May 8, 2008

I'm Back

And just in time for my birthday! Yes, today is my 37th birthday, and thanks to the relativistic effects of traveling close to the speed of light, I have it on the highest authority that I don't look a day over 37!

I know you want to know all about my recent trip to outer space, and I was worried that I wouldn't be allowed to discuss it for global security reasons. However, we're lucky that film footage of this top-secret mission has been leaked to the press, with more to come, I am certain.

Now that the space-cat is out of the moon-bag, so to speak, I can speak candidly about the mission I was on. If you haven't seen the leaked clips, watch this:

Yes, the truth can finally be told.

I was on a mission to fight the Evil Space Nazis (ESNs) on the dark side of the moon.

It was very exciting. We've got lots of pictures from the whole shebang, and I'll post some of them in the next few days.

But this adventure with ESNs started me thinking about retro-futurism. Why is it so cool to mix the past into our frothy futurist cocktails? Blade Runner (ha! The Spouse hates it when I go on and on about Blade Runner) famously made 2018 Los Angeles a 1940s-esque noir-fest.

But I digress. Over at his Sweet Homo Alabama blog, Z.C. Byrnes points us to a very cool mashup of canonical western film High Noon and... um, killer robots. How cool is that?!

"Have you forgotten he's got his own deflector shield?" Classic!

Watching this video I was reminded of a tune we heard while in space heading toward the ESN base. In space we got fabulous radio reception from all over the globe, and the crew and I were treated to a fun track on the BBC: The Last Shadow Puppet's "The Age of The Understatement." It's a hoot. Check it out:

Now, while the video gives us Soviet tanks and choruses, the music is heavily influenced by Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western scores. But with a modern twist. I could imagine killer robots being behind that twist. In fact, I bet it was the killer robots who were running the Soviet army. You read it here first, people.

Which, of course, makes me think of that other great recent western-themed future fantasia in song, Muse's "Knights of Cydonia." If you've been living in a retro-futurist-proof bomb shelter for the past year or so, you might not have heard this song. But even if you've heard the seriously western-themed song, have you seen the video?

Oh, Gustof von Musterhausen, your little film is so full of awesome it hurts my brain.

I've written before about remix culture and prosumers (producer/consumers with the near-professional quality modern tech allows), but with "Knights of Cydonia" we get the full circle -- professional video producers remixing genres, effects, narratives, and throwing in a whole heaping of allusions to other works.

And it's all wrapped in a laser-shooting, kung-fu fighting, unicorn-riding sci-fi western package. Excellent.

P.S. Bonus points go to whoever identifies the most allusions in the Muse video!

Posted by reparent at 4:39 PM | Comments (0)

March 29, 2008

Late to the Party, but No Less Sincere

The new (and last) season of Battlestar Galactica starts on April 4th.

To get you whipped up into a white-hot heat over the premiere, a week or so ago the cast crashed David Letterman's show to read the top-10 list: the top 10 reasons to watch the new season.

Reason #1 to watch this top-10? Number 4 gives us a chance to hear Lee Adama (British actor Jamie Bamber) let his accent slip from bland-US-Midwest to rocking-Brit.

Posted by reparent at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2008

It's Raining... the Horror!!!

The Spouse insists that I share this video with you, as a continuation of my thread on the good & evil being done in the name of grassroots political advocacy.

I will simply say that I firmly believe we have entered the post-ironic age. Watching this video, can you tell the difference between ironic self-parody and sincere advocacy? I sure can't.

Imagine what this means for our oh-so-trendy students! Now we can simply assume that the ridiculous bug-eyed sunglasses they wear with the hideous snowboarder-chic (ha!) winter garb means that they want to uglify themselves up! Trucker hats (which I do still see occassionally on campus) now mean that the wearer really is a no-brow bumpkin.

Life has become just a little bit simpler. And snarkier. Joy.

P.S. If you need a unicorn chaser, I suggest either Grammatically-Challenged Felicitous Felines or, if you're filled with understandable rage at the horrors of the McCain Girls, Kelly's "You Can't Text Message Breakup." They both always make me feel better.

Posted by reparent at 1:23 PM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2008

That's Edu-tainment!

I really, really enjoy the "You Suck at Photoshop" videos. I think that's probably because "Donny" manages to be pretty darn funny and I like his voice. I guess I should say something about that last sentence. The Spouse and I were watching The Daily Show a few nights ago and the interviewee was Grover Norquist, sworn foe of "big government" and taxation. Norquist has been a huge force in modern conservative politics, and has quite a reputation.

He's also got the nasal, adenoidal voice of a high school physics club officer. Let's face it, vocally he's no Darth Vader.

"Donny" isn't either, but his voice fits the persona in the videos, and the frequent near-breaks do a nice job to clue us in to Donny's mental and emotional state. (Hint: it's not good.) That's subtext for the videos, and I really appreciate subtext.

All of which is to say, here's the latest in the series:

Another thing I really like about these videos is that they tell a story while they instruct. They're edutainment.

There are other videos, however, that edutain in other, less positive ways. I posted recently about the groundswell of user-generated support for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Grass-roots mass media efforts, however, are only as good as their creators. As we saw in the last Hillary video, the grass may be rooted, but it's not... good. Well, here comes another "hip" effort from Hillary-land. Brace yourselves.

I think we learn a lot from this video as it tries to entertain us with a "hip" "rap." First, it teaches us that even progressives feel better when there's a cleaning lady around. Classist, exploitative labor practices be damned -- Hillary, you're our kind of maid. Now get in there and start scrubbing. You missed a spot. Or something like that. (Hint: listen to the opening again if you're lost.) Second, rap has gotten a reputation as an art form of "the people," as it was started by people socially and economically disenfranchised from corporate patronage and privilege. That would make it seem an ideal vehicle for supporting a Democratic candidate for president. But we learn from this video that you need a little something I like to call "talent" to make rap work. And dude, you don't have it.

But there are people with talent out there, who can make anything entertaining and informational in rap form. Sammy Stephens is one such talented man. This video isn't new, but it's informative (and entertaining) to watch it in dialogue with the Hillary rap.

See? It's just like a mini mall. Though to be fair, it may be that Stephens has better material to work with. The "Mini Mall Rap" even works as an acoustic slow jam.

Someone should tell the Clinton campaign.

UPDATE! The Spouse sent me yet another example of Hillary's "supporters" "helping" the campaign. I think at this point even Hillary wishes that someone please make it stop!

Posted by reparent at 4:29 PM | Comments (0)

February 29, 2008

The Void Stares Into You

Work work work. Meeting meeting. Work some more.

Pretty much the story of my week.

But since I eat lunch (usually) at my desk, alone (I know), and since my work is usually typing-related, I can't be expected to work while eating my lunch. So I read stuff. And today I found this experiment, via GU Comics, who got it from Penny Arcade (at the very bottom of the page), which means you may have already seen it.

Nevertheless, it's brilliant. And disturbing:

Garfield Without Garfield digitally removes the title cat from Jim Davis' cartoons, and the results are, as promised, "an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life."

Crazy. And profound. Who knew Jon Arbuckle had it in him to be an existentialist everyman in crisis?

Posted by reparent at 2:09 PM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2008

Pickle You, Kumquat!

I don't remember anything about the first Orbit gum ad I saw on TV except that every time the perky British lady said "fabulous!" I nearly wet myself laughing. That lasted for weeks.

Since then, not much new on the gum commercial scene. Until this:

While I was looking for the ad on YouTube, I found something interesting -- 2 different versions of the same ad, each featuring changes in tone and both featuring slight changes in content from the aired version I'd been seeing on TV. Here's the first one I found:

And here's the second:

I love these because I find the word-play to be quite clever. And I'm tickled by the addition of "You hoboken!" at the end. If we assume that the "cleaned-up" words are simple euphemistic replacements, we might guess the secretary is calling the wife a whore. Except that whore doesn't really fit the situation. (That's not to say she might not use the term, just that it doesn't really fit the extremely tight economization constraints a 30-second spot faces. Which means that these words could be anything, and suddenly I'm free to really engage my profane imagination.

