Link Dump

You know the drill, painstakingly curated links posted here for your enjoyment, so you better damn well enjoy. Or not. I’m not your mother. Where were we? Ah, yes, links:

• Chief O’Brien at Work – This little webcomic perfectly captures the pathos of Chief O’Brien. I like how most of the comics start with the same three panels.
• Asking the Wrong Questions: Her – Abigail Nussbaum’s review of Her is a lot more critical of the movie than I am, but we also share some thoughts:
  

  Science fiction films, it often seems, are the idiot cousin of the genre. Not that there aren’t some excellent SF films out there, but even if you ignore the vast majority, which are actually action or horror films in an SFnal setting, what you’ll be left with will be mostly small, simple stories in thinly drawn worlds, often with a thuddingly obvious political subtext. Again, that’s not to say that these films can’t be good–Moon, to take one example whose story and world are practically miniscule, is one of the finest SF films of the last decade. But it’s rare, verging on unheard-of, for SF films to achieve the depth and complexity of SFnal ideas and worldbuilding that written SF is capable of, and I think that part of the reason for this is fear. Most SF filmmakers (or their financial backers) are afraid to imagine a world too different from out own, a future too alien–the most celebrated SF film of the last year, after all, was one that used space exploration as a metaphor for alienation, and ended with humanity effectively barred from space for decades to come. Spike Jonze’s Her isn’t the film to buck that trend, but it carries within it the seeds of that film. Jonze takes the relatively unusual step (in the film medium, at least) of pairing SF with romantic drama, but that potentially refreshing choice turns out to be Her’s undoing–not only because the romance it crafts is problematic and unconvincing, but because it obscures the much more interesting SF film that Her could have been, if it were slightly less afraid of the future.

  Again, I don’t quite agree with everything, but it’s very well put, and the rest of the review is a pretty compelling argument. I still liked the movie a lot, but like I mentioned earlier this week, I think the movie doesn’t fully explore the implications of its SFnal ideas and its world never really approaches the depth or complexity of novels covering similar ground.

• Firefly Fan Tries to Retroactively Save Dead Character With NASA Data – This is one of those articles where no one really comes away looking particularly good. This guy went to extreme lengths to help… a fictional character. On the other hand, I (and I suspect most Firefly/Serenity fans) can sympathize with him, because Joss Whedon is the sort of writer who will kill a character in the most blatantly manipulative but still heart wrenching manner, so heart wrenching that it doesn’t really achieve its aim. But then, we’ve covered that ground before, eh?
• Inside The Army’s Spectacular Hidden Treasure Room – Yada, yada, yada, it turns out that the giant government warehouse that the “top men” store the Ark of the Covenant in at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark is actually a real place, and it’s awesome.
• Stephen King’s Boners – Niche tumblr of the week, created by a brilliant maniac named Britt Hayes whose goal is to catalog “every mention of an erect penis in Stephen King’s novels.” She’s only been doing this for about a month, and she’s got 5 pages of boners.

There you have it. Stay tuned for some Oscar commentary on Sunday, and while I’m thinking that my twitter will consist more retweets than original tweets, I’ll probably be online for the whole ceremony, so feel free to follow me there.

I appear to be one of the lucky few to have power in the Philly area right now, but the past few days have been a doozy. If you’re local, stay safe (and keep warm). If you have power, here are some links for your enjoyment:

• Destroy All Monsters: Stop J.J. Abrams – An interesting discussion on the upcoming Star Wars films centering around the conflict between what audiences want and what they need:
  

  What the audience wants is to see Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo again. The problem is, that’s impossible. Those characters are gone. They are a creation of celluloid well over thirty years ago. Without conducting the requisite thought experiments, though, the audience – and J.J. Abrams – will continue to “want” to see their heroes again, right up until the moment that they do. At which point, I think, a rather horrible collision between wants and needs will take place, right up there on the big screen.

  What the audience needs, above all, is to not have their abiding affection for the original trilogy tampered with.

  Amen to that. Lets hope that Abrams knows what he’s doing.

• How to Correct People – An interesting perspective (from a reality TV show, no less) and something I wish more folks would engage in:
  

  The customer (called a “Skin” on this show, although it’s a “Human Canvas” on Ink Master) had spent four years in the Marine Corps and wanted a tattoo that related to his helicopter. In the brief conference about the direction of the tattoo, the tattoo artist said, “So you were part a helicopter crew.”

