I find myself having a hard time describing his work, or how the loss of him makes me feel. Which I suppose is a bit Ballardian. I read and was hugely impressed with his writing, though I never fell personally in love with it. My favourite of his novels was Concrete Island, sort of a retelling of Robinson Crusoe in which a man crashes his car at a highway interchange and finds himself trapped in the forgotten space between ramps.
Who else could inspire film adaptations by both David Cronenberg and Steven Spielberg? The former, Crash, Ballard called a better version of his novel than the novel itself, which may be why at Cannes they had to invent an “Audacity Prize” to accommodate how such a bad film could also be a great film. The latter, Empire of the Sun, is to my mind Spielberg's best film ... and is of course almost forgotten.
Hugh “Wolverine” Jackman has found a way to use Twitter and his celebrity for charity.
I will donate 100K to one individual's favorite non profit organization. Of course,you must convince me why by using 140 characters or less
He's re-tweeting the pleas he gets on his Twitter feed, so that while only one charity gets his $100,000 lots of folks get a bit of free publicity for their work. It's a cunning way of leveraging his fame.
Smart, handsome, famous, tech-savvy, and a stand-up guy; Mr Jackman gives George Clooney a run for his money. And unlike Clooney, the guy can sing ...
Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.
Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination.
....
The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the “right” direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, “You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”
Julian Sanchez has been thinking about why discussions of climate change rely so heavily on “countless experts agree” type arguments, and makes a good point about evaluating experts' arguments.
Come to think of it, there’s a certain class of rhetoric I’m going to call the “one way hash” argument. Most modern cryptographic systems in wide use are based on a certain mathematical asymmetry: You can multiply a couple of large prime numbers much (much, much, much, much) more quickly than you can factor the product back into primes. Certain bad arguments work the same way—skim online debates between biologists and earnest ID afficionados armed with talking points if you want a few examples: The talking point on one side is just complex enough that it’s both intelligible—even somewhat intuitive—to the layman and sounds as though it might qualify as some kind of insight. (If it seems too obvious, perhaps paradoxically, we’ll tend to assume everyone on the other side thought of it themselves and had some good reason to reject it.) The rebuttal, by contrast, may require explaining a whole series of preliminary concepts before it’s really possible to explain why the talking point is wrong. So the setup is “snappy, intuitively appealing argument without obvious problems” vs. “rebuttal I probably don’t have time to read, let alone analyze closely.”
If we don’t sometimes defer to the expert consensus, we’ll systematically tend to go wrong in the face of one-way-hash arguments, at least our own necessarily limited domains of knowledge. Indeed, in such cases, trying to evaluate the arguments on their merits will tend to lead to an erroneous conclusion more often than simply trying to gauge the credibility of the various disputants. The problem, of course, is gauging your own competence level well enough to know when to assess arguments and when to assess arguers.
To that last point, knowing that in consequence of being a pretty smart cookie I tend to overestimate my competence for this sort of thing pretty frequently ... and noticing that folks significantly less competent than myself commonly have a tendency to overestimate the value of their judgment much more than I do ... this is a disconcerting observation.
... fearful of sounding presumptuous, I labeled the note a “Request for Comments.” R.F.C. 1, written 40 years ago today, left many questions unanswered, and soon became obsolete. But the R.F.C.’s themselves took root and flourished. They became the formal method of publishing Internet protocol standards, and today there are more than 5,000, all readily available online.
....
The early R.F.C.’s ranged from grand visions to mundane details, although the latter quickly became the most common. Less important than the content of those first documents was that they were available free of charge and anyone could write one. Instead of authority-based decision-making, we relied on a process we called “rough consensus and running code.” Everyone was welcome to propose ideas, and if enough people liked it and used it, the design became a standard.
This bit particularly spoke to me:
It probably helped that in those days we avoided patents and other restrictions; without any financial incentive to control the protocols, it was much easier to reach agreement.
James Wimberley at The Reality-Based Community offers yet more reasons why the new White House garden is awesome.
Washington, Adams, and Jefferson were all keen gardeners, and cows grazed round the White House building site. The message then was sturdy self-reliance, and in Jefferson's case, progress through science, in the form of genetic modification through plant breeding.
....
Washington and Jefferson did not of course plant, muck and weed their lettuces personally, as the Obamas plan to do. Plantation-owners had slaves for that. So Michelle's garden is part of a reclamation by the slaves' descendants of the entire polity, of which the garden is an ancient if conservative image. (Enclosed Scottish estates are actually called policies.)
....
There's an even older echo. Plantation slaves kept their own gardens to feed themselves.
....
So the White House kitchen garden marks a full stop at the end of a long line of gardens of slaves and gerdens tended by slaves. Eleanor Roosevelt launched victory gardens. Michelle's is a liberation garden.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the challenges of adapting stories from other media to film. What, really, is the point of doing a film adaptation? What makes something a “good” adaptation? Eventually I hope to have my thoughts in enough order to write about it.
For the moment, I just offer this new trailer ...
... and the thought that if you try to adapt the classics, you need to swing for the fences. It may not work, but anything less is sure to fail.