Fabulous!

Posted by reparent at 9:11 AM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2008

Sing Out, Louise!

I've been posting a fair amount about Barack Obama and John McCain lately. It's time to give the other major candidate, Hillary Clinton, some time in the sun.

As you may recall, Obama's supporters put together a touching, thrilling music video set to one of his speeches. Well, it seems that Clinton's supporters have put together their own video. Only instead of hyping their candidate's words, they're just hyping the awesomeness that is... Hillary.

You probably need a unicorn chaser after that. Here's a slice of patriotism that's guaranteed to warm the cockles of your heart.

(Oh, and bonus points for anyone who can identify the reference in the title.)

Posted by reparent at 6:08 PM | Comments (1)

February 18, 2008

Busted

One of the great things for researchers about the Internet is that it makes information and recordings easily and quickly available to a huge number of people.

That's not always a great thing for the people being researched, however.

It would have been so easy for Obama to preface this part of his speech with "As Deval Patrick noted when this same, baseless complaint was levied against him: 'Don't tell me that words don't matter'..." But he didn't. And it may be that Obama was reaching for something to say and latched onto this eloquent, forceful rhetorical bit.

But I don't believe that Senator Obama gives many extemporaneous speeches these days, so this possible explanation feels quite flat to me.

Yes, Senator, words do matter. So please don't try to pass off someone else's words as your own. The Internet has a loooong memory.

UPDATE: TPM has an update on Obama's plagiarism-gate. Here's the Senator:

"I was on the stump, and, you know, he had suggested that we use these lines," Obama said at a news conference a few minutes ago. "I thought they were good lines. I'm sure I should have [given him credit], didn't this time."

Which is nice, really. We've become far too used to politicians who can do (or at least, who can admit doing) no wrong.

UPDATE REDUX! Deval Patrick himself weighs in on the subject in a NYT article:

Mr. Patrick said he did not believe Mr. Obama should give him credit.

"Who knows who I am? The point is more important than whose argument it is," said Mr. Patrick, who telephoned The New York Times at the request of the Obama campaign. "It's a transcendent argument."

Which is nice, really. We've become far too used to politicians for whom everything really is about them. A little humility goes a long way.

On the other hand, citation is about respect and truth. It shows respect for the originator of the passage, and a commitment to the accurate representation of the past. In the age of Google, why not just do the right thing from the start?

Posted by reparent at 4:47 PM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2008

ObaMacain... In Music

You may have seen this video before. It's from Will.I.Am, one of the members of the Black Eyed Peas, and it's getting lots and lots of exposure. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out. (You can see a clearer, larger version of the video here, along with Will.I.Am's thoughts on what drove him to put this together. It's worth checking out.)

It's well done, the music pulls you along, the celebrities are an interesting mix of famous and not-quite-so-famous, and many of them are quite attractive. I find it especially notable that I bounce back and forth between wanting to hear more of the singing, and hearing more of Obama. Sometimes it feels like Obama is screwing up the song, and sometimes it's the song that's screwing up the speech. I imagine this has something to do with the cadences and rhythms of the speech. Sometimes Obama is on, and sometimes not so much.

But there are other videos out there, with a less uplifting message. While Obama's rhetoric may feel naive at times, John McCain's 2007/2008 version of "straight-talking" is truly shocking.

And the strongest points of the Obama video are the twin refrains "We Want Change" and "Yes We Can." Both sentiments that feel sadly anachronistic today, given the corruption in our government and the overwhelming feeling that what happens in Washington and what happens where you live are two very different things that have no relation to each other, or impact on each other.

And so we have the McCain version of Obama's refrains. And while these feel (to jaded, cynical old me) more realistic, more truthful, they're also shocking when stated so baldly.

Posted by reparent at 3:14 PM | Comments (2)

January 16, 2008

Scary, Funny, and Wimpy

A few things, briefly noted.

~ < * > ~ * ~ < * > ~

This makes me feel so very validated. Penny Curtis, a researcher at the University of Sheffield provides the money quote: "We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable." Damn right they're universally disliked! Shudder.

~ < * > ~ * ~ < * > ~

BoingBoing tells us that Joel Hodgson is back with a new MST3K-like series: Cinematic Titanic. You can order the DVD of the first movie on their web site.

(Note to The Spouse: We ordered the DVD of the first movie on their web site.)

~ < * > ~ * ~ < * > ~

SciFi blog Io9 complains that the new Terminator TV series "wimpifies" Sarah Connor, famously played in the movies by Linda Hamilton. WRONG! The TV show, perhaps, portrays the mother of the savior of mankind (yes, John Connor is the Jesus Christ of the post-AI world) as a little less of a Rambo-figure than the disappointing Terminator 2 did. Yet that movie wasted all that was good and interesting about the first Terminator movie (one of my all-time faves) in a desperate attempt to shore up a weak premise with explosions and special effects. The first movie didn't need "mimetic poly-alloy" liquid metal.

What made Terminator interesting (and enjoyably re-watchable) was that it took an average woman and put her in an untenable, terrifying situation. We then got to watch her react, adapt, and ultimately triumph. But it wasn't easy, it wasn't natural for her, and it was never a sure bet that she'd live to see the end of the flick.

Terminator 2 gives us an ultra-buff, weaponized, super-soldier, where in the first movie (even at its end) we had come to love a scared, sad, and uncertain waitress. The only good thing to come of T2 was that it tried to show the corrosive effect of her descent into super-hero-dom on her child -- a sullen, withdrawn, emotionally distant and distrustful pre-teen Jesus John Connor.

And so we get, in the new TV series, a sensitive Jesus (dangit) John Connor, who is so into his feelings and his sense of "can't we all just be friends?" that he turns to Mary... er, Sarah, and whines something along the lines of "I can't do this. You save the world!" And our steely-eyed slayer-of-cyborgs tells him, "Okay. I will."

And you know what? With the Bimbotron 6900 at her side, our gun-toting, fast-driving, pain-ignoring super-soldier from a Bob's Big Boy probably can do just that.

And that's just wrong.

Posted by reparent at 2:02 PM | Comments (2)

December 11, 2007

Still Grading

Hi. I'm still grading. And having meetings. And having meetings about grading. (Maybe I should start grading my meetings...)

Anyway, when I finish grading, I've got a few research projects in front of me that I need to get to. One of them has to do, in part, with pop-up books. How cool is that? (Don't answer that. It's a rhetorical question.) In the spirit of tomorrow's new challenges (as opposed to today's really tired old challenges of grading and meetings), here's a really awesome Photoshopped pop-up book. Enjoy!

Posted by reparent at 5:56 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2007

Oh, Speed...!

No time to blog now -- the grading crunch is once again upon me.

But I leave you in the driving-gloved hands of none other than Mom and Pop Racers' pride and joy... Speed Racer.

Yes, the Wachowski Brothers are bringing a big-screen adaptation of the beloved Japanese cartoon to cineplexes everywhere on May 9th, 2008. if you click on that link, you'll get to check out the cast. And you may notice something... odd. Apparently, the Brothers W know something about Rex Racer and the mysterious Racer X that even Speed's original Japanese creators didn't!

I'm not sure what I think yet of the decidedly unrealistic racing effects. On the one hand, it fits with the series perfectly. On the other hand...

I'll leave you with this bit of techno-porno-fluff from the inimitable Alpha Team. (Be patient -- the player may take a minute to load.) A word of warning if you're using speakers: though it uses dialog and sounds from the original cartoon... it's not exactly SFW.

You were wonderful!

Posted by reparent at 3:25 PM | Comments (0)

December 9, 2007

The Golden Compass - Spoiler-Free Thoughts

Liam asked what we thought of The Golden Compass, so here goes.

