

Police Brutality: Beyond the Headlines

Tyler Goucher

Reporter

April 8, 2015

Filed under News, Bakersfield College: The Renegade Rip Newspaper

Recently in the United States, there has been an uprising of police brutality, or at least that’s what the media is portraying.

It has become very popular for these media organizations to flood the airways with fear-mongering material aimed at sparking controversy and backlash, often times only shedding light on the victim’s perspective, rather than giving the viewer an overall unbiased look at what’s really the root cause of most of these violent incidents.

In a recent interview with police Sgt. Joe Grubbs, public information officer for the Bakersfield Police Department, he had some insightful things to say about these recent events.

“What is going on in our nation is the narrative is putting all the blame on the police. There isn’t much of a discussion on different ethnic groups killing each other,” said Grubbs.

Although there hasn’t been many shootings in Kern County, in other locations in the U.S., there have been several cases of deadly force being used in situations where a Taser or some other type of force could have been used.

“Often times, in some of these situations, less lethal force is used,” said Grubbs. “It doesn’t always work for a variety of different reasons, though. Sometimes these devices don’t work or people don’t respond to them, and the officer is left with five seconds to make a rational decision.”

Often, media is blamed for a lot of the way people think about law enforcement. The theory is that if it wasn’t for all the coverage of controversial subject matter, such as unarmed shootings or racial profiling, it is possible that this negative stigma that has been created for the police, may not be as harsh as it is now.

“The media isn’t fully to blame. Law enforcement is somewhat to blame. Not all shootings are 100 percent right. We aren’t doing a good job of educating the community about how law enforcement works and how their training goes,” said Grubbs.

“It goes back to a lack of education in civics. Our education system has a lot to do with it. Officer shootings are almost always preceded by a bad decision made by the person the officer is shooting at.”

Due to all the recent riots in Ferguson and Oakland, as well as other cities and towns in the United States, some Americans believe that we are on the brink of a civil war because more and more civilians are becoming more combative with police officers and authority in general.

“I hope that it doesn’t happen,” said Grubbs. “I don’t see a civil war happening, but I do see somewhat of a national kind of event happening that will cause society to stabilize and come back to its core. And even if that did happen, law enforcement would still be there to do their job, regardless of what public opinion is.”

Some think the problem is within the hiring process of law enforcement and that it breeds corruption. It could also be that along the way, good cops become bad because of the already negative outlook on them by the people they are sworn in to protect.

“I don’t think people come on the force with intentions of becoming corrupt. Through the course of their careers, some officers have become corrupt, though. In most cases they are weeded out quickly,” said Grubbs.

“Police officers take their job very seriously, as well as their responsibilities and role in society very seriously. If these corrupt individuals are found, they are reprimanded or fired very quickly.”

For those who are interested in finding out statistics on police shootings, there is no national database, so the only way to find the information would be to search on Google for the date and location you are inquiring about. For the numbers being as low as they supposedly are, it’s questionable why they make the information so difficult to find.

“There should be a national database, there is a database for California,” Grubb said. “I think that most law enforcement agencies don’t have a problem with that. Most of our shootings are justified, so why would we have a problem hiding that information?”

- See more at: http://www.therip.com/news/2015/04/08/police-brutality-isnt-all-that-it-seems/#sthash.tO5olrVl.dpuf

My first experience with the future of Virtual Reality

By Tyler Goucher

Reporter

March 19, 2015 
Filed under Features, Uncategorized

Bakersfield College: The Renegade Rip Newspaper

Everything is black. There is little noise, except for the communication going on between the man in the room and myself. As the view in front of me brightens, I start to see what could only be described as a three-dimensional menu, almost like an Xbox dashboard. Everything I look at pops out at me. I start to turn my head to look around, and to my surprise, I am completely surrounded by this visual experience. I tell myself, ‘so this is what virtual reality is like’.

The feeling is indescribable, yet I want nothing more than to describe to you how this experience completely blew my mind.

After exploring the menus for a few minutes, I was instructed on how to use the touch-pad on the side of the Samsung Gear headset, to choose the content I wanted to check out.

The first app I chose was called the Oculus Cinema.

The screen goes black for a few moments and then slowly fades into a virtual representation of a giant movie theater lobby. In the center of the lobby, it gives me a choice of choosing the movie I want to watch and in which theater I want to watch it in. I choose by simply looking at the title of the movie I want and tapping the touchpad on the headset. Once the decision is made, you are transported to an empty movie theater.

