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August 30, 2007
Emily Post Would Agree
Josh Marshall, apropos of the recent unpleasantnesses with Republican Representative Bob Allen of Florida and Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, points our attention to Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Frank Cerabino, who notes that their recent mishaps "serve as a cautionary tale on the importance of guy bathroom etiquette for the rest of us."
True, true. And to help alleviate any further problems, I offer the following machinima, "Male Restroom Etiquette," made with the always-expressive Sims 2 game. Enjoy.
Posted by reparent at 9:02 AM | Comments (0)
August 29, 2007
The New Semester Begins
Well, the semester has started and the world has not yet ended (as far as I know).
The new courses are running, and each has a snazzy new blog. Check out my teacher-geeky graduate-level Practicum in Teaching Writing blog here. I'll refer to this as "the Teaching Seminar," regardless of what the University has it coded as in its arcane and Vaal-like computer system, so don't be confused. In the Teaching Seminar I'm tasked with teaching the new teachers how to teach English 001, our version of Freshperson Composition. I like it, and it's absolutely essential for our new Graduate Teaching Fellows, but it's not exactly going to set off any super-cool detectors. Sigh. One day society will realize that teaching is dead sexy. Until then...
We've got my other course this semester, Composing Digital Narratives, a course that is really, honestly, cool and sexy all at the same time. Sort of like David Beckham if he were a college course being taught in a computer lab in the bowels (seriously, we're waaaaaay underground) of the administration building.
Anyway, in the Digital Narratives class, we'll be using crazy tech to mess with everything you thought you knew about stories and storytelling. Should be mucho fun.
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In other news, my colleague over in the tech garrison here at UVM, Justin Henry, links to Khoi Vinh's thoughts on "ignorant objects," that is, a provocative take on technology and the Velveteen Rabbit phenomenon. I highly recommend you check it out. And while you're there, note the minimalist design of Vinh's blog. Spare, sparse, yet seriously sharp!
Which brings me to our good friend BoingBoing, now in v2.0. They've dropped the clutter from their site design, added comments to their posts, and launched a new sibling site, BBGadgets. I'm hooked.
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While checking out the new BBGadgets, I came across this picture:
And I was reminded, as I so often am, that the future we were promised is not the future we inhabit. There's an article in there somewhere, I think. Something about the rhetorical appeals and promises in the visual design of the future from the 1940s onward. Hmm...
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And speaking of the future we inhabit, here are two bits of cultural ... um, something.
Item 1: The Wall Street Journal notices the LOLCats phenomenon:
I know it's hopelessly co-opted now, but I can't help myself. I luv me sum LOLCats. Especially when they make it sooooo easy to put together LOLWSJs like that.
Item 2: I am not a hipster. Seriously. I'm not being ironic. Or maybe I am. Who can tell anymore? Anyway, check this out:
Posted by reparent at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2007
Pre-Semester Panic?
Last night's fortune cookie fortune:
Clear your mental, emotional and psychic space and you'll see.
Is it a sign of the impending start of the new semester (and two new courses I've never taught before) that I don't seem to remember how to do any of that clearing?
Posted by reparent at 10:20 AM | Comments (1)
August 21, 2007
So Now You Know
Boing Boing continues to give us news we can use:
Man, I love infographics! Thank you, Vjornaxx.
Posted by reparent at 8:51 AM | Comments (0)
August 20, 2007
More (and Less) Human Than Human
What do these three photographs have in common?
Can you guess? Click the link below to find out.
They're all three completely artificial. Each of them was computer-generated by a very talented digital artist. (Here are links to Max Wahyudi's portrait of actress Song Hye Kyo; the Flickr posting of the minimalist bathroom; and Piotr Fox Wysocki's online portfolio.)
I've mentioned before on this blog that you just can't trust images anymore. The idea of "indexicality" (that photographs have a 1-to-1 relation to some real moment, space, and event, even if that moment is long past, the space has been demolished or repurposed, and the event was memorable only to the photographer) is under attack from all sides.
The Spouse was recently advised to purchase a disposable camera to be kept in the glove compartment of our car so we can document the event in case of an accident. Why a cheap, low-quality disposable camera? We both have camera phones and also have a pretty nice digital camera. Because the police are hesitant to allow digital photographs as evidence in their investigations as they're so easily manipulated.
In short, the police don't believe your digital photographs are indexical. They're just not real enough anymore.
I had the same thought when Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money persuaded me to take the MyElectionChoices Presidential Candidate Compatibility Test. The test begins by asking you which issues will be most important in your final selection of a candidate for president. It then provides you with a selection of actual quotes from all of the candidates on the issues you had identified and asks you to indicate which ones you agree with. At the end, it tabulates which candidate has the most comments on record that you agree with.