I have read the books many times, and love them. The Spouse hasn't read the books. I'll try to accurately reflect our various reactions to the film because they really were quite different.

The movie, we both agree, looks wonderful. The settings and machinery in Lyra's world are great retro-futuristic pieces that really help to establish the setting as related-to, but different-from, our own world.

Nicole Kidman is incredible as Mrs. Coulter. 'Nuff said.

Also incredible, though in a smaller role, is Hattie Morahan (I didn't know who she was, either) as Sister Clara, the matron of Bolvangar. She's luminous and oh-so-very-very wrong. When she's on the screen, you can't look away.

Not so fabulous is Daniel Craig. But that's only because he's not much of a presence in the first book. (And I'm not going to say anything substantive about the other books.) The film does a surprisingly good job of following the book, and so Craig's Lord Asrael doesn't get much screen time.

The one thing that I am seriously torn about is the ending of the movie. I won't give anything away, but the movie ends before the first book does. This sets up a different dynamic for the cliff-hanger between the first and second books/movies. I'm not sure how I feel about that. And, if you've read the books, there's a whopper of an ironic statement that ... well, they're going to have to bring it back for the second movie, as it really is important to what happens next in the narrative. (And commenters, please don't reveal anything about the ending or the irony there. Not everyone has seen the movie or read the books yet.)

On the other hand, the movie is gaining tremendous attention/controversy because of its anti-religious agenda. I won't reveal anything of import by telling those who haven't yet read the books that "The Authority" is the books' name for God, and "The Magisterium" is The Church. We learn very, very early on in the movie that the agents of The Magisterium aren't rooting for the success of the same people we are in the story. I bring this up because The Spouse was unclear, after watching the film, what, exactly The Authority was. The euphemistic nature of the term does lead one to assume that defying The Authority simply means breaking the rules of The Magisterium/Church. (He was also not at all aware that The Magisterium is The Church -- it seems like a civil authority in the film.) This ambiguity is, I am certain, intentional on the part of the film.

(I do wonder, however, how much of the film is really lost on those who haven't read the book. It's certainly not as bad as it was when my father and I went to the theater to see David Lynch's Dune. Without a solid grounding in the epic storylines and vast array of characters from the book, the film can be impenetrable. The Golden Compass isn't impenetrable to viewers who haven't read the book... but following my conversations with The Spouse about it, I think that I had a much richer, more nuanced experience than he did. He simply didn't know enough to be able to decipher all of the narrative and visual shorthand employed in the film.)

Yahoo's Buzz Log recently ran a brief story about the controversy and how it is fueling debate (and web searches about atheism) all over the Internet. Yahoo has since closed the comments on that article: "due to numerous violations of our Comment Policy and Guidelines. Hopefully this will just be a cooling off period, and we look forward to restoring existing comments as well as accepting new submissions." Controversy and debate are, apparently, good for Yahoo... as long as they happen on your web site.

The real anti-religious material in the books, however, only intensifies as the series progresses. It will be interesting to see what the filmmakers do with this.

Finally, The Spouse and I discussed the relative merits of the film in a market saturated with heroic fantasy child-narratives (Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, etc.). I mentioned that one of the distinguishing features of Pullman's books is that they're exceptionally well-written. Their subject matter is more serious and much darker than Lewis' or Rowling's books, and Pullman is frankly a better prose stylist. When translated to the screen, however, C.S. Lewis' didacticism and pedantry is all-but-impossible to detect beneath the lush visuals and epic plot. Rowling's endless comma-splices and reliance on stock-characterizations are invisible on screen, and her narrative excesses are trimmed away in the more compact medium of the films. Pullman's rich play with language, ideas, and the interior lives of his characters, however, is largely lost on the screen. The films begin to seem... alike, much more so than their source material ever could.

Posted by reparent at 11:50 AM | Comments (3)

December 5, 2007

Tired of Feeling Down

Well, winter's here, the semester is almost over, the papers are stacking up, and the projects that absolutely have to get done haven't gotten done... yet. Oh, and the sun's been hiding and my light-therapy sun-lamp crapped out on me. (I need to ship that back to them one of these days.)

And then I saw that Dolly Parton, one of the primary goddesses in the gay pantheon, has a new song and video. Behold!

But wait a minute, o celestially-endowed one, I hear your complaint about complainers. I can't stand them either. They just go on and on, and it all gets so tiresome having to listen to them... But is this really advice I can use to help myself feel better, and possibly even fitter, happier, and more productive?

Oh, my. Embedding a Radiohead song with Stephen Hawking's wheelchair voice probably isn't the best mood-elevator.

But I'm still not sure that Dolly's exhortations to stop moping and:

get to livin', givin'
Don't forget to throw in a little forgivin'
And lovin' on the way
You better get to knowin', showin'
A little bit more concerned about where you're goin'
Just a word unto the wise
You better get to livin'

Are going to work for me. (Or for most people, either.) They just feel a little ... underwhelming, when coming from someone like her. As in, "that's easy for you to say, oh celestially-endowed one, but how do I do any of that?"

And then it dawned on me that exhortation might not be the best key for unlocking potential happiness. In my classes, I use exhortation to motivate students, but I also use questions. Et voila!

Maybe it's the academic in me, but I respond better to provocative questions than I do to encouraging words, especially when Dolly says "So negative the words she had to say / I said if I had a violin I'd play." That's just not nice. But when Heather Small asks:

What have you done today to make you feel proud?
It's never too late to try
What have you done today to make you feel proud?
You could be so many people
If you make that break for freedom
What have you done today to make you feel proud?

I start to feel it. I find myself thinking about what I can do to make myself feel better. I start getting creative with myself. And very little makes me feel better than when I can feel creative.

So there you have it. Watch Dolly for the raw fabulousness, the costume changes, and the awesome multiple cameos by Amy Sedaris, but watch Heather Small to shake the blues away and start feeling better. In fact, after a healthy dose of "Proud," you might even feel capable of livin', givin', forgivin' and lovin'.

Fancy that.

Posted by reparent at 6:45 PM | Comments (1)

November 30, 2007

Kids Say The Darndest Things!

In the Teaching Seminar we've been having a discussion all semester about student writing, and we've also been talking about gender. (The first is pretty obvious in a seminar teaching teachers how to teach composition, the second is due to a wickedly problematic set of sample papers on gender and performativity with which I've burdened the students this semester.*)

Recently, an op-ed column in the student newspaper of the University of Texas (ah, memories) has waded into the turbulent waters of sex, gender, and performativity. But not in the subtle, insightful way you might hope. Oh, no.

Meet Ryan Haecker. Ryan's a history major in his third year. He had this blinding flash of insight to share with the world:

The nature of sexual attractiveness in women is objective, immutable and incontrovertible because it is directly related to the constant and unchanging physiology of men and women. What men find attractive in women is fixed because the physiology of humanity has been relatively unchanged. In this way, the ideal form of femininity is also unchangeable and without regard for cultural context or time period. What men find attractive in women - the form of a true lady - is objectively identifiable, just as it was in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. In short, femininity is sexy, and sexy is timeless and universal.

Apparently, the history major has never heard of a bustle. Victorian babies got back like no rap guys' girlfriends ever did!

Haecker continues:

In advocating the wearing of dresses, I must distinguish between the flowing elegant dresses of tradition and the more degenerate and immodest dresses of our present culture. The miniskirt, a dress of sorts that doesn't extend below the knees, is both lacking in modesty and elegance. Elegance is essential to femininity, and the lack thereof implies a sort of masculinization. Modesty is essential to feminine virtue, and the lack thereof implies a state of whorification. Immodest, inelegant dresses constitute a degeneration and androgynization of true dresses.

The androgynous masculinization of the modern woman, through the donning of pants, suits, uncovered shoulders and unveiled hair, has in a sense led to the slow whorification of ladyhood. In discarding feminine dress, women seem to have symbolically discarded femininity and modesty (the virtues of women) in favor of sexual virility, promiscuity and immodesty (the vices of men). The ideal form of a true lady is a constant, immutable aspect of humanity, and this strange new development can only represent a bizarre aberration of a perverse and ignoble culture.

