Sci-Fi Miscellany

This morning I found an article in a Chicago Jewish newspaper announcing that in honor of Charlton Heston and his role in “The Ten Commandments”, William Shatner would be in town to do a dramatic reading of the book of Exodus. Be afraid, be very afraid…

Incidentally, the erstwhile Captain Kirk’s name provides fair fodder for a Tom Swifty: “Tom, use the name ‘William Shatner’ in a sentence.” “ok. William Shatner the bushes because there was nowhere else to go.”

…and while I’m on the topic of Star Trek: My memory’s a bit hazy on this since I haven’t consistently watched the show in years, but why were the holodecks equipped with safety settings that could be turned off so as to render participants vulnerable to severe harm and/or death? Perhaps it’s mere poverty of imagination on my part, but is seems to me that the risk/reward ratio there is pretty highly skewed…

Finally, get a load of the latest Time magazine cover:

I haven’t read the article yet, so maybe they really are trying to evoke Highlander…and if so, that begs the question of WTF is wrong with the people at Time magazine. Then again, given the number of times this season Hilary Clinton has “come back from the dead”, as it were, maybe some people are legitimately scratching their heads as to whether she’s an Immortal. And as for Obama…maybe there’s more than meets the eye to his reluctance to debate with no moderators…

Actual logorrhea

We got the upstairs carpet shampooed and scotch-guarded recently, so for the past few days there have been little squares and rectangles of paper leading up to my room for me to step on so that whatever’s on the bottoms of my feet doesn’t dirty up the drying fabric. It’s kind of cool, since I like to pretend that I’m in a video game hopping from platform to platform as I go in and out of my room. I think I played the same kind of make-believe several years ago when climbing around the ruins of Machu Picchu, only then there was an actual possibility of serious injury. Game Over.

Logorrhea

There’s a vague irony to writing a brief blog post on this article, but I’m going to do it anyway.

About halfway through Stein’s piece, I noticed something curious about my act of reading it, namely, that the article was veering away from where I assumed it was going and instead moving on to a completely different, although entirely valid point. Stein seems to be operating off the notion that current web technology operates as an honest to goodness “marketplace of ideas” that efficiently sifts creative output such that it gets expressed and primarily consumed in a form appropriate to its maximum degree of development–hence, the Rob Schneider/YouTube connection, which of course brings to mind the legion of SNL-sketch-influenced movies that really should have remained sketches. Insofar as this argument holds water, I do think he has a point (e.g., Little Nicky really should never have been made), but there nevertheless is plenty of market-based evidence to undermine his thesis (e.g., the comments page for the previous link).

The more sinister implication I initially thought he was aiming at, however, is that the proliferation of tools by which, and forums in which one may opine on a whim generally devalues the formation of complex opinions because technology has enabled the satisfaction of merely saying something to outpace the incentives for coming up with things that are worth saying. In other words, why should I invest more time and effort developing my thoughts into a blog post that A) few people will read, B) will probably not be very good, C) I’ll probably end up forgetting about or changing my mind about later, and D) I may actually abort halfway through when I realize I don’t have anything I really want to say, when I can dash off a quick one-liner on Twitter or make up a clever status for myself at Facebook and feel a few seconds’ gratification at having made my mark of free expression on the networks? Is the internet becoming one giant bathroom wall for our soundbyte culture?

I’m generally of the opinion that it’s good for people to put a fair bit of thought into self-presentation, be it physical or intellectual, if only out of respect for the public spaces they intend to inhabit. You don’t shit where you eat, as the vulgar expression would have it. Whither, then, the culture that would redefine defecation?

“I call it the nouveau tag.”

Um…while reading this piece, I honestly had a difficult time convincing myself it wasn’t from The Onion.

Incongruous

The other day I was at the market square in Cambridge, England, and there was this table of Marxist activists advertising for the 2008 “Festival of Resistance”.  Think about that one for a bit.

The Obligatory Video Game Post

Although it’s been several years since I actually bought anything really cutting edge in the world of video gaming, I still manage just barely to keep abreast of new developments, mostly in order to shake my head and lament that games aren’t like they were “back in my days”, which sentiment is probably far more a function of my imagination than an accurate reflection of reality. In any case, I doubt that I’m any time soon going to succumb to the encouragement of a couple of my friends and plunge head first back into the scene. For starters, I just don’t have that kind of money to throw down. But more importantly, for reasons that I haven’t really thought about too much, I’m just not that interested in spending my time that way anymore because, frankly, I find it kind of boring (no, foreign language versions of old games don’t count. But that’s a topic for another day.).

But that’s in no way meant to knock video gaming as an absolute waste of time. In fact, I am frequently amazed at what some people end up doing with the more creative aspects of the field. Anyway, that’s all kind of a BS preamble to saying that I this ad really clever and funny.

Profound

I found the following quote by Wendell Berry in Jedediah Purdy’s book, “For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today”:

“A destructive history, once it is recognized as such, is a nearly insupportable burden.  Understanding it is a disease of understanding, depleting the sense of efficacy and paralyzing effort, unless it finds healing work.”

Freespeak & Newspeak

This post was brought on in part by some of the recent political debates about certain statements being “over the line” etc.

To piggyback on a point I once read regarding the contemporary loss of distinction between Patriotism and Nationalism and/Jingoism, I’ve been thinking on and off about what ever happened to the social category of “Taste”.  I suppose it’s kind of a pre-90’s mentality–you know, back when The Simpsons was considered edgy–but it seems to me that the realm of social meaning and valuation that “Taste” used to occupy has been carved up between radical Free Speech advocacy and PC Speech Restrictions, and that conceptually we’re a far poorer society as a result.

Briefly, as a working definition I understand the “Taste” to encompass the degree to which an actor frames his actions/utterances in accordance with the accepted social norms of the particular context of the action/utterance.  Radical Free Speech attacks this by claiming that social context should never impinge upon one’s right to express oneself however one wants wherever and whenever one wants, and PC Speech declares certain expressions and opinions as off-limits in any context.

Jive Iliad

Courtesy of Gizoogle, this ought to be worth a weekend of fun.  Check out “bootylicious Achilles“, which I’m sure is what Patroclus thought…

I wouldn’t say that I was ‘depressed’ or ’suicidal’ last year, but…

Hmm…