It's a clever way to engineer a silly web quiz with "real-world" implications. But I don't believe it one bit.
In short, I've become so cynical that I don't believe that anything a presidential candidate says is indexical.
Sigh.
And if you're curious, I selected 3 issues and here are my matches:
- Mike Gravel (D) - 8 matches
- Hillary Clinton (D) - 7
- Barack Obama (D) - 7
- Bill Richardson (D) - 6
- Joe Biden (D) - 5
- Christopher Dodd (D) - 5
- Ron Paul (R) - 5
- John Edwards (D) - 4
- Dennis Kucinich (D) - 4
- Sam Brownback (R) - 2
- Mike Huckabee (R) - 1
- Tom Tancredo (R) - 1
(This post's title, by the way, comes from the movie Blade Runner, in which the Tyrell Corporation builds robot "replicants" that are, according to the company motto, "More human than human.")
Posted by reparent at 12:02 PM
August 13, 2007
Academic Freedom? Not So Much.
One of my good friends recently sent me the link to this article from the Vancouver Observer about a Canadian psychology professor's recent nightmare at the U.S. border.
Andrew Feldmar, a well-known Vancouver psychotherapist, rolled up to the Blaine border crossing last summer as he had hundreds of times in his career. At 66, his gray hair, neat beard, and rimless glasses give him the look of a seasoned intellectual. He handed his passport to the U.S. border guard and relaxed, thinking he would soon be with an old friend in Seattle. The border guard turned to his computer and googled "Andrew Feldmar."
[. . .]
Before long the customs guard was engrossed in an article Feldmar had published in the spring 2001 issue of the journal Janus Head. The article concerned an acid trip Feldmar had taken in London, Ontario, and another in London, England, almost forty years ago. It also alluded to the fact that he had used hallucinogenics as a "path" to understanding self and that in certain cases, he reflected, it could "be preferable to psychiatry." Everything seemed to collapse around him, as a quiet day crossing the border began to turn into a nightmare.
You should read the entire article. It is profoundly disturbing.
I would say more, but this blog is Googleable, too.
Posted by reparent at 4:36 PM | Comments (0)
August 7, 2007
New Feauture: BOLD or strikethrough
Howdy, Digressers. Today, in my continuing efforts to make it possible to blog every day, I'm launching a new feature: BOLD or strikethrough, a picks 'n' pans sort of quick romp through what's highlight-able and delete-worthy.
BOLD! -- Kyle Gabler has put together a fun and thought-provoking web application that attempts to map human brain word associations. Check The Human Brain Cloud out here. (via Joystiq)
strikethrough -- Blizzard's art direction team for World of Warcraft gets a much-deserved shame! for their sexist and just-plain-silly armor gendering. Jill Walker brings the point up in her post here, but really there's a larger problem. If little more than a battle-thong (accessorized with a cape or headband, your choice) is all you need to battle Persian armies or snake demi-gods, then why not show the male toons in WoW the same minimal-coverage love? Shame, shame on Blizzard!
BOLD! -- Here's something to ponder: what would your city/town/village be like if all of the humans in it died? Alan Weisman explores this very question in his new book The World Without Us, which you should check out. You should also check out the multimedia page of the book's web site for some awesome graphics of a world without us.
strikethrough -- MIT's Henry Jenkins (I taught one of his articles last semester in the CyberCulture course) muses on the recent CNN/YouTube Debate. His brief analysis gives rise to two! strikethroughs. First, shame on the Democratic candidates for not doing a better job of moving away from talking points and the same, tired rhetoric we're already tired of hearing. And second, shame on the Republican candidates for being so terrified at the prospect of having to stand up and respond to 30-second video clips that they've all (except for the long-shots McCain and Paul) realized that they have to... um... wash their hair that night. So shame, shame on the Democrats for being robots (and not the cool kind)! And shame, shame on the Republicans for being cowards!
BOLD! -- The UK's Times Online has a feature up about "The 50 Best Movie Robots. They even have links to the trailers for the movies, in case you missed one here or there. Check it out.
strikethrough -- The UK's Times Online leaves out some of the greatest robots of all time, the Nexus 6 Replicants (and possibly a Nexus 7 or two) from Blade Runner. Shame, shame on the Times!
BOLD! -- This picture at Gizmodo freaks me out. Cheers to central-column designs and cantilevering, but man...
Click through to read about it.
strikethrough -- GayGamer, one of my favorite game blogs was recently the victim of a series of denial of service (DOS) attacks, shutting the site down all weekend. Shame, shame on homophobic hackers who flooded the site and its forums with slurs, hate speech, and death threats!