You should read the whole thing. It's choice. I am particularly fond of Haecker's neologism "whorification."

As one should expect, there are excellent responses from bloggers TBogg and Pam Spaulding.

The newspaper's site seems to be experiencing some difficulties, as I can't post the link that will let you click through to read all of the comments on this column now. Sigh.

Sometimes I miss UT, the place where I began my college career. Most of the time, though... I really don't.

* The sample papers are wrestling with a core feminist idea: the idea that all gender is performative. That is, that our actions, every action we perform constitutes our gender. It's not an act we put on, but what we do while we're doing the things that make up our lives, that constitutes our gender. Thus, our genders are not essential parts of us that have always been. (This is a big part of the feminist differentiation between gender and sex.) Anyway, it's a complex theory that goes against much of what we're raised to believe about ourselves and the world. Not surprisingly, the sample papers struggle with it.

Posted by reparent at 5:35 PM | Comments (1)

November 28, 2007

Dragon Claw Fire Horde Strike!!!

You may have read something, somewhere, about a "writers strike." And you may be suffering now, as your humble blogger and The Spouse are suffering, from Daily Show-withdrawal and Colbert Reportlessness.

Well, here are a few videos to explain what's going on, and why you -- yes, you! -- should support the writers Dragon Claw Fire Horde strike. (And be sure to watch the last video. It's awesome.

Here's a good primer explaining what's at stake and why the writers... excuse me, the Dragon Claw Fire Horde are striking:

Here's Not The Daily Show reporting on the situation:

And here's Not The Colbert Report opining furiously:

And finally, here's one of my favorite YouTube series, Ask A Ninja. Apparently, someone Asked a Ninja about the strike. Watch and learn, grasshopper:

Posted by reparent at 6:15 PM | Comments (0)

November 25, 2007

Wrong and Right

In our complex, postmodern world, it often seems as if questions of wrong and right are beyond our ability to adjudicate. After all, as the New York Times Magazine reports today on a group of young earth geologists who got together in Ohio:

this was a gathering of elites, with an impressive wall of diplomas among them (Harvard, U.C.L.A., the Universities of Virginia, Washington and Rhode Island). They had spent years studying the geologic timetable, but they remained nevertheless deeply committed to a different version of history.

Hey. These folks have advanced degrees from elite schools. And they are convinced that the earth (literally "the earth" -- both the planet and the rocks in the ground we walk on) is only about 8,000 years old, and that everyone else in the scientific community is wrong. I mean, everyone knows that carbon lies.

So, what are we to make of the story of Megan Meier, who was mean to a schoolmate on a MySpace page, and who was then driven to suicide by that girl's parents? Jonathan Turley has an op-ed in the LA Times that does a good job of covering the details of the story.

We all know that cyber-bullying is wrong. And we all know that cyber-stalking and predation is wrong. But what about when the bully isn't an age-mate, and isn't even a pedophile or some other form of online sexual predator? What do we do when the cyber-fiends involved are >helicopter parents?

Turley writes that "Tina and Ron Meier were told that they had no clear legal recourse -- either criminal or civil. It is not a crime to be cruel and immature." Because, really, creating an online persona with the sole purpose of sexually enticing a girl into liking "you" enough that she'll be devastated (perhaps suicidally so, as was the case) when you dump her horrifically, is just about my dictionary definition of "immaturity."

But the badness isn't over yet. When the news story broke, the media refused to publish the names of Lori and Curt Drew, the parents who caused Megan Meier's suicide:

The local newspaper refused to publish the name of the family responsible for the e-mails out of consideration, it said, for their young daughter. Other news outlets, such as Fox and CNN, followed suit, running stories that also withheld the names. In other words, simply because they had a child, the alleged perpetrators were given the benefit of anonymity.

Turley puts the implications of this rather succintly: "The Drews' daughter was certainly dealt a bad hand by her parents. However, the media puts itself on a slippery slope when it starts to protect accused wrongdoers on behalf of their progeny, offering a free pass for alleged predators who procreate."

And that's just bad, folks. Really, really bad. It's terrible that this happened, and it's terrible that there is no recourse in situations like this, and it is terrible that it was bloggers who had to do the research to reveal to the world who was responsible for this traveshamockery.

And then there are things that are wrong, but they're right at the same time. Like cute, mentally-challenged dogs. They're not right in the head, but they're right with me:

Thanks to Scott for posting this video. One day, I am sure, the evil that is cyberbullying, and the stupidity that is young-earth creationism, and the menace that is the rear-left leg, will be vanquished. I long for that day.

Posted by reparent at 6:52 PM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2007

Briefly Noted: Cool &/Or Provocative

The Spouse and I saw The Mist a few days ago, and it was really good. We heartily recommend it. It's got a surprising amount of suspense, rather than just heaping on the gore.

And it has a moment, pretty early on, that I think I get now that we live in Vermont. Don't worry, this won't spoil anything. (This blog has a strict no spoilers policy.) The film takes place in Maine, which isn't that different from Vermont. Maine is, however, the whitest state in the U.S. Yes, Vermonters, there is a whiter state than ours.

Anyway, Andre Braugher plays a hot-shot attorney from New York who vacations at his Maine home (as you do). We're told in the film that he could have a seat "on the bench" one day. Well, early on in the film, Andre decides that the white folks (and especially the white locals -- which is redundant) are trying to pull a fast one on the black out-of-towner (and which is worse should be a subject of much debate) and he leads a group of "his people" (the 5 other black people trapped in the store) outside.

I'm not going to say anything about what happens. But I do want to mention this point because of its interesting racial implications.

We might assume that this is a racist plot point -- the black folks are too stupid to stay inside where it's safer. However...

Is Braugher paranoid? Being black in the whitest state in the country has got to be a bizarre experience.

And being an outsider, regardless of your skin color, is a bizarre experience in New England. My mother spent part of her childhood in Massachusetts, and she always told me that the Mass. folks were the most intolerant, closed group of people in the country. On the social ladder, that may be true. But I wonder about it in general, especially up here in the north country.

And let's face it -- going for help rather than staying in the store just because there's a heavy fog makes sense.

The Spouse and I were both impressed with the psychological and sociological depth of the film. (When was the last time you said that about a horror film?) This is an intriguing moment in the film for me, and one that I read differently now that I live here in Vermont.

Also, you probably read about the giant sea scorpion they found that was nine feet long. Here's a graphic from the CNN article:

I've said it before and I'll say it again: insects and arachnids are just plain evil. Yes, we know that gravity and physics prevent these monstrosities from getting this big on land. But give them a little buoyancy... EVIL!!!!

And finally, a brief return to my thoughts on movies/film/video online. I was reading John Rogers' blog Kung Fu Monkey, and I came across this post, which is intriguing for many reasons. But the one I want to mention here is his use of the word "prosumer" to describe high-quality but affordable digital video cameras.

I mention this because of the double-nature of the word. As Wikipedia points out, the word is a back-formation meaning either/both producer/consumer and professional/consumer. It is, of course, also a play on the Pro/Con dyad. This is great, as it really gets to the heart of the video online phenomenon: the consumers are also producers, and are increasingly able to become professionals. Sweet.

And there's a new branding effort going on to reclaim the much-maligned term "progressive" that makes some really nice use of the pro/con dyad. Here's one of the commercials in this effort:

You can watch the others here.

Posted by reparent at 5:52 PM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2007

Simulations Greetings, This Holiday Season

I'm a little thankfulness-ed out. So, let's take a break and look at what's going on in the world.

I like simulations, I like alien invasions, and I like thought-experiments. I also like thinking and talking about teaching and about pedagogy.

Which would make one think that I'd really, really dig Robert Farley's "Independence Day" infrastructure simulation project.

