« "God does not play dice with the universe."—Einstein "Albert, stop telling God what to do."—Bohr | Main | "Build a miniature city, put it outside the window, tell them it's far away. It'll look real if you squint." »
February 26, 2006
"None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with you. YOU'RE locked up in here with ME."
- Fox News is busy asking the important questions, like "ALL-OUT CIVIL WAR IN IRAQ: COULD IT BE A GOOD THING?" I shit you not. Media Matters has screenshots. via
But enough about Iraq. You should read about that elsewhere.
- A quick way to compare the picture quality of DVDs vs HD is to check out this visual comparison of The Fellowship of the Ring in standard versus high-def. Be sure to click on the images—the HD pictures on the main page have been scaled down to DVD rez. via
- Damon Lindelof, the co-creator of Lost, is a huge fan of Watchmen, as is Joss Whedon. Watchmen, is, like the best comic ever. Here's a great explanation of Watchmen's influence on Lost:
As the mystery unfolds, the story cuts between the present, where an investigation takes place, and the past, formatted as “origin” stories focusing on a single character. (Sound familiar?) Each hero’s “origin” chapter often intersects with the others’ revealing different perspectives to the same moment.
*Each chapter is named after a snatch of a song lyric or famous quote. More interestingly, each chapter ends with the whole song title or quote cited, revealing more of that quote’s meaning and serving as a resounding footnote to the just completed chapter.
*The entire series is littered with repeating motifs and images, specifically clocks (most set to the time of the Hiroshima atomic bomb detonation), mirrors and other allusions to reflections and dualities and smiley faces marred with blood. Of course we’re all aware of Lost’s motifs: the Numbers, black/white, dysfunctional families, eyes, etc. In Watchmen however these repeating motifs don’t have any significance to the plot. They serve instead to reinforce the overall theme of the book: that everything is destined, not by the hand of anyone, but simply because, if you step outside of time, the past, the present and the future all share one moment. This sounds like the fatalism of predestination, but Watchmen seems to suggest there’s actually comfort to be found in it. As Dr. Manhattan proclaims: “Nothing Ends, Adrian, Nothing EVER ends.” In their last podcast prior to "One of Them", Cuse and Lindelof said as much: the Numbers may have no specific meaning but they’re recurrence is a statement about the nature of the universe,
*The crossovers of characters from one flashback to the other spin out of predestination: that everyone on The Island is, has been and always will be connected. In a life where we may not control our own destiny, comfort is found in knowing there are others with you along for the ride. In the pre-One of Them podcast, Lindelof and Cuse talked about the appearance of Kate’s mother in Sawyer’s flashback as an example of the interconnectedness of the human family and did not discuss it as a major plot point.
*Each chapter concludes with historical documents that while not central to the story, add significant background dimension to it. The Oceanic-Air and Hanso Foundation sites act the same way.
*Lost is set-up to be a myth. Most comics (really, all the good ones) are modern myths, serving the same purposes tales of the Greek gods served millennia ago. They’re to guide us through the difficulties of our lives and are an intuitive means of passing on the previous generations’ wisdom to the up-and-coming one. Lost is the Myth for the 21st Century, a modern superhero origin story without the childish trappings.
The story, such as it is, involves aspiring manga artist Robin Nishi (also the name of the man who create the manga that this film is adapted from) meeting his childhood girlfriend Myon, only to hear that she is about to become engaged to big, handsome Ryo. He offers his congratulations, of course, even if he's still carrying a huge torch for her. It's not to be, though, as a pair of yakuza burst into the bar run by Myon's sister Yan, looking for the girls' father, and kill Nishi (in a most humiliating manner) as he tries to stand up for Myon.
But wait! Nishi pulls a fast one on God, returns to Earth moments before his death, and turns the tables. He and the girls make a run for it, stealing the gangsters' car, only to be chased by what seems like half the yakuza in a mad dash that sends them careening off into the water. The car is swallowed by a whale, and inside they encounter a man who has been living there for thirty years, and has built himself a sort of treehouse out of other junk that the beast has swallowed.
- AksMe: Intelligent Anime?
1.Use what is already available from the DSLinux project as a basis.
2.Implement a touchable on-screen keyboard.
3.Make a standard 80x25 console that looks nice and is readable on the top display and communicates with on-screen keyboard.
4.Implement a lite version of X.
5.Use Busybox for standard commands to keep use uf CPU low.
6.Design an upside-down web-browser with controls that dock on the top of the bottom screen, while the content of the browser is displayed at the top. Probably going to end up being a port of Dillo.
7.Design key-bindings for the NDS controller to make operation on the desktop easy. Will probably end up feeling like your playing Dead-or-alive.
- Microsoft is poised to release a new consumer electronics device codenamed Origami. Apparently it performs the roles of a camera, phone, handheld, camcorder, or audio player, depending on how you fold it. I predict that it will fail, both because it is Microsoft's first attempt at a new market, and because the only thing Microsoft does worse at than making something that does one thing well is making something that does everything adequately.
- Back in December I linked to the story of a marijuana cave bust in Tennessee, and now there are pictures available of this amazing, underground grow-op. via
MySpace perplexes me. I am mystified by its popularity, and I dislike it enough that I'd feel uncomfortable linking to it. Websites like it have been around for years...Orkut, Friendster, FaceBook. Why is MySpace so incredibly popular? What makes this bastard spawn of a dating site and a web forum so different? It seems like half the people I've ever met in my life have a MySpace account. I asked one friend why he's a member, and he said a friend urged him to join. I asked another why MySpace was so popular, and she said:
Sonja: im hooked
Sonja: have you explored it?
Sonja: u make a page of blog and codes
Sonja: u can post comments which is messages u can leave people.
Sonja: my friends insert photos siully ones
Sonja: leave me messages... u can describe urself in it
Sonja: its like putting urself out there ig uess
Sonja: it gets addicting bc u want to know if any one asked u to be their friend... or did anyone leave me any comments..
Sonja: loads of bands put themselves on it
Sonja: to try and introduce themselves to the world thru myspace
Me: why does it seem that *everyone* is using it? people are constantly browsing through it during class, old acquaintances whose names i barely remember are on it, etc.
Sonja: probably bc its more catchy to be saying "yeah im on myspace" its your space
Sonja: i dont know.. im on facebook as well.. myspace u can do cooler more editing personalizing things
...which I took to mean that part of the reason it's popular is that MySpace confers a sense of ownership or property to its users, by everything from having more customization options to the name itself implying that it belongs to them.
- In "Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace," Danah Boyd puts forth a different explanation of the site's appeal, at least for teens: via
When MySpace was initially introduced, skeptics thought that it would be just another fad because previous sites like Friendster had risen and crashed. Unlike the 20-somethings who invaded Friendster, the teens have more reason to participate in profile creation and public commentary. Furthermore, MySpace's messaging is better suited for youths' asynchronous messaging needs. They can send messages directly from friends' profiles and check whether or not their friends have logged in and received their email. Unlike adults, youth are not invested in email; their primary peer-to-peer communication occurs synchronously over IM. Their use of MySpace is complementing that practice.
Posted by Jon Rubin at February 26, 2006 06:06 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.ubiquit.us/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/80