  Now, it turns out that it is not actually called a helicopter “crew.” And some people get really persnickety if you use the wrong word by accident. But this guy answered by nodding. And he said, “A helicopter squadron, yeah.”

  I’m just really impressed by this move, where he managed to squeeze in a correction while agreeing twice. And it worked!

  Seriously, if we all acted more like that, we wouldn’t have to endure the stuff this next link describes:

• Don’t let movie social media get toxic – Another symptom of the seeming tendency in modern life to vilify those who aren’t like you. Twitter’s ease of entry and brevity of content only exacerbates the issue.
  

  There are still lots of worthwhile voices about film on social media. If you;re following the right people, you’ll see dynamic, thoughtful conversations from people looking to spread the love of cinema and foster a community of tech-savvy cinephiles. But from my subjective vantage point, there also seems to be more and more hostility on Twitter as well, and an increasing rush to judge those who don’t have the “right” opinion about a movie, whatever that may be at any given moment. Didn’t like 12 Years A Slave? Thought The Wolf Of Wall Street was just so-so? Loved The Lone Ranger and its crazy human-heart-eating villain? Sorry, no, you’re wrong.

  This is spot on, and it’s something I’ve been noticing a lot lately. I don’t think that social media is the cause, though. Outrage happens at the speed of Twitter, and that’s pretty much instantaneous. We either need to think before we tweet, or we need to recognize that we’re not thinking before we tweet and treat the content accordingly. I understand the impulse to complain and be snarky, especially on Twitter, but what I don’t understand is the notion that such sentiments be taken quite so seriously. This isn’t about movies, and it isn’t about Feminism (the article that really set this off was about how Feminists are under constant attack by other, self-righteous Feminists). It’s about discourse and speech, and for whatever reason, we seem to be hounding each other to shut up (even as we publish more than ever – clearly this hounding isn’t working). It’s fine to be offended or outraged, but that doesn’t entitle you to anything. We should all strive to be more like that guy who corrected the tatoo artist in the previous link. There’s a lot to chew on here, and it’s something that’s been bugging me for a while. Like I said, it’s not limited to the spheres discussed here. I’m sure this will pop up again on the blog at some point.

• How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love – OkCupid is harder than it looks.

Yet more links from the depths of the internet, posted for your enjoyment:

• New Horror Movie Trailer – I’ll leave it a surprise, but it’s a pitch perfect parody.
• Do Vampires Get Married More Often Than Werewolves? – Based on 2,231 books that spend a substantial amount of time talking about werewolves and/or vampires. It turns out that Werewolve’s marry more often, but Vampires get more action (especially explicit action).
• Why Armond White got kicked out of the New York Film Critics Circle – Say what you will about Armond White (a famous contrarian who argues things like Paul W.S. Anderson being a better director than Paul Thomas Anderson), but this latest scuffle seems rather odd to me. The basics:
  

  This morning, the members of the New York Film Critics Circle, including me, voted to expel Armond White, the former critic of the now-defunct New York Press (and currently the editor and movie critic of CityArts), from the group. To me, it was a sad moment — pathetic, really, though Armond brought it on himself. A week ago, at the Circle’s annual awards dinner, White made a rude and bellicose spectacle of himself, as he did the year before, by heckling one of the winners — in this case, Steve McQueen, the director of 12 Years a Slave, a movie that White, in his review, had dismissed as “torture porn.”

  Now, I wasn’t there, so I have no idea what really happened (White denies saying the things he’s accused of), but this seems like a rather excessive punishment. This is a guy who’s chaired the committee multiple times, and while I doubt anyone agrees with White that often, he’s at least a thought provoking, interesting critic. The thing that strikes me as odd is… why kick him out? He wasn’t suspended for a time or banned from this awards dinner, they went with the nuclear option. Owen Gleiberman gives his reasoning in the linked article, but it seems to amount to hearsay. This is strange because Gleiberman spends most of the article praising White’s virtues, which are not hearsay. It feels like there’s more going on here.