(When the movie came out, The Spouse and I were living in Washington D.C. Every time the preview hit this moment, the audience cheered. Every single time.)

Please click the link and read Farley's post. It's a fascinating idea.

So, to sum up (for those of you who refuse, even when I ask nicely, to click through and read the post), Farley is asking his students in the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky to think through the logistical and political problems of rebuilding a functioning democratic state after a catastrophic event. In this case, he's using the alien invasion from the movie Independence Day as his template for the "catastrophic event." I'm okay with that.

But the premises that Farley and his class have worked out appear highly suspect to me. And to many of his commenters, it seems. As Farley explains, he and his students developed the premises for their simulation through "repeated viewings of Independence Day." From their premises list:

• "The actual targets of destruction would probably take into account commercial and military importance in addition to raw population."
• "We assumed that the attack took place on July 2, 2007, in order to ease various narrative problems. Of course, this means that the United States is deeply involved in Iraq during the attack; Baghdad almost certainly would have been destroyed by an alien ship."
• "The attack resulted in the destruction of the 30 largest American urban centers, assuming that a ship can destroy a city every three hours, that the aliens allocated 3 ships to North America, and that only three targets each in Mexico and Canada were destroyed."

Now, basing your thought experiment on a movie premise sounds rational and interesting to me.

Basing it on the movie's plot points is, at best, a missed opportunity.

Shouldn't a group of academics (and graduate students are, at the very least, academics in training) be able to come up with a "better" attack plan than the special-effects folks at ILM? Shouldn't that be part of the exercise? If students are to really think through the issues and problems surrounding infrastructure, shouldn't they be charged with developing a really smart attack plan that does as much tactical damage to that infrastructure as possible, and then to think through the problems of rebuilding from that?

After all, as we have learned from Iraq, shock and awe does not equal instant and complete victory. It may, however, equal a big box office take.

I understand this this is not the "big" simulation project for the students, which happens in the spring. However, the premise seems to have enough potential to warrant an expansion of the project to really take advantage of all of the opportunities here. It may, even, lead to competition. I could imagine dividing the class into two groups: aliens and humans. The aliens' task is to develop an attack plan from which the humans would be unable to recoup (given reasonable constraints: aliens have x ships with y destructive capability which they can use for z time; humans have n time to rebuild to a functioning national, or possibly first world global democratic baseline). The constraints could come from the film or not. Either way, that's a project that's not only sexy, it's also maximally educational. And fun.

Posted by reparent at 6:50 PM | Comments (0)

November 14, 2007

Cruel... but Necessary?

I've been thinking about films and videos online for a while, now. The next few posts are my attempt to put some of these thoughts together in some reasonable order.

First, something juicy to start us off. John Rogers at Kung Fu Monkey turns our attention to these two videos posted to YouTube by Betty Munson. They're sequential, sort of, so watch them in order to get the full effect.

Rogers has this to say about these:

"So who is Betty Munson? Is she real? Or is she an entertainer who's figured out that video entertainment on the web is more like haiku -- short bursts of standalone narrative that can be linked over time? Or is she both, one become the other? Either/or, spiffy."

I agreed with him. I thought the first was interesting, and the second was really, horribly, gratifyingly cool. So I clicked on the video and tracked Betty back to her YouTube profile.

There, I learned that she had posted a third video (which was really her first, but it was the third I had seen:

Now, at this point I was beginning to wonder whether Betty Munson was really Betty Munson, or rather "Betty Munson," a la lonelygirl15. As I watched this clip, I was bothered by the gynecologist. Not because she was a jerk, but because I thought I recognized her. I freeze-framed on her and it became clear to me that she is an actress -- Lisa Zane. I had most recently enjoyed her as Diana, the exiled Roman trying to gain control of rebellious ancient Ireland in the TV series Roar. (The SciFi Channel had aired most of the series' episodes, and The Spouse and I enjoyed watching them many, many months later from the DVR. More info on the show here.)

Going back to Kung Fu Monkey, of course the Hive Mind had beaten me to the punch. First commenter "Sander" outs the videos as part of a fictional narrative work. In this case, it's Cruel But Necessary, a film imdb claims came out in 2005. Here's the plot summary, written by "anon":

Cruel But Necessary is the story of Betty Munson's strange journey of self-discovery and soul-awakening in the traumatic years following the revelation, on videotape, of her husband's infidelity. Her marriage over, struggling to raise her teen-age son alone, Betty becomes driven to discover other secrets that may surround her and so she videotapes every aspect of her life during the gradual disintegration of her comfortable upper middle-class existence. Sometimes used as an eavesdropping device, other times as a confessional, Betty's camera dispassionately records the layers of family and personal dynamics. The film is seen entirely from the viewpoint of Betty's video camera resulting in a "surveillance tape" that is a kind of voyeurism of the absurd.

I can't find a copy of the movie anywhere, and I don't remember it getting a wide release. Here's a blurb from the 2005 Seattle International Film Festival. Maybe it failed to get a distributer.

In any case, why are these clips getting released now? Is it a marketing ploy? A sign of an upcoming sequel to the original movie? Certainly, the "finding yourself by videotaping others" theme isn't new in movies. sex, lies, and videotape (one of my favorites of all time) did it in 1989. The Ethan Hawke version of Hamlet made Hamlet's need to videotape everyone around him one of the film's central modes of characterization in 2000.

But in sex, lies, and videotape there's really no way to distribute the videos James Spader makes. They're private and mostly secret. Things have changed. As we saw in yesterday's post the desire to document one's life (or the expectation that one should document one's life) on sites like Facebook and MySpace (and YouTube and the other video sharing sites), means that not only is nothing really private anymore, but that what used to be considered private is now easily and widely broadcastable.

From the point of the consumer of these videos, it's a huge shift. We don't just watch professionally-made videos anymore. We watch each others, and we frequently enjoy them more than we do the professional stuff out there.

While this is new in respect to video technology, it's not really a new dynamic. In the 18th and 19th centuries, diaries and journals were often published and read widely.

But what's the difference, still thinking about this from the perspective of the viewer/reader of these personal works, between reading Samuel Pepys' diaries, and watching the video blogs of someone like DiGiTiLsOuL?

One of the grad students in the department is starting work on his MA thesis on digital media, and I keep pushing him to address this issue: what's the aura (to use a term from Walter Benjamin in a decidedly, intentionally, not-exact-and-not-really-what-Benjamin-meant sort of way) of video, and how does that compare with print? How do their respective modes convey information, and what is the potential for impact, for affect, with their viewer/readers?

In our composition classes, we teach students how to increase, ideally, their rhetorical authority and their ability to convey their individual voice through the mute medium of print. But are those concepts really even parallel enough to remain applicable when we think about personal videos? Bree's hesitations and fumbles in the lonelygirl15 videos endear her to us and invest us in her narrative, but infelicitous prose and awkwardness often alienate readers.

Much to think about here... and we haven't gotten to the perspective of the producers/composers of these videos!

Posted by reparent at 2:25 PM | Comments (1)

November 11, 2007

Ask Digital Digressions!

Once again, it's time for ASK DIGITAL DIGRESSIONS, the blog post inspired by your deepest desires (for... you know, information... about this... blog...).

Q: Hey, DD, what's up with the one-pants-leg-cuffed look you're sporting on the Author Photo? Signed, Confused in Cuff-Land

DD Responds: I'm glad you asked that, CiCL. The photo in question was taken by The Spouse during our recent trek to Bonny Old Scotland. While bicycling around the Island of Shapinsay in the Orkneys (which is where an important part of Frankenstein takes place), we stopped to enjoy the North Atlantic and take some pictures. This photo was one of the resulting photo-documents. My pants leg is cuffed to prevent my jeans from catching in the bicycle's chain. Since the chain is only on one side of the bicycle, I only need to cuff one leg to avoid getting mangled by a tragic pants-tastrophe. (Besides, that's one dang sexy calf muscle right there!) So now you know.

