May 27, 2013
(Sorry, there are a bunch of formatting problems on this right now and Blogger won't let me fix them. I'll get it right soon.)
At Skunk Bay, there were plenty of opportunities to recharge.
I finally caught up on all the headlines I'd been meaning to read.
On Memorial Day, this sunrise woke me up at 6:00am.
So I had lots of time to put together these links.
This "Faka" argument is exactly how I would react.
With a strange brew of love, pity, guilt, rage, sadness and exasperation.
For years, Criterion has brought an art-house sensibility to DVD packaging, rereleasing classic films with new covers featuring striking photography and nuanced typography. The cases are so visually alluring that I've filled my shelves with many of them. Of late, though, Criterion has brought its touch to the trailer business with an entertaining and thoughtful series of online promotional teasers that interpret, rather than simply hype, their films—in less than two minutes.
Semicolons - The Lonely Island
...what’s possibly more entertaining is the4-minute highlight reel above, annotated with pop-up graphics explaining the stream of landmarks passing by, from borders, to cities, to mountains, to lakes. Selections include farmland along Russia’s Volga river, irrigated crops along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq, the shores of Lake Victoria in east Africa, and Zimbabwe’s mineral-rich rock formation The Great Dyke. The viewing experience is amplified with world music corresponding to the locations below.
At the end of this month, NASA will hand over control of the satellite to the U.S. Geological Survey, its partner in the project, who will operate the satellite and it make its data available for free.
What has stuck with me about Star Trek is how much I want to like things.
I try really hard to be positive.
But sometimes things are just bad.
And it's a comfort to know I'm not the only one who feels that way.
Once you start looking at the source material, you open the floodgates. Abrams has faced criticism from the start for how far he’s militarized Trek, and, in doing so, lost the original’s spirit of exploration, of solving problems by out-thinking them rather than outgunning them. Early in Into Darkness, there’s a moment that’s either the most or the least self-aware bit of writing in the movie, when Scotty seems to channel disgruntled Trek fans as he demands of Kirk, “This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? ‘Cause I thought we were explorers.”
You can watch the whole thing online (link above).
Here are some comedians reacting to this classic stand-up set.
From our reader poll (blue=yes, orange=no):
That 39% jumps to 50% among readers 35 and older, while only 28% of millennials say they use cursive. Among female readers, 63% use cursive, while only 30% of male readers do the same. And among all readers, a minority of 41% believe teachers should stop teaching cursive to children. Below are some remaining thoughts on the popular thread:
The key point to me is that every single pro-cursive argument that’s made is very easy to rebut. Just running through the ones that have appeared in this thread:
1) Handwriting builds muscles and hand/eye coordination. True, but this applies to print and cursive – no evidence cursive is better than print.
2) There is a need write quickly and legibly. Actually, there rarely is (basically note-taking and test-taking in school is the only time in life this is needed). But if speed was the concern, keyboards are way faster than cursive. And if keyboards aren’t nearby and speed is paramount, we should teach kids shorthand.
For their part, the parents are like, "Um, I pay like threeve fafillion megabucks (PLUS 'charitable donations') for you to sit around while my dumb kid plays Oregon Trail, and now you expect me to reschedule my eyelash-extensions so I can come participate in 'safety patrol,' which, as far as I can tell, is a schoolyard game in which an idiot tries to stop an oncoming delivery truck armed only with a small nylon flag? NOPE. I'M SENDING LISA."
Aaaaaand then the school admins fire back with this tasty burn:
“Sometimes, the parents are so high-maintenance. you almost rather see a nanny,” she added.
Boom. Killed it.
After those collections of notable definitions of art, science, and philosophy, what better way to start a new year than with a selection of poetic definitions of a peculiar phenomenon that is at once more amorphous than art, more single-minded than science, and more philosophical than philosophy itself? Gathered here are some of the most memorable and timeless insights on love, culled from several hundred years of literary history — enjoy.
If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood. I’ve found that the only way I can keep writing every day, year after year, is to let my mind wander into new territories. To do that, I’ve had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness. At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you’ll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, you’ll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, you’ll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems. A playful mind is inquisitive, and learning is fun. If you indulge your natural curiosity and retain a sense of fun in new experience, I think you’ll find it functions as a sort of shock absorber for the bumpy road ahead.
In 1966, Star Trek broke new ground with its international crew of hopeful explorers, scientists, and adventurers. True, the show was full of heavy-handed Cold War metaphors and casual 1960s misogyny, but its central messages were obvious: Racism is bad. Give peace a chance. That kind of thing. Men and women, Russians and Americans, aliens and humans: all could work together on a more-or-less equal footing. For many viewers, Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura) was the first woman of color they’d seen playing anything other than a maid. Star Trek was pushing the envelope.
In 2013, not so much. Into Darkness shows more racial diversity among cameos from alien species than it does among human characters in main speaking roles. Worse still, iconic Star Trek villain Khan Noonien Singh was recast as Benedict Cumberbatch, possibly the whitest man on the planet.
In Khan’s original role, he was super-intelligent, super-strong, the head of a genetically engineered master race—and brown. In other words, the opposite of the usual racial stereotypes one saw in mid-20th century “foreign” or “exotic” villains. Whitewashing Khan into being an posh-sounding Englishman reinforces the message sent out by Kirk, Spock, and the morally ambiguous Admiral Marcus: Good or evil, everyone in power is a white male. Suddenly, the awkwardness surrounding one ofJohn Cho’s publicity interviews makes sense. “Who is your favourite villain?” he is asked. “Ricardo Montalban,” he answers. “He was badass. And a man of color, I might add.” Nervous laughter. Next question, please.
Added to the long list of things I keep meaning to watch.
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