• String theory: Lauren Beukes plots her time-travel murder-mystery – Sweet merciful crap, look at that crazy board.
• Daycare Questionaire – Filled out by an awesome person.

That’s all for now!

Yet more detritus from the depths of the internets, curated and posted for your enjoyment:

• Ranking the James Bond/Batman Mash-Ups – An admirably comprehensive list of all 23 James Bond movies… if they were actually Batman movies in disguise. Or something like that. It’s a pretty clever way to comment on both Bond and Batman, and again, I have to admire the follow through.
• From Absaroka to Yazoo: The 124 United States That Could’ve Been – Some maniac found this List of U.S. state partition proposals and decided to plot out what the country would have looked like if they were all successful. Neat.
• Is This Bad-Ass Korean Woman Actually Jimi Hendrix In Disguise? – “Using a gayageum, a twelve-string Korean instrument normally used for Royal court music, Korean musician Luna Lee covers Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chili.'” And it’s pretty damn awesome.
• The Gap Mannequin Project – Niche site of the week.
• Video Game Review Scores, Ranked – Isn’t the internet awesome?

That’s all for now.

Yet more links from the depths of the internet, as unearthed by my chain-smoking monkey research squad:

• Air Warfare Expert Christine Fox – Fighter Pilots Call Her “Legs” – Inspires the New Movie Top Gun – Amazing 1985 article from the archives of People magazine, it’s filled with gems. “Cruise and McGillis meet during a lecture, and their love soars like a ground-to-air missile.” Heh. Oh, and by the way, Christine Fox? She’s just been named as acting deputy secretary at the Defense Department, basically the number two in command behind Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel (she’ll be the highest-ranking woman in Pentagon history).
• The meaning of “Doom” – A nice reflection on the importance of the video game Doom. Also of note, the book Masters of Doom, which chronicles the creation of Id and their many revolutionary games, with special focus on the two Johns (Carmack and Romero). Worth checking out if you have an interest in games or even just programming.
• Milk, the Drink of Conquerors – Weirdly fascinating article. “Recent scientific discoveries suggest that the spread of farming across prehistoric Europe may have gone hand in hand with the increase in lactose tolerance.” Huh.
• Inside the Book: Rube Goldberg – I have to admit, while I’m obviously very familiar with the infamous “Rube Goldberg Devices”, I’ve never known much about the man or his art (where he depicted those famous devices, but also lots of other interesting stuff). This video is admittedly limited in scope, but it makes me want to delve deeper into Goldberg’s work…
• Medieval kids’ doodles on birch bark – It seems that some things never change. Even in the 13th century, young students would doodle when they got bored. Make sure to check the links to other doodles… Not to mention all the other junk that came along with these writings.
• Why Shorter Men Should Go After Taller Women – And vice versa! I have never understood the steadfast insistence about this. But then, I’m only 5’6″, so it’s not like I would ever want to limit things so arbitrarily…

That’s all for now.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Here’s some links to be thankful for:

• Legal Systems in Genre and Why No One Paid Attention to Them… Until Now – Max Gladstone on the surprising similarity between lawyers and wizards:
  

  …we have two professions known for conservative dark-colored wardrobes, maintaining immense libraries of impenetrable tomes bound in red leather, communicating in technical jargon drawn from languages a thousand years dead, being utterly beholden to the mysterious immortal beings they serve, and getting very little sleep. Seems like a natural fit to me.

  …Let’s consider common trappings of hermetic and summoning magic. Magic forces things to act in ways they don’t normally. So does law—we don’t need to go so far as Hobbes to recognize that in the absence of laws people would not behave in the same way as they do with laws.

  It works better than I’d think, and there might even be some historical basis…

• My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me – Dude gets curious about his daughter’s school workload:
  

  Some evenings, when we force her to go to bed, she will pretend to go to sleep and then get back up and continue to do homework for another hour. The following mornings are awful, my daughter teary-eyed and exhausted but still trudging to school.

  I wonder: What is the exact nature of the work that is turning her into a sleep-deprived teen zombie so many mornings?

  I decide to do my daughter’s homework for one typical week.

  Man, I really hate homework.