Once I took a minute to look around, I had this strong sense of presence. For a moment, I really felt as if I was actually inside a movie theater, waiting for the movie to start, wondering why there was no one watching the movie except me. Of course this feeling fades as you look up and are given the option to play the movie. The best part about the Oculus Cinema app is the ability for the user to upload any movie, or video file for that matter, into the app to experience on the big screen.

After having some fun with the Oculus Cinema, my next journey took me to Iceland, as I soared over the lush scenery in a helicopter in one of the Samsung Gear’s 3D videos. Although there were a few moments I experienced a little bit of dizziness, the beautiful imagery compelled me to continue on.

The sheer magnitude of how big this could be in the tourism industry was beyond anything I ever expected. No longer will people be forced to spend thousands of dollars on expensive trips across the world, just to experience something we should all have the opportunity to experience.

When I was finished messing around with the Samsung Gear, which is the mobile VR headset created by Oculus, I was asked to put on the big boy headset, the Oculus Rift.

Being that this headset was powered by a gaming pc with an $800 graphics card, I was expecting the experience to surpass everything I had just gone through with the Samsung Gear.

The first app I was shown was a space exploration game called Titans of Space.

I look down, and I am in some type of a pod, floating in the middle of the solar system. There are controls and buttons in front of me that light up when I look at them and give me a sense that I am actually in control of where I get to go.

As the game starts, it takes you from planet to planet and shows you a larger-than-life representation of what each of them look like, along with a description of the planet, with fun facts and interesting insights.

This is going to be huge for education and space enthusiasts. Imagine learning about space in virtual environment that allows you to actually see what you are reading about, rather than relying on outdated textbooks and boring lectures.

After conquering space, I was interested in how horror games would be experienced in VR. I was then launched into a horrifying game called Dreadhalls.

I open my eyes to a dark, underground-animated maze, lit only by a lamp that my character is holding. I look down and see a map that only shows where I have been, which at this point, is nowhere. Now being that this game actually requires you to move, I was handed an Xbox controller so that I was able to walk around in this maze. As I started to get the hang of the controls and the disorienting feeling of being able to look around in 360 degrees while controlling the camera at the same time, I started to really get into the experience.

As I walk down the halls trying to find my way out, I start noticing shadows in the distance of random horrifying characters. When you are spotted by one of these characters, the music picks up and pretty much forces you to run away and try to find a way out before you are caught and the game ends.

I must admit, my heart was beating pretty fast in this game. My anxiety usually doesn’t get to me when I play horror games, but something about being virtually “inside” this game, made it that much more realistic and unnerving.

The last experience I had was probably the most immersive one of them all. As part of a marketing ploy for the new upcoming Divergent movie sequel, Insurgent, some VR developers created a 3D VR experience unlike anything I had experienced yet. In Insurgent: Shatter Reality, you become a character in the movie.

When the app started, I opened my eyes to Kate Winslet’s character, speaking to me in a lab, explaining to me about being divergent. As the dialogue continued, I looked down to see my arms and legs, strapped in a chair. This was really crazy to me. It really felt as if I was there, being talked to by these characters. It was awesome. Confusing. Horrifying.

I won’t spoil the experience, but I will say that there was times where my brain actually made me feel some of the physical reactions to what I was going through. This in itself made the Insurgent app the most memorable experience I had.

All in all, my first experience with these new VR headsets won’t be my last. I highly suggest anyone with the time, money and interest, to get your hands on one of these prototype headsets, so that you too, can have your mind blown.

The future of Virtual Reality is now

By Tyler Goucher

Reporter

March 19, 2015 
Filed under Features

Bakersfield College: The Renegade Rip Newspaper

Imagine the world you live in is replaced with an alternate reality. One where anything is possible and nothing is as it seems.

What was once considered to be science fiction when we were younger is now becoming a true possibility, if not a probability.

Virtual Reality, or VR, is a computer-simulated environment created by computer programs and presented on digital displays. The main goal of VR is to create life-like experiences by incorporating user interaction, immersion, and presence into the content so that one day, we are able to do just about anything we can imagine and have it feel as close to “real” as possible.

Although VR has had its ups and downs since its consumer launch in the early-mid ’90s, it is finally stepping into its prime as we are being introduced to the most powerful, technically advanced VR systems ever created in this day and age.