Q: I noticed you just added a new category to the blog, "Queer Theories." Obviously, that's a sign that the blog is going to be addressing more queer issues in the future. So... what's the best LGBT blog out there? Signed, Asking For No Particular Reason

DD Responds: Wow, AfNPR. That's a toughie. Personally, I read Center of Gravitas, Scott-O-Rama, Someone in a Tree, and Bloggernista (who I think I new once, far away, and in a not-so-happy long ago time. But I always, always check Joe.My.God. And so should you. Not only is Joe's blog consistently entertaining, it's also profound:

Best, most multi-faceted use of the phrase "We found ourselves on the dance floor" evah.

Q: Which school would win in a steel cage death-match: Ohio State or the University of Virginia? Signed, Betting on the Big 10

DD Responds: And is that your final answer BotB10? I'm sorry, but you lose. A recent study by Ohio State researchers Ohio State sociologist Dana Haynie, and her indentured servant graduate student, Stacy Armour, argued that:

youngsters who lose their virginity earlier than their peers are more likely to become juvenile delinquents. So obvious and well established was the contribution of early sex to later delinquency that the idea was already part of the required curriculum for federal "abstinence only" programs.

Except that they're wrong. Now, researchers at UVA (led by Paige Harden, a doctoral candidate in psychology -- go doctoral candidates!) have shown that "youngsters who have consensual sex in their early-teen or even preteen years are, if anything, less likely to engage in delinquent behavior later on."

Read the whole article for the details on the scientific smack-down. It's juicy behavioral genetics goodness. And it shows that the Cavaliers kick Buckeye butt.

Q: What the heck's up with the nom-de-blogs on this blog? Signed, Coeurlion

DD Responds: I'm glad you asked that, Coeurlion! This blog holds fast to a strict policy of respecting our commenters' (yes, both of you) identities. That means not letting the LOLCat out of the bag, as it were. And, just for the record, this blogger prefers "Chard" as a nom-de-blog, which, however, this blog and its blogger refuses to use.

Q: What's the best show on YouTube? Signed, Wretched 'cuz of the Writer's Strike

DD Responds: Obviously, that would be The Flight of the Conchords, originally airing on HBO, and then running in a much better format on YouTube. Check out:

Or this favorite of The Spouse:

Just watch them all. It's better than what you'll see on TV these days.

Thanks for tuning into another installment of Ask Digital Digressions!

Posted by reparent at 4:40 PM | Comments (1)

November 6, 2007

Reflecting on Advertisements

The Spouse and I watched the Patriots/Colts game on Sunday. We support Tom Brady's team, so the Patriots' win was nice.

But we saw an ad that had me literally laughing out loud. I now share that with you:

And we saw that damn Geico Gecko far too many times. He's really, really, irritating to me, and I've decided that it's the accent. So when I saw this on I Can Has Cheezburger, I also felt the need to share with you:

Finally, we saw the Kate Walsh Cadillac commercial, which reminded me far too literally of one of the biggest punchlines from the Dudley Moore comedy Crazy People: Moore designs a truthful ad campaign for Jaguar cars: "Jaguar- sleek and smart. For men who would like handjobs from beautiful women they hardly know!" Sadly, or comically, or something, the ad works and sales for Jaguars go way, way up.

(I was especially impressed by the close-up on her high heels. Do you know how hard it is to drive aggressively in 3 1/2" heels?)

But then we saw the same ad... only in male. :-)

Click on the image and then scroll down in the Commercials tab to "Turn You On (Martin)." Love that suggestive titling!

See? The world isn't all sadness. Sometimes it's helpful, or funny, or mildly titilating.

But do you think Cadillac's sales would increase if they dropped that silly "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit" tag line for something like "Cadillac -- sleek and smart. For men who would like handjobs from actresses on medical soap operas or vaguely foreign actors!"...

Posted by reparent at 7:47 AM | Comments (0)

November 3, 2007

It's Singing Saturday!

As promised, here's a post. On Saturday! But it's not just any Saturday... it's SINGING SATURDAY!

But first, a few observations.

• A while back, David noted on his blog, Someone In A Tree, that "There is something primal and therapeutic about letting that sound just rumble up through the body and out into the world. No matter how depressed or lonely or negative I'm feeling, if I start to sing it makes me feel better." I used to sing. A lot. I was in choir and the pop vocal group in high school (yes, I was a choir geek), and then I completed almost all of a BFA in Music Education with a vocal concentration. I was a singing fool. But that was a long time ago, and now I really don't sing at all. Not even to myself. I often wonder what it would be like (and what it would sound like if I just cut loose and belted something out. Probably not pretty, at this point. Sigh.
• Big Bear Butt Blogger Karthas (it's a World of Warcraft Druid thing... and you have a filthy mind!) notes that November is NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month, for the acronymically-challenged. (Yes, it's also NaNoWriMo, but there ain't no way in hell I'm writing a novel this month.) I can, however, try to post a post each day for the rest of November. (The previous November days don't count because I didn't know about NaBloPoMo.) If you're in to that sort of thing, here's my profile on the NaBloPoMo site. I'm not sure I'm going to do anything with it, as I really don't like the social sites (I know, big surprise), but who can tell what the future will bring? Perhaps I will use this site to torment my blogging friends. Yes, Sster, I'm looking at you!
• So here we go!

First up on SINGING SATURDAY is a lovely rendition of the Flame Wreath chant in a light madrigal style. (You don't need to know anything about Flame Wreath to enjoy this, but I'll explain after the clip.) And for those of you who are now considering skipping this because you a) don't know anything about this "flame wreath" thing; or b) are worried that not knowing anything will dampen your enjoyment, I say: Don't be silly! It's Singing Saturday, so watch the clip and enjoy the pretty harmonies!

For those of you who care, here's what's going on in that chant. Flame Wreath is a spell that one of the big monsters in World of Warcraft casts at players when they try to kill him. It creates a wreath of flame around each of the players in range of the monster, and as long as all of the players in the wreath stand perfectly still, it's not much of a problem. However, if anyone moves through the wreath itself (to run to safety or to attack the monster, all of the players in the wreath get some massive hurt put on them. Hence the raid (the group of players raiding the dungeon) blows up. But even not knowing that, it's nice to hear geeky guys doing neat stuff with harmony.

Next up is one of my guilty cinematic and aural pleasures -- Mortal Kombat. Except that it's Singing Saturday, so you know it'll be fun! (Same rule applies -- watch at least the first minute or so of the clip!)

Now, if you're not familiar with the theme from Mortal Kombat, you're in luck. I'm experimenting with embeddable MP3 players on the blog, so here's the original theme for your entertainment and education!

I think what I like best about these two (and yes, I confess that I rarely make it all the way through the DeCadence video (even though their name is quite clever, that's not quite enough to make up for the fact that a'capella songs shine most brightly when they are able to highlight variation, while techno is quite repetitive) is that these are both examples of really surprising examples of the de-technologizing of essentially technological experiences. That is, it takes no mechanical or digital technology at all to sing, but going up against the Shade of Aran's flame wreath in Warcraft's Karazahn Tower is impossible without a whole mess of technology. Same for the Utah Saints' techno tune, which is the theme to a highly special-effects-dependant movie which is itself based on a series of computer video games.

And, of course, even though these are both de-technologized adaptations, they were both captured by digital cameras, encoded for digital playback, and then uploaded to YouTube. That is, you could call both of these clips examples of technology displaying technology capturing de-technologizations depicting technology-based entertainments. Pretty cool for a Singing Saturday, n'est pas?

Posted by reparent at 3:01 PM | Comments (1)

October 1, 2007

Holy Crap!

Holy crap is right! Today's post is all about the astounding, amazing, and aggravating! And exclamation points!

-Do you like our multi-disc collector's edition?
-Must be expensive.
-Very. I'm Rachel.