BOLD! -- "Autobots, transform and run out!" TechEBlog brings us running gear in disguise: Transformers Optimus Prime and Megatron as transforming running shoes. How amazingly cool is that?!
strikethrough -- To the Michael Bay Transformers movie. Alien Loves Predator's Bernie Hu and VG Cats' Scott Ramsoomair identify some of the major problems with the film. To their able critiques, I'd like to add that the knobby and cable-y designs of the robots when in robot mode made Bay's trademarked spin-the-camera-around-until-everyone-pukes style of filming battle made it almost impossible to tell what was happening or to whom. When one of the robots gets ripped in half (but which one?! this spoiler-free blog will never tell), I had to explain to The Spouse both what had happened, and to whom. That's just wrong, friends. Shame, shame on not-unattractive director Michael Bay!
BOLD! -- Hooray for getting good news (and praise, even!) from the editor who is including one of your articles in her book! "Valuable"! "Thought-provoking"! "Important"! "Compelling"! These are just a few of the fantabulous words used to describe my work. I will confess that I'm feeling pretty good about my scholarly self right now.
strikethrough -- To having waaaaaaaaaay too many e-mails in my various in-boxes. At last count, I have 372 in Gmail and a whopping 948 in my university account. Ouch! So, if I owe you an e-mail (or 12), please be patient. I'll be working through these monsters in the next few days. Shame, shame on me!
Posted by reparent at 3:29 PM | Comments (0)
August 2, 2007
Of Cats, Rabbits, Students, and Eyes
Wowzers! There sure is a lot going on right now.
First of all, August is Kitties-Go-To-The-Vet-For-Checkups month chez Richard(s). The kitty with serious health issues went today, and her sister will be going on Friday (but don't tell her -- we want to survive until then).
I Can Has Cheezburger, as always, puts it best:
Second, why is it that when you try to be flexible with undergraduates (or with graduate students who need "just a little more time" to finish their seminar paper or the dreaded thesis), they crap all over you? The summer course on Children's Lit was supposed to end on Thursday, July 26th, the last day of classes. I made the final project (an exceedingly modest one, given the scope of this 5-week summer course, mind you) due on Monday, July 30th. I still have not received final projects from a number of students. Some have had the decency to e-mail me with a plausible excuse. Some have not. Grrrrrrrr.....
Third, Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing shows off the coolness that is, and is on, her iPhone, in this post. Sigh. Anyway, this item caught my attention: a music video by UNKLE with Thom Yorke singing "A Rabbit In Your Headlights." It's a disturbing (seriously) video, but the ending is... words fail. "Awesome" has lost too much of its meaning, and "breathtaking" (literally, I gasp) is now too clicheed. There's a story here. Or maybe I'm just compelled to create and/or impose a story because of the images. Of course, in Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster argues that I'm not really talking about a story at all, but rather a plot, because I'm drawn to the hints about causation in this video. And I'm convinced that there are hints here. And maybe the disturbing, traumatic elements of the video are needed to allow the ending to work the way that it does. Is there a necessary degree of cruelty in all profound art?
Fourth, and speaking of words failing... your humble blogger has yet to join the next generation proper of gaming hardware. Sure, I've got a Nintendo DS, which is excellent and interesting, and sure to be the source/subject of at least 2 published articles (good ones), but I have yet to acquire a Nintendo Wii (drool), an XBox 360 (sigh... bland yet offering very pretty graphics), or a PS3 (sigh... bland yet offering even prettier graphics). I haven't really considered getting a PS3 because it's just so darn expensive and there really aren't any must-have games out for it yet. (Shame on you, Sony! Shame!) That might be changing, however, with the release of the next-generation EyeToy, the Playstation Eye Peripheral for the PS3. (The EyeToy was the black web-cam that Sony used to bring motion-capture to the PS2.)
The first game released for the Eye is the aptly-named Eye of Judgment, a collectible card game (CCG) like all of the other collectible card games (e.g., Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, World of Warcraft CCG). You have a deck of cards, each of which contributes in some way to your battle against your opponent and her cards. You may find it interesting or instructive to read Tycho's run-down of the way Eye of Judgment's card battles operate. Or you may just want to cut to the chase and read the web-comic about it....
In any case, what makes Eye of Judgment interesting to me is the way Sony has finally started using its processing power to augment reality instead of replacing it, as most games do. Click on the image below to watch the trailer, and make sure you pay attention to the very end:
98% of the trailer is pre-rendered cinematics featuring the battle animations of the various cards. But then, at the very end, we start to see what the PS3's super-duper processor can do when you hook a camera up to it: it can animate the cards in your hand, and let you interact with your deadly little card buddies. And that's just plain cool.
There's more, but this has already dragged on for too long, so the rest will have to wait for another post.
Posted by reparent at 8:27 AM | Comments (0)