Through thousands of hours of work and dedication, and with the help of crowd sourcing, a man named Palmer Luckey, in 2012, created a new, highly advanced head-mounted VR display, called the Oculus Rift. Since it’s spawn, it has brought VR back into the multimedia spotlight and has opened up new doors and avenues for both software developers and engineers alike.

In 2014, after being acquired by Facebook for over $2 billion, the Oculus Rift became the next big thing in emerging technology.

Already, Microsoft and Google, as well as other major competitors, have jumped on the bandwagon and have started developing their own VR equipment that will be compatible with their own products.

Much like there have been videogame console wars in the past, this will be the first type of war for VR equipment since the mid ’90s.

Even outside of the professional world of VR, many individuals have become hardcore VR enthusiasts.

Ian Hamilton, a journalist by trade, is a VR enthusiast who has been following this movement for sometime now. Hamilton got interested a while back when he was a technology reporter for the Orange County Register and was introduced to the Oculus Rift developer’s kit by a friend.

After having a first-hand experience with the prototype headset, he was turned on to purchase his own developer’s kit, which fueled his newly found interest in VR.

Since his purchase of the Oculus Rift developer’s kit 2, he has started a blog dedicated to VR news and updates, and has even started to develop his own VR content.

Now many people believe that VR is going to change the world forever, and that may very well be true, however there is a lot to consider.

“It’s hard to gauge how quickly VR will become influential,” Hamilton said. “Society will be fundamentally different when space doesn’t separate us, and you can go to any world you can imagine.”

There is also much to be said about the effects it will have on the human mind and whether or not it could potentially have negative effects on our mental health.

“It’s not going to be for everyone,” he said. “I’d think people who don’t have a solid grip on what’s real to begin with and those who don’t like this world anyway, might have problems handling alternate realities too.”

It may never get to that point unless the experience becomes fully immersive and as of now, there is a lot that stops it from being just that.

Where the Oculus Rift relies heavily on head tracking to give the user that feeling of immersion, it still hasn’t gotten to the point of incorporating full body sensors to capture movements of the arms and legs.

Some of Rift’s competitors including Microsoft’s HoloLens and Google’s Magic Leap, which are also still in development, are focusing on a different type of technology to pierce through the world of VR.

Augmented reality takes a real-world environment and augments it by using computer-generated sensory input such as audio or video.

Since this technology isn’t replacing the real world with a fake one, it won’t rely on sensors to track body movement for a virtual character.

It will instead allow the user to experience the augmented reality, while still being able to see their bodies and interact with the environment in real time.

When the time comes for consumers to choose a product, there will be a lot of variety in the type of VR headsets that will be available.

“There are mobile VR setups like Gear VR and Google Cardboard, desktop VR systems like Vive and Rift, as well as console VR like the Morpheus,” said Hamilton.

What consumers should keep in mind, is whether or not how powerful the device is, will outweigh the price and mobility of the unit.

“Desktop VR is where all the excitement is right now because of the powerful sense of presence that can be produced using the highest end graphics cards inside desktop gaming PCs.” He said.

“Mobile VR is so much more convenient though, because it’s less expensive, wireless and you can get into bed or get on a plane to use it. But because mobile VR relies on a fully functioning cell phone, there are weight and heat limits to how powerful it can be.”

There is so much potential for this technology in more than just gaming and entertainment.

Hamilton explained, “Education could be enormous. Every person could learn any subject from the best teachers in the world.”

Facebook even plans on taking social networking to the next level with the Oculus Rift. In the future, we may experience Facebook in a completely different way.

“Social VR would be even bigger,” Hamilton said. “You could meet with anyone you want, to do anything you want, anytime you want.”

At the end of the day, though, this is all speculation. All of these companies have now, are beta versions of what will hopefully be everything they aim to be, revolutionary. “The next five years are going to be about improving software and hardware so prices come down for consumers, while the capabilities improve, to bring more of who you are, into VR,” said Hamilton.

If VR enthusiasts like Hamilton are interested in experiencing what these headsets have to offer in their early stages, development kits and beta versions are available. However, the consumer versions of these products will be vastly different in quality, appearance, and content.

“The devices out now are not ready for consumers yet. Wait for the consumer version unless you want to invest a fair amount of money and time to learn how to make VR experiences yourself with the tools that are available,” Hamilton explains.

More information and news on VR can be found at Ian Hamilton’s blog http://ianhamilton.net or by simply searching for Virtual Reality on Google.