Holy crap, there's a new version of Blade Runner (i.e., "The Final Cut") coming out! Here's director Ridley Scott's interview with Wired, and here's a write-up in the New York Times. Dangit. I don't have time to fly to New York or Los Angeles to catch this thing in the theater! And yes, the Times article does feature spoilers (as you knew it would), so read at your own risk.

< * > ~ < * > ~ < * >

Holy crap, the travel industry is screwing us over even more than we knew they already were! I've already ranted at you about the way the airline industry treats its passengers once we get to the airport. But now it turns out they screw us over when we're buying our tickets. But Richard, I hear you saying, the insane airfares are already bad enough! What else could they do to us? Well, Michelle Higgins at the Times informs us that the same rental car, hotel room, and airline seat often costs less -- much less -- if you buy it through one of the rental agency's/hotel's/airline's non-US web sites. Try Budget.ie instead of Budget.com when you're renting a car in Ireland, and you'll save money. As Higgins reports: "Paula R. Rivera, a public affairs manager at Hertz, wrote in an e-mail message [...] 'Costs and competitive conditions in individual markets are among the considerations that affect pricing.'" In other words, the infallible invisible hand of the "free" market make sure that we pay more. For everything.

< * > ~ < * > ~ < * >

Holy crap, a junior at Yale (in his sophomore year, no less!) recently discovered that postmodernity kinda, you know, sorta describes what's going on today! Read the whole thing here. I'll have more to say on this soon, but it's good to know that it will always be the heady Theory-with-a-capital-T days of 1982 at Yale.

< * > ~ < * > ~ < * >

Holy crap, I've got the same daemon as my friends Claire & Victor's daughter, Nina! (And if you don't know about the books this comes from, or from the movie that's going to be released in December, you owe it to yourself to check it out!)

< * > ~ < * > ~ < * >

Holy crap, even though a federal judge has ruled that bloggers can't be held responsible for the crazy comments posted on their blogs, many conservative political campaigns are busy busy busy "nutpicking" the craziest comments they can find to smear their opponents! Ah, democracy, the Internets r in ur votr edukashun, stealin ur elekshuns!

< * > ~ < * > ~ < * >

Holy crap, I missed International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Arrrrrr, crap! And there was a party in Second Life and everything. As always, however, Nitrozac and Snaggy show us the way forward:

So, rationalizing all the way, I have decided that today is my Talk Like a Pirate Day, because I "do what I want 'cuz a pirate is free, and I arrrrrrr a pirate!" And because I be a rebel, here arrrrr some inappropriate Talk Like a Pirate Day remarrrrrrrks!

(Shiver me timbers! That video be arrrrrfully bad. Though I do like the techno dance party about 1:25 into it.)

< * > ~ < * > ~ < * >

Holy crap, San Jose State State professor Henry Lowood is teaching an online class on "Games & Libraries"! He reports that he's taken his group of 13 students into World of Warcraft. I have a few comments and questions:

• Lowood describes taking students to Second Life as "easy" and WoW as "crazy." I disagree. The hardware requirements for Second Life make it challenging for many students to get online there, and many who are able to manage this feat suffer from frame-rate lag so severe they may as well watch screenshots. WoW is much more forgiving of low-end systems.
• From a pedagogical perspective, taking students into WoW is easy. There's so much to see and do that is external to the students that class activities take care of themselves. WoW imposes narratives and quest-lines (achievement-based motivation) on its players. Second Life does not. Send a student into WoW and they know what they're supposed to do: kill monsters. Send a student into Second Life and they almost immediately fall apart, wondering how do I win this?
• Mostly, I want more information about the course. What's the thesis of the course? What are the competing hypotheses? Where's the course syllabus and reading list? As a big believer in the productive range of educational and social possibilities for gaming and for game- and non-game virtual worlds, I have no doubt that there can be a provocative connection between games and libraries, but from his short post, I don't get it.

< * > ~ < * > ~ < * >

Holy crap, there really is a lot of news out there, and it's just as bad and as badly reported as Jon Stewart says it is! As you might have guessed from the number of links to NY Times articles in today's post, The Spouse and I finally caved-in and started getting the New York Times on Sunday, after a little over two years of reading nothing (on paper) but the Burlington Free Press. Surprisingly, both Sunday papers are about the same size and thickness. But that's mostly because there's an inch and a half of sale circulars for four grocery stores, JCPenney ("LAST 3 DAYS!" of the earth, I suppose. Who knew Penny's was so well informed on the apocalypse?), Big Lots, PetCo, Wal*Mart ("Save money. Live better.^SM" I couldn't make that one up if I tried), Michael's, ToysRUs ("Our Biggest Game Sale Of The Season!" which is referring to what season, autumn?), Kohl's, which informs me to "Expect Great Things"®, and something called SearsBook advertising "appliance innovation." I didn't know Sears had moved into the bookselling business... to sell toaster ovens.

< * > ~ < * > ~ < * >

But what's really bothering me is when I read the Times and see stuff like this:

• "Big Coffers and a Rising Voice Lift Group on the Right"... because: 1) big money has never before insured the spread of a political message; 2) it's a good thing they're speaking up now, because conservative opinion has been soundly ignored for the past 6 years; 3) and thank the gods they're rich enough to be able to lift themselves from the oppression they face every day. Better headline: "Another GOP Group of Millionaires Buys Media Time."
• "G.O.P. Hopeful Took Own Path in the Senate"... because it's always important to know the media narrative we'll have forced on us at every turn for the next year and a half. Fred Thompson is an individualist, and probably rugged, too. Oh, and when other politicians don't do what their voters tell them to do, those politicians are out of touch. It's "leadership" when Fred does it.
• "Laughing Matters in Clinton Campaign"... Steve Benen notes, at Talking Points Memo: "The scrutiny of Hillary Clinton's marriage has been excessive. The scrutiny of her hairstyle has been absurd. The scrutiny of her cleavage has been offensive. The scrutiny of her clothing has been almost comical. And so I suppose it was only a matter of time before the media turned its attention to her laugh." It used to be the conventional wisdom that the Bush Administration had made satire either redundant or so easy as to be insulting to our highly trained satirists. Now it's the media's turn. Here's a shorter Patrick Healey: "ClintonWatch: Cackle Proves Clinton Not Merely a Bitch, Also a Witch." What was that I was saying about how comforting it is to know what the rest of the nation months from now will decide for themselves about the candidates?

Look, I don't expect the New York Times to rise much above its fourth-grade reading level. I just expect it to treat us as fourth graders who can think. And maybe that's why I expect too much.

Posted by reparent at 4:34 PM | Comments (2)

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.

~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~

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.

~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~

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...

~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~

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 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)

July 27, 2007

TGIF...

Holy guacamole! It's almost 6pm, and your intrepid blogger and The Spouse are only now leaving work!

Luckily, here's the latest bit of fabulous from Dame Shirley Bassey, who even at age 70, hasn't lost a bit of her divine divaness.

Turn it up, my darlings.... waaaaaaaaay up. We've got a party to get started!

Posted by reparent at 6:00 PM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2007

About That Potter Post...

I was going to post my thoughts on Stephen King's thoughts on reading and on the conclusions of books and book series. (You can read the relevant passages here on the Children's Lit blog. I'll post my reactions to them on Digital Digressions soon.) But today (as always seems to be the case on teaching days) has been exceptionally hectic.

Besides, I came across these while eating my lunch here at my desk (as I do). I think you'll probably get a kick out of these more, anyway.

Tech*E*Blog, your one-stop shop for all things consumer electronic, points our attention to this terrifying news update from ONN, the Onion News Network:

Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash

And finally, something that's going into the "I Want One" category in a big way -- 3D Mailbox:

This bad boy is getting installed on the PC laptop tonight. Oh yeah...

Posted by reparent at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)

July 25, 2007

Busy busy busy (part the next)

I promised to talk about my feelings about the end of the Potter series today, but I have been overtaken by events, so that post will have to wait until tomorrow.

