As the DNC churns along its wake filled course, and the RNC looms in the future, I began feeling a bit mythic. Some would say fanciful. I long for the days when good and evil were easy to determine and you didn’t need a score card to tell which one was the lesser of each.
It didn’t hurt that I wanted a time appropriate reason to post a Lord of the Rings + Transformers mashup found on You Tube via Agent M.
(via the one you tube, Agent M)
The Beijing Olympics are over. A thought or two popped up over the weekend while I was attending a party. Olympic Sex. Holy crap you know they’re having it. I posted an article on it last Olympics and meant to do the required searches this time around to see what news agency would have the nerve to give it up again. I managed not to look during the weeks in question but the exact article I was looking for just fell into my lap.
Over at Times Online UK, former Olympian Matthew Syed spills all on the happenings between the Olympic Villages sheets.
Before we get to that, however, it is worth noting an intriguing dichotomy between the sexes in respect of all this coupling. The chaps who win gold medals - even those as geeky as Michael Phelps - are the principal objects of desire for many female athletes. There is something about sporting success that makes a certain type of woman go crazy - smiling, flirting and sometimes even grabbing at the chaps who have done the business in the pool or on the track. An Olympic gold medal is not merely a route to fame and fortune; it is also a surefire ticket to writhe.
But - and this is the thing - success does not work both ways. Gold-medal winning female athletes are not looked upon by male athletes with any more desire than those who flunked out in the first round. It is sometimes even considered a defect, as if there is something downright unfeminine about all that striving, fist pumping and incontinent sweating. Sport, in this respect, is a reflection of wider society, where male success is a universal desirable whereas female success is sexually ambiguous. I do not condone this phenomenon, merely note it.
Well that’s unfortunate. All you lady medal holders be sure to shoot me an email. To talk, you know? We’ll discuss the unfairness of the male dominated society and drink much wine while doing it. Maybe afterwards, some coffee?
Misty May, you’re married and all so…. keep it discreet.
But let us get back to all the sex going down in the village. One possible explanation centres on the fact that Olympic athletes have to display an unnatural (and, it has to be said, wholly unhealthy) level of self-discipline in the build-up to big competitions. How else is this going to manifest itself than with a volcanic release of pent-up hedonism?
At least someone else noted that there’s a cost for all that determination.
(via timesonline uk)
The Longbox Project seems to be a venture to bring comics to mobile digital media. Your basic iPhone bringing you you’re Funny Books.
I likes the idea.
Myriad Issues talks with Rantz Hoseley about the score and Rantz puts into words exactly what I don’t like about “animated” comics.
MI: What do you think about the “animated” comics some publishers are experimenting with?
RH: Motion comics are basically a throwing shaky cam on a still medium. Please, what are you on? Didn’t we already see this in the mid 90’s when Flash first appeared on the ‘net? It wasn’t a good or satisfying experience then, [so] what has changed that would make the end result any different? It all feels like art and film school demo reels when they first start playing with motion graphics tools like Flash or After Effects.
[Reading] comics is both passive behavior and active behavior on the audiences’ part. They control how fast they read things. You start putting in dialogue with voiceover and flipping pages for the reader, then you take away their [the reader’s] control and it’s no longer comics anymore. I don’t think that’s what makes comics interesting, what makes it powerful as a storytelling medium, or what makes it seductive. I think it’s a really bad band-aid solution.
He’s not wrong. Sorry, Mr Kirkman. I saw what MTV did to INVINCIBLE. That dog don’t hunt for me. Maybe if they picked voice actors (for parents, mind you) that were older than 15, it wouldn’t be so jarring and uncomfortable. But they didn’t and it is.
MI: Do you think smart phones and iPhones are a viable platform for digital comics?
RH: It’s not an impossibility. But by the nature of what the iPhone is, and in a sense the Kindle as well, you’re automatically at an inferior platform for most comics. Trying to maintain things like readability, detail and still have page context [from the traditional comic book format] means you’re already behind the eight ball, and trying to come back from that is not a trivial thing. Dealing with it on a computer screen, or a TV via modern game consoles is a much easier… a much more viable solution.
Aside from the fact that, in order to deal with those issues, you have to create unique, platform-specific content, I think mobile comics are a bad idea until there is a little more stability in the phone market. Between the iPhone and what companies like HTC and Samsung are doing, trying to deal with a market-wide solution right now is basically jumping into the middle of the leapfrogging that’s going to continue to take place in cell phones over the next 5 years as the companies jockey for market dominance;
The entire article is worth a read, for those who want more info on Future Comics type stuff.
