Pop Culture
evolgen | April 23, 2007...that appears to do absolutely nothing (link). Usually they do something mundane in a really complex manner. But all this one does is open the curtains so that the credits can run. The device pictured below is different from the one linked above, but I figured this post needed something to fill up more space.
(Via The Disgruntled Chemist.)
evolgen | April 19, 2007On yesterday's episode of Mythbusters they tested the myth that birds in a trailer decrease the weight of the trailer when the birds take flight. The 'busters put a bunch of birds into a trailer, weighed the trailer + birds, and then allowed the birds to fly in the trailer, measuring the weight every fraction of a second. The myth was rejected because, while the weight fluctuated a fair bit, the mean weight remained the same before and after the birds took flight.
When a bird (or anything else that flies) gets airborne, it must exert a downward force equal to its weight. The weight of the…
purepedantry | April 11, 2007Virginia Postrel has an interesting column in Atlantic Monthly on the aesthetic purpose of fashion in museums:
The Boston exhibit's comment book records a debate between fans, mostly women, who praise the museum for displaying an "inspiring" and "seldom seen" art form and detractors, mostly men, who decry its descent into commercialism. "What's next? Victoria's Secret's Xmas Collection?" writes one. "People in the museum world complain that fashion is not art, and they think it is unworthy of being in an art museum," says Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of…
drorzel | April 9, 2007The Comics Curmudgeon and others note the death of Johnny Hart, arguably the best known religious wing nut from Broome County, New York, where I grew up. (Sadly, this is not a set of one, as the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue also traces its origins to the Binghamton area.) Hart was the creator of the comic strip B.C., in which wisecracking cavemen occasionall veered off into discussions of or lengthy quotes from Scripture.
The strip hasn't been consistently funny for at least fifteen years, and I found his personal views kind of obnoxious, but the man was a Broome County icon, and it's…
drorzel | April 7, 2007There's been a fair bit of discussion of this year's Hugo nominees around the Internets, most of it centering around the gender of the nominees (that link goes to a fairly civilized discussion, which includes links to a rather more heated argument). For those who haven't been following the controversy, only one of the twenty nominated works in fiction categories was by a woman.
What follows will be rambling and discursive and probably not terribly productive, but I've become accustomed to thinking by typing, so there you go. If you're not fascinated by squabbling over SF awards, scroll down…
drorzel | April 6, 2007Yesterday, on my way in to work, I was listening to ESPN radio and Mike Greenberg made a bold assertion (paraphrased slightly):
Jackie Robinson is one of the ten most important Americans of the twentieth century. Not just sports figures, Americans.
Contrary sort that I am, my first thought was "I don't think I believe that."
Which is not to say that Robinson wasn't an important American of the twentieth century. I don't think there's any question that he's the most important twentieth century American from the world of sports (trailed by Muhammed Ali and Jesse Owens, and then a big step down…
drorzel | March 22, 2007Via Rachel Manija Brown, a Wikipedia page on misheard lyrics in Japan:
From Sean Paul's "Fire Links Intro":
Mayday! [...] Sean Paul! This one is hot!
ç®çã! [...] ã·ã£ã³ãã¼! ãªã³ã¹ã¯ç¡ãã!
Me itai! [...] Shanpū! Rinsu wa nai sa!
My eyes hurt! [...] Shampoo! There is no hair conditioner!
Global pop culture is Difficult. Still, this is probably fair payback for the word salad of the Hellsing theme music, which puts absolute gibberish over one of the coolest theme tunes around.
evolgen | March 18, 2007Dr. Wayne Grody is a molecular biologist at UCLA. But his part-time job sounds like a lot more fun: "technical advisor on a number of motion picture and television productions". He's the guy responsible for giving Eddie Murphy's Professor Klump character a ginormous research lab despite the fact that he worked at a small liberal arts college. To Grody's credit, however, he did try to plant thermal cyclers, which the director found "visually boring". But, according to Grody, scientists account for such a small proportion of TV viewers and movie-goers that scientific accuracy isn't much of a…
drorzel | March 14, 2007Posting has been basketball-heavy of late because, well, there isn't much else going on that I find all that interesting at the moment. More importantly, though, it's the Season of the Bracket...
I'm not the only one affected, of course, though many people who don't care about hoops have to find other outlets for the impulse to construct match-ups between various concepts, and arrange them in a single elimination tournament:
Locally, there's the Science Spring Showdown. I'll be announcing the first-round winners in the "Orbit" bracket on Friday, and while my decisions are final, they are…
drorzel | March 14, 2007John Scalzi is announcing the launch of a new "collaborative short fiction" site, Ficlets:
What does "collaborative short fiction" mean in this case? Simple: You, as a writer, post a very short (not more than 1,024 characters) piece of fiction or a fiction fragment on the Ficlets site. People come to Ficlets to read what you've written, and to comment on your piece. If they want to, they can also write a "sequel" to your story or story fragment, carrying the story forward from where you left it. Or, alternately, they can write a "prequel," explaining how you got to where you are in the story…
drorzel | March 5, 2007James Nicoll is soliciting recommendations for a series of novels about the planets of the Solar System. His first pass:
Mercury:
Venus:
Earth: Imperial Earth, Arthur C. Clarke
Mars:
Jupiter: Jupiter Fred and Carol Pohl (ed)
Saturn:
Uranus:
Neptune: Triton, Samuel R. Delany
As you can see, there are some gaps...