• 10 Paragraphs About Lists You Need In Your Life Right Now – As lists go, this one seems a bit arbitrary.
• Facebook Drives Massive New Surge Of Traffic To Publishers – Amazing what a small tweak to an algorithm can do:
  

  The increase comes as Facebook is competing with Twitter to be seen, and used, as a vital news source, and appears to be the result of changes to how news links perform in the News Feed. In short, Facebook appears to have broadly shifted its algorithms and to create formidable new traffic streams that simply weren’t there just weeks earlier

  In August, Facebook announced changes to its News Feed algorithm, noting that, “Now organic stories that people did not scroll down far enough to see can reappear near the top of News Feed if the stories are still getting lots of likes and comments.”

And that’s all for now…

Moar links from the depths of the internets, curated just for you!

• Aningaaq – This is an interesting little short-film spinoff of Gravity, depicting one of the scenes from the movie from a completely different perspective. Directed by the son of Alfonso Cuaron (who was the co-writer of Gravity), there’s buzz that this might get nominated for a short film Oscar, and since Gravity is doing pretty well on that front, both may be nominated, which is interesting.
• 4 Rules to Make Star Wars Great Again – In fairness, the original trilogy never stopped being great, but these are interesting points that I think we can all hope JJ Abrams takes to heart in making new Star Wars movies.
• How money can buy happiness, wine edition – I’m not sure if this works as well as the author thinks it does, but it’s an interesting perspective, and some specifics are dead on:
  

  The more you spend on a wine, the more you like it. It really doesn’t matter what the wine is at all. But when you’re primed to taste a wine which you know a bit about, including the fact that you spent a significant amount of money on, then you’ll find things in that bottle which you love. You can call this Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome if you want, but I like to think that there’s something real going on. After all, what you see on the label, including what you see on the price tag, is important information which can tell you a lot about what you’re drinking. And the key to any kind of connoisseurship is informed appreciation of something beautiful.

  We human beings like to think we’re always acting rationally, but a lot of times, we’re just rationalizing a more instinctual reaction… and there’s nothing wrong with that.

• I Noticed This Tiny Thing On Google Maps. When I Zoomed In… Well, Nothing Could Prepare Me. – An interesting story discovered by futzing around on Google Maps and zooming in on what looks like an old plane crash in the middle of a desert.
• Katniss Everdeen Kills Everything – Creative editing is creative.

And that’s all for now…

It’s been a goofy week for the blog. One of the great things about paying for your own webhost is that you have control over everything. One of the bad things is that… you have control over everything. So when stuff goes wrong, you have to spend some time fixing it. Fortunately, that’s relatively rare these days, but I had some trouble this week with an “upgrade” to mysql and perl which left various pieces of blog functionality (like commenting) inoperable (it also caused me to miss a post, sorry!) This should be all taken care of now, so look for the return of regularly scheduled programming. Anywho, time is short and I’m seeing Thor tonight, so here’s a few links from the depths of the internets. Enjoy:

• Imagining the ‘Seinfeld’ Movie Posters (and Part 2) – Some genius has gone and photoshopped all of the fake movies that were referenced on Seinfeld, casting the movies in the process, and most of these are just perfect.
• The Creator of Arnold Schwarzenegger – The professionalism of this video almost had me fooled at first. It’s a bananas theory, and it’s also perfect.
• Mumblegore – An excellent little profile on the current crop of up-and-coming horror movie directors, actors, and writers, including the likes of Adam Wingard, AJ Bowen, Amy Seimetz, Ti West, and Roxanne Benjamin (amongst many others). Interesting stuff, and I hope to see more from these folks!
• The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge – We all know what I think of “declining serendipity” arguments, but one of the dangers of “on demand” culture is the notion of only exploring “the best” and focusing on pragmatism rather than letting curiosity run its course. Of course, as the linked article suggests, this isn’t really a new thing, but it has been an idea that’s interested me of late.
• Grand Theft Auto V is a Return to the Comedy of Violence – Heh: “As video game players have gotten older, as antiheroes have become routine across the culture, as sex and violence have permeated prestige television, the controversies that once surrounded the Grand Theft Auto games have begun to seem like sepia-toned oddities from another age.” I was pretty down on GTA IV and actually, I haven’t been playing much in the way of video games at all of late, but this article made me want to pick up a copy of GTA V and fire up the ol PS3 for some mayhem.

That’s all for now!