What happened at AIGFP is standard practice throughout corporate America. America's corporate titans like to talk endlessly about performance-based pay and how capitalism rewards risk, but in real life compensation packages are almost always constructed to avoid as much risk as possible. If you work in a growing industry, your bonus depends on raw growth rates. If you work in a declining industry, your bonus is linked to relative growth rates. If the market is up, your bonus is paid in stock. If it's not, suddenly deferred comp and increased pension contributions are the order of the day. Heads you win, tails you win.
Henry “The Nightmare Before Christmas” Selick’s stop-motion-animated film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s children’s book Coraline opens tomorrow.
Mr Gaiman, who is very pleased with the film overall, says that’s “the first Coraline trailer I’ve liked.” He also offers these excellent words on the subject of koumpounophobia, the fear of buttons.
Coraline is sure to inspire a case of koumpounophobia in just about anyone, but don’t let that deter you from checking out the film. Gaiman opened his book with a little quote from G. K. Chesterton which I found very affecting when I first read it:
Fairytales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
A good lesson indeed, and I can attest that the book, at least, contains that and much more.
Check it out in 3D while you can: apparently the 3D release will only last a few weeks.
I respect people who love Charlie Brown, the muppets, and even those goofy Rankin-Bass cartoons, but my all-time favourite is undoubtedly The Twilight Zone: Night of the Meek. Magic all the way through, and a perfect ending.
You may not recognize her name, but you surely recognize her. The only woman's image whom you could argue has been more reproduced and imitated than Bettie Page's is Marilyn Monroe's.
Maybe.
Like with Marilyn, Bettie worked a strange magic with the American virgin-whore dichotomy, knowingly sexy and innocently pretty at the same time. But Bettie could walk even deeper into the paradox; she did countless pictures that were a lot racier (and fetishier) than Marilyn ever did. Don't let that deter you from looking for them, though, as even the wickedest of her pictures are only wicked by ’50s standards—and more importantly in every one of them she radiates joy. I remember reading somewhere that the photographer best known for working with her, Bunny Yeager, said that she didn't have any unreleased photos, because Bettie had been so uncannily photogenic that she had never managed to take a picture that wasn't good enough to publish.
Life was not nearly so kind to her as the camera had been. How could it have been?
On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the full text of which appears in the following pages. Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and “to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories.”
Preamble
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore the General Assembly proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
....
This story contains about a hundred layers of heartbreak.
There's growing support among many Nebraska lawmakers to limit the safe haven law to children no older than three days. But several lawmakers said they'll push for something closer to a 30-day age limit.
The safe haven law was meant to protect infants, but there is no age limit under the current law. Five of the abandoned children were brought to Nebraska from out of state. Parents have traveled into Nebraska from Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, Florida and Georgia.
Tysheema Brown drove from Georgia to leave her teenage son at an Omaha hospital.
“Do not judge me as a parent. I love my son and my son knows that,” Brown said. “There is just no help. There hasn't been any help.”
As a teenager, I'd watch Doctor Who on Sunday afternoons on PBS. (Pertwee, Baker, and Davison, for those who care enough to recognize the names; otherwise never mind.)
My father would always comment that he didn't understand the appeal. “All they do is walk around in corridors and talk!” But like many American fans, I loved the cheerful goofiness of the show. It's difficult for me to imagine what it's like for Brits, who grow up as children watching from behind the sofa, terrified of the un-threatening Daleks.
I'm late to the party on the recent revival of the show. A little while back I finally sprung for the first couple of seasons on DVD but didn't motivate to watch them. I write this having finally watched the first episode. Exactly the sort of good fun I was hoping for.
And oh, the ending. Young Rose Tyler, her boyfriend in tow, has just survived the adventure in which she meets The Doctor.
Much as I hesitate to assert that my inclination to admire the beauty of women reflects some deep commitment to Truth, Spiritual Enlightenment, and Social Justice, a recent bit of news has gotten under my skin and has me tempted, just a little bit.
A week or three ago, someone pointed me at this little music video by Amanda Palmer, of cabaret-punk band Dresden Dolls fame, for her song “Leeds United:”
How good is that? It's a super spiffy pop song, a fun video full of stuff that makes my cabaret-lovin' heart sing, and — bonus! — Ms Palmer is awfully ... ah ... charismatic. (If you dug that, I also commend to your attention LeAnne Rimes' video for “Nothin’ Better to Do.” Zowie.)
I don't buy a lot of new music, but I got to thinking that it was past time I invested in the Dresden Dolls and Ms Palmer.
Then, via Warren Ellis, I learned that the record company had really jerked her around about this video. She explains:
the label i’m on (roadrunner records) had wanted to pull shots from the video so that my bare belly wasn’t exposed. they thought i looked fat. i thought they were on crack.
dude. i’m a vain motherfucker. i know when i look fat. i had beth hanging out on the set of the pope videos, keeping an eye on my figure as i pranced around in my slip in case pope was getting a particularly pregnant-looking angle. i hate shots of myself where i look heavy with child.
but THIS?? this was just nonsense. i thought i looked HOT. i really, really didn’t see where they were coming from. at all.
so i didn’t budge.
they weren’t happy, but then again they’re not very happy with anything i’m doing lately (including putting out a record that has “no commercial potential” and is impossible to promote, since nobody will like it).
the video was left as is.