Suggestions are welcome, bearing in mind of course that James's definition of SF pretty much demands MilSpec certification for the bolts holding the rockets together, so it's a little tough to come up with books that meet his standards. I'm a little more forgiving of dodgy science…
drorzel | February 25, 2007A few days ago, Inside Higher Ed did an Oscar preview, and asked five academics who study film to predict the Best Picture winner. Three of the five picked The Departed to win, and one of the other two preferred it to his predicted winner (Babel).
Clearly, Scorsese is doomed to lose yet again. Scalzi's half-serious prediction of Letters from Iwo Jima is looking better and better... Or possibly The Queen, which none of the academics even mentioned.
I've seen exactly none of the nominated films, so I really don't have an opinion. If you'd like to offer a prediction, or just call me a cretin for…
drorzel | February 24, 2007OVer at the Whatever, Senor BaconCat has two long posts on the glamorous life of a successful SF writer: one breaking down his income from SF writing in detail, and the other talking about why he's talking about money. The comment threads are also lively and interesting in their own right. It's particularly funny to see the number of people who are shocked at how low the income is-- $67,000 is a pretty respectable salary in the world of people who don't play around on the Internet all that often, and it's probably in the ninety-somethingth percentile for fiction writers.
Of course, I'm amused…
drorzel | February 21, 2007John Scalzi is being railroaded into heading a new movement in SF: The New Comprehensible. He disdains manifestoes ("people who issue literary manifestos should be thrown into jet engines"), but does offer a set of precepts for people seeking to write in the New Comprehensible:
1. Think of an actual person you know, of reasonable intelligence, who likes to read but does not read science fiction.
2. Write with that person in mind.
He goes on to note that these same rules apply to other genres of fiction. He does not, however, make the point that this is also excellent advice for non-fiction…
drorzel | February 20, 2007As Kate and I are planning to attend the Worldcon this year, we're eligible to nominate for the Hugo Awards, which are sort of SF's version of the Oscars, or maybe the Golden Globes (the Nebula Awards being the other). This is only the third time I've had this opportunity, and it's always kind of difficult, given that I end up having basically no opinion in so many of the categories.
I do have a few ideas about works to nominate, but I'd like to hear suggestions from other people. So, what should I be putting on my nominating ballot this year? I'll put the list of categories below, with my…
purepedantry | February 15, 2007Not to be catty, but what the hell is up with that hat? Did Britney Spears skin Santa and send him to a furrier?
Hat-tip: WWTDD.
drorzel | February 15, 2007One of those only-on-the-Internet, adventrues-in-D-list-celebrity videos: A YouTube clip of a hair metal cover band joined onstage by one of the teachers from "Saved by the Bell" and Dallas Cowboys snap-dropper Tony Romo, singing "Somewhere in the Night" by Journey. Romo really gets into it, and Mr. Belding drops the F-bomb a few times, and, well, it's not for the faint of heart.
It's like somebody accelerated the Eighties to a good fraction of the speed of light, slammed them into a wall, and now we're looking at the spandex-and-hairspray clad particle tracks.
integrityofscience | February 6, 2007The Daily Show is reporting that Punxsutawney Phil has been reassigned for statements he made during last week's Groundhog Day celebration in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.
After attempting to use media attention to warn against the dangers of anthropogenic climate change, Phil was put back in his hole. Not a week later, he has been reassigned to a Whac-a-Mole machine. Oh the indignity. You can view the video here.
Phil's fate is, of course, parody of the not-so-funny experiences of some federal agency scientists. Those real stories will likely come up at the Senate Hearing on Climate Change…
drorzel | February 1, 2007Over in LiveJournal land, I've been reading a bunch of posts about superhero stories, mostly in the form of forty-odd years of comic books on DVD (mentioned in locked posts on a pseudonymous LJ, so no link for you). I end up reading these posts with a sort of detached interst, because I don't really get the whole superhero thing, particularly in comic form. I think the last time I regularly followed superhero stuff was when the "Superfriends" show was on tv on Saturday mornings.
It's a little weird, because I like some stories that riff off the idea of superheroes (Watchmen), and I've…
integrityofscience | January 23, 2007The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has nominated "An Inconvenient Truth" for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. The announcement was made this morning. Prepare yourself for savage overuse of the phrase "liberal Hollywood elite" and its permutations between now and the February 28 awards show.
Al Gore, unsurprisingly, is thrilled that the 3rd highest-grossing documentary of all-time has been recognized by the academy.
"The film ... has brought awareness of the climate crisis to people in the United States and all over the world," Gore said in an e-mail statement. "I am so…