(via myriad issues)
The Goblin Shark’s name continued to pop in and out of my various feeds. Days ago I finally took noticed and clicked a link.
I wish I didn’t.
Nature has my mind today.
At any given time, approximately 20 to 50 volcanoes are active worldwide (depending on the definition of “active”). Collected here are photos of volcanic events from the the past several years
(via boston.com)
There’s a hole in the world. It is man-made (a diamond mine in Eastern Siberia, Russia) and it is horrifyingly gorgeous.
Other holes on planetary surfaces: Mars
(via sreedhara, Mark Trapp)
This story on Brian Conley appeared in my email via Read or Alive’s Ultimate Josh.
Beijing - Brian Conley, creator of the well-known videoblog, Alive in Baghdad, was detained with his friend, Jeffrey Rae, early Tuesday, August 19th in Beijing. Their detention appears to have taken place at the same time as that of international artist James Powderly, whose detention was reported Tuesday. Three other bloggers and activists, Jeff Goldin, Michael Liss, and Tom Grant, have also been missing since Tuesday morning. Conley, 28, Rae, 28, Goldin, 40, Liss, 35, Grant, 39 are all American citizens.
The five “citizen journalists” and activists were in Beijing to support and promote human rights, freedom of expression, and freedom for the Tibetan people. They and numerous others have acted as an independent media centre for the dozens of pro-Tibet activists in Beijing who have sought to draw attention to the Chinese government’s occupation of during the Olympics
Mainstream media seems to want to ignore this bit of news. I wonder why.
According to hotel staff, Rae and Conley checked out of their hotel in Beijing before dawn Tuesday morning. At 12:30pm Beijing time on Tuesday, Conley’s wife in Philadelphia received a text message from him reading “In Jail. All fine.” A “twitter” message to Students for a Free Tibet suggested that they were being held with James Powderly, the artist and co-founder of Graffiti Research Lab who was preparing to debut a new work and technology of protest, the L.A.S.E.R. Stencil. (See http://freetibet2008.org/globalactions/jamespowderly/)
Be sure to read the full story here.
It seems I made a note of Brian Conley’s efforts back in 2006.
If the mainstream won’t say boo about this, the blogosphere must. Spread the word as far and wide as you can. We must remember that the country holding one of the last few international gestures that immediately bring up the thoughts of hope and peace is the same government known to have committed terrible violations of humans rights.
Other blogs are talking:
Brian Conley and other American activists Detained in Beijing
Why aren’t you?
UPDATE: Under law the Chinese government has “72 hours before it is required to notify an embassy about foreign nationals who have been detained.” It is currently 60 hours and counting.
UPDATE UPDATE:
(via read or alive, Brian Conley’s Twitter, Free Tibet 2008, Alive in Baghdad)
Something new in the night sky, for the moment anyways.
Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, astronomers detected a small, comet-like object called 2006 SQ372, which is likely made of rock and ice. However, its orbit never brings it close enough to the sun for it to develop a tail. Its unusual orbit is an ellipse that is four times longer than it is wide, said University of Washington astronomer Andrew Becker, who led the discovery team.
[...]
2006 SQ372 is beginning the return leg of a 22,500-year journey that will take it to a distance of 150 billion miles, nearly 1,600 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Scientists believe the object is only 50-100 kilometers (30-60 miles) across.
But did you hear about Pluto? Messed up right?
(via universe today)
The Internet is all about thoughts and memes coming round again. This sampling of color photos on the USA in the 1930s recently popped up in my FriendFeed. A little digging and it is discovered that Daily Kos focused on this first back in 2006.
See also:
(via nonewbs, friendfeed, and daily kos)
Over the weekend the world lost two valued and talented entertainers. Forgive me for not wanting to acknowledge their passing earlier.
Clooney said: “The world just got a little less funny. He will be missed dearly.”
Brad Pitt, who also starred in the crime caper trilogy, added: “I lament the loss of a ferociously funny and hardcore family man. My thoughts are with Bernie’s wife Rhonda and their family. Bernie Mac, you are already missed.”
Samuel L. Jackson, who can be seen in comedy film Soul Men with Mac later this year, said he was “honoured” to have acted alongside the comedian.
(via the superficial, iwatchstuff, nzherald)
Mining the News most others forgot.
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