In the meantime, here are a few interesting tidbits:

ITEM: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the fastest-selling book of all time, with at least 4.1 million books flying off the shelves in the first 48 hours of its release. It's possible that the figure, as Scholastic insists, is actually 6.9 million. In any case, you won't be seeing Deathly Hallows on the New York Times bestseller list. Ever. Michael Giltz explains why. What do you think about this outrageous traveshamockery?

ITEM: One of my colleagues had asked me a few days ago to help her to set up a course blog. UVM supports and hosts faculty, staff, and student blogs using Movable Type, which is nice of them, but MT isn't easy or intuitive. To prep for my meeting with my colleague, I set up a new blog, Standing Still, and have started posting how-to instructions for doing different things with MT. I hope to make the blog a useful resource for my entire department. Next up: including images in posts. If you have struggled or are currently struggling with MT, especially at UVM, zing me an e-mail with topics to address in later posts.

ITEM: Henry at Crooked Timber ventures into the Dark Side of the Force and joins Facebook. I've gone back and forth on this question, and have not yet joined, even though (or perhaps because) UVM has its own Facebook chapter now. Besides the issues Henry discusses, I'm also concerned about infringing on my students' space. What do you think?

ITEM: And finally, something specially for The Spouse (though other academic spouses may find it eerily familiar). Ph.D. (Piled Higher & Deeper), a web comic by Jorge Cham that I recently got tipped to, has quickly become one of my faves. If you suffer from graduate school, or are a recovering graduate student, Piled Higher & Deeper may be right for you. Here's a strip that I found particularly amusing/distressing, and if you've ever inflicted your own academic work on a non-academic significant other, or been the victim of this sort of abuse, you'll get a kick out of it too:

Posted by reparent at 2:48 PM | Comments (3)

July 18, 2007

Machinima Music Madness!

The Ataris recently concluded a contest at Machinima.com that asked the machinima-making-masses to create music videos for three of their songs ("Not Capable of Love," "The Cheyenne Line," and "Connections Are More Dangerous Than Lies") using the World of Warcraft game engine. It's a promo for the new Ataris disc, Welcome the Night, but to facilitate the promo, the band had to give away these three tracks. Since these three songs are, presumably, the tracks slated to be released as singles, that's an odd strategy. (You can still download the three tracks for free here.)

The contest is over now, and here are the three winners:

First Place: "Frame of Mind" by Sedrin

Second Place: "Connections Are More Dangerous Than Lies" by Baron Soosdon

Third Place: "Connections Are More Dangerious Than Lies" by Dead Workers Party

I'd also like to draw your attention to one of the finalists that didn't make the top 3: Selserene's "To The Fairest"

You can compare Selserene's video with the official (i.e., featuring the band) Ataris video for "Not Capable of Love" at the iTunes Store. (Double-click on the song title to watch a 30-second preview.) I like the Blood Elf version better, I think.

Finally, for something not-completely different, the Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain have been confirmed to perform live at Blizzard's annual BlizzCon this year. Here you can sample the heavy metal goodness of "I Am Murloc!" (Warning: this video contains death-metal power chords, thrusting orc hips, and brief superhero-themed homophobic content.)

Anyway, what I'm most interested in with these machinima are the ways they depend (or not) on knowledge of the game for viewers/listeners to enjoy them. (And what should we call the consumers of music video? Listeners? Viewers? Multi-modal-mu-vid-mavens?) Sedrin's "Frame of Mind," for instance, is a critique of the tendency toward excess in the Achiever play-style (mentioned in yesterday's post, and then ably copped-to by Coeurlion in the comments). It's easy in WoW to get caught up in the race to level 70, and in the race to get the most elite weapons and armor. Sedrin shows us his avatar's Buddhist coming-out party, renouncing worldly goods and rediscovering friendship and that the world has color. If you've never yelled at someone for ninjaing loot, or been yelled at yourself for an innocent (we hope) mistake looting, does this video mean anything at all to you? Can it?

Baron Soosdon's video, on the other hand, seems like a pretty straightforward tale of lost love and zombie invasions. However, if you're a WoW player, you might have noticed the cross-faction romances of our main characters (Blood Elves are Horde, the Draenei are Alliance) -- a big no-no. And if you're a lore-junkie, you might have noticed the allusion to Horde Warchief Thrall and Alliance Mega-Mage Jaina Proudmoore, whose own forbidden love has been the subject of long speculation. Obviously, this isn't crucial knowledge needed to make sense of the video, but it does set up a clear dichotomy between what we might call naive and experienced readings of the video.

The Dead Workers Party video also makes use of in-jokes and references, such as the absurdity of playing World of Warcraft on an Atari 2600, itself an in-joke reference to the band's name, The Ataris. The video's concluding in-joke pokes fun at the difficulty in knowing who or what is on the other side of the often attractive avatars on screen.

And the L70ETC song, "I Am Murloc!" may be catchy if you're into that sort of thing, but if you've ever played WoW, it's an instant classic. Murlocs are irritating, little, deadly fish-people who swarm up to you and then make you into their own special fish-food du jour. Horde and Alliance both have quests that require navigating through Murloc-infested areas, and killing many, many Murlocs. Every WoW player knows the sinking feeling of doom when you're trying to get just one Murloc to attack and end up hearing the Murloc sound: "Aaaaaughibbrgubugbugrguburgle!" coming from 3-8 others, all heading your way with murder in their unblinking eyes. Can this song/video have the same impact on non-Wow-ers?

I don't have a conclusion to this ramble. That's usually a good sign that there is (or should be) a paper hiding three or four so-whats down the road. We'll see.

Until then, rock on!

Posted by reparent at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2007

¡Ay Carumba!

As you've probably heard by now, Homer and the gang now officially live in Springfield, Vermont. In case you're wondering, Springfield, Vermont is located here:

Yes, out of the 100+ Springfields in the U.S., and thanks to the magic of movie marketing, Vermont's little town that could is now even less... real.

The roughly 10,000 residents of the town "...where the rivers flow"© managed to convince about 6,000 non-Springfielders to vote for them, based at least in part on the Simpsons tribute video the town created. You can watch all of the videos submitted by hopeful Springfields here.

I guess I'm ambivalent about this because I really don't think that the stars of TV's longest running sitcom and animated series are woodchucks.* Of course, not being a Vermonter™ myself, I can only offer an outsider's perspective, which as all Real True Vermonters will tell you, is less than worthless.

Anyway you look at it, though, Springfield, Vermont is now the home of animated characters whose relevance to current popular culture is clearly in decline. If The Simpsons were still a trenchant force for insightful cultural commentary, then I have no doubt the wave of unreality would spread. Which Vermont town is Shelbyville? Is the cleaner, nicer, more cultured, more educated, and snobbier neighboring rival city Burlington? Or might it be Manchester or Concord, across the state line in New Hampshire? I see the lack of interest in extending the metaphorization of Springfield as a clear sign that the Simpsons Movie will not be a galvanizing moment in cultural transformation.

But that doesn't mean that we can't still have fun with the movie's web site! Much like the silly web quizzes we all love, the site lets you "create your Simpsons avatar!" The customization options are surprisingly robust, which makes the whole experience, of course, a giant personality test. Here's my avatar:

So, how do you see yourself in Simpsons-ese?

* It was explained to me last summer by an n-th generation Vermonter that "woodchuck" is roughly analogous to the n-word. As my native informant explained,

woodchuck:Vermonter :: the n-word:black people.

That is, it can be used by Vermonters to describe themselves and each other, but is absolutely verboten for flatlanders.** Like me. Which probably makes my use of it above a big no-no. D'oh!

**Flatlander. n. 1) A term of disdain employed by natives of Vermont for: a) Anyone not from Vermont, i.e., from Massachussetts or Colorado; b) Anyone whose ancestry cannot be traced back at least 5 generations to Vermont, with each generation residing solely in Vermont.

Posted by reparent at 12:45 PM | Comments (1)

April 13, 2007

Why Digital Literac