WTF?
Look, as someone who was on the leading edge of the “video killed the radio star” generation, I hate to bite the hand that gave me Annie Lennox, but what the %#&@!! is wrong with these music industry clowns?
What the &*%!! is wrong with a society which creates people paid to tell sexy pop stars that they are unattractive?
I know as a good feminist my first reaction should be to point y'all at the reBELLYon where fans are posting pictures of their “no commercial potential” bellies in a zany pro-postive-body-image protest, rather than to allow a BS chivalrous reflex of protectiveness toward pretty girls to muck up the discourse, but my tastes in pretty girls are better than theirs nyah nyah nyah and I'm pretty fromaged off about it.
Clearly I must go see her show and thereby put some money in the lady's pocket. That'll show ’em.
Today Neil Gaiman got an anguished letter from a fan named Jess about his support for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
The question, for me, is even if we only save ONE child from rape or attempted rape, or even just lots of uncomfortable hugs from Creepy Uncle Dave, is that not worth leaving a couple naked bodies out of a comic?
If you accept -- and I do -- that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don't say or like or want said.
The Law is a huge blunt weapon that does not and will not make distinctions between what you find acceptable and what you don't. This is how the Law is made.
....
I was born the day of the conclusion of the Lady Chatterley trial in England, the day it was decided that Lady Chatterley's Lover, with its swearing, buggery and raw sex between the classes, was fit to be published and read in a cheap edition that poor people and servants could read. This was the same England in which, some years earlier, the director of public prosecutions had threatened to prosecute Professor F R Leavis if he so much as referred to James Joyce's Ulysses in a lecture (the DPP was Archibald Bodkin, who also banned The Well of Loneliness) , in which, when I was sixteen and listening to the Sex Pistols, the publisher of Gay News was sentenced to prison for the crime of Criminal Blasphemy, for publishing an erotic poem featuring a fantasy about Jesus.
....
you could rewrite Jess's letter above, explaining that only perverts would want to read Lady Chatterley, or see images of women being abused, or read Lost Girls or the works of Robert Crumb, and mentioning that if only one person was saved from a hug from a creepy uncle, or indeed, being raped in the streets, that banning them or prosecuting those who write, draw, publish, sell or -- now -- own them, is worth it. Because that was the point of view of the people who were banning these works or stopping people reading them. They thought they were doing a good thing. They thought they were defending other people from something they needed to be protected from.
....
So when Mike Diana was prosecuted -- and found guilty -- of obscenity for the comics in his Zine “Boiled Angel”, and sentenced to a host of things, including (if memory serves) a three year suspended prison sentence, a three thousand dollar fine, not being allowed to be in the same room as anyone under eighteen, over a thousand hours of community service, and was forbidden to draw anything else obscene, with the local police ordered to make 24 hour unannounced spot checks to make sure Mike wasn't secretly committing Art in the small hours of the morning... that was the point I decided that I knew what was obscene, and it was prosecuting artists for having ideas and making lines on paper, and that I was going to do everything I could to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Whether I liked or approved of what Mike Diana did was utterly irrelevant ....
It's worth reading the whole thing; Mr Gaiman really kicks out the jams.
And this makes today a particularly good day to donate to the CBLDF.
You may recall me blogging Anonymous' spooky anti-Scientology videos. In the months since then, they've succeeded in organizing several actual protests. I stumbled across one in San Diego, and they seemed to be running a surprisingly tight action for folks who broadcast on the 'net.
So, how in the world did a secluded online community, widely considered to be a bunch of social misfits and outcasts with little vested interests beyond expanding their collections of violent fetish porn, become a potent, organized activist group that has protested against the Church of Scientology since January in an operation called “Project Chanology”?
He doesn't manage to offer an answer per se but he does have some interesting history of what happened.
How, then, did the raid on the Church go from DDoS attacks to standing on street corners in major cities around the world with signs, masks and cake — all within less than a month? How was it that Bunker watched “Anonymous virtually pivot on a dime?” For his part, Bunker became Anonymous' advisor, Wise Beard Man. “I made a video to suggest they stay within the law and do things the right way,” Bunker says. “I worried Anonymous would attack me for daring to make the suggestion, but I felt I had to say something. Happily, most understood my points and agreed with me. They dubbed me Wise Beard Man and started to rethink their involvement and their tactics and quickly transformed in a way Scientology has never been willing to do.” And there it is, in all its glorious simplicity — Anonymous rethought, transformed and changed. Did a convincing paradigm shift carry Anonymous into the real world with an ennobling goal?
Not necessarily. It was also an internal polarization: We only saw the more elevated, optimistically charged side in the real world, while its opposite sunk further ...
Croop basically supposes that it may turn out that in a Fredrick Jackson Turner-ish way, the existence of internet-based troll pits may help to actually help stabilize social activist movements. I'm skeptical, but it's an interesting datum.
