My newest favorite webcomic-of-the-moment is Freefall. It’s a sci-fi comic about a sentient wolf, a kleptomaniac squid, and a childish robot. While it’s probably most notable for being one of the more scientifically accurate speculative fiction comics around, it’s the author’s deft handling of the artificial intelligence angle that’s the most interesting to me.
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Freefall – AI done right
April 11th, 2010 by BriannaNOT the most annoying song ever
April 6th, 2010 by BriannaThis has been around for a while, but it’s really quite fascinating. Apparently some extremely bored people decided to write a song based on a survey. A pair of songs, actually: the ‘Most Wanted Song’ and the ‘Most Unwanted Song’. The most wanted song has mushy love lyrics, electric guitars, and rock/r&b-style singing. The most unwanted is a huge mess of bagpipes, harps, children, and other random elements.
Needless to say, the ‘most wanted’ one is boring and derived. But the ‘least wanted’ song is actually quite fun. It’s a sort of random hodgepodge – sopranos, tubas, and children advertising the holidays at Wal-Mart. In other words, it’s completely postmodern. In all honesty, if they had layered it a bit, made it a bit more dissonant, and fixed the structure (at the moment it’s more like three or four songs placed end to end than one complete work) it might pass as a serious modern classical work. As it is, it’s a fascinating commentary on musical opinion.
Which just goes to show – true art is weird. This was, of course, the artist’s intent (Wired Magazine completely missed the point here).
But I can’t help but think the composer was being unfair – they obviously made the ‘most wanted’ song annoying, and the ‘most unwanted’ interesting, if non-standard. What if they had honestly tried (within the given guidelines) to write a really good song for the most wanted one? It seems to me that would have been far more enlightening…
Health Care Bills and Protests
March 21st, 2010 by BriannaThe health care reform bill just passed, and there’s a bunch of unhappy people all over the country.
I won’t pretend to understand the issue completely (I got bored and stopped following it closely a long time ago). But if the summaries are correct, (and the CBO is accurate, which seems reasonable), we’ll get a moderate reduction in the deficit, some new taxes for the rich and people who use tanning salons, some decent subsidy expansions for low-income people, and some mild tweaks to medicaid and medicare. All quite undramatic, really.
All of which makes the protests quite bewildering.
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On warming to fanfic
March 1st, 2010 by BriannaWhen I first heard about fan fiction, I thought it was the Worst. Idea. Ever. By a long shot. Why not be original?, I thought. It seemed so… dishonest, almost like stealing. And slash (actually, shipping generally) seemed to be downright obnoxious. The characters are author’s, right?
Then, of course, I learned about textual analysis, and the whole concept that each reader constructs their own reading of each work, only truly applying to them. Fine. But still – fan-fiction’s different, right?
Not so much. On the off chance that you still can’t stand it (or want to convince someone else), here are some thoughts:
Semi-Critical Reviews: Strawberry Panic!
February 28th, 2010 by BriannaI’m not the biggest anime fan. In fact, I’ve only really started watching any at all this last year. Most of it seems to be either A: Fight Fight Fight Giant Mecha Big Gun Fight, or B: Panty Shot Male Gaze Panty Shot Boobs Fight Male Gaze Short Skirt
Not so great.
But there a few that are really… fun, even if they’re not the greatest thing ever (I’m told there’s great art, too [Revolutionary Girl Utena], but I haven’t seen any yet).
Strawberry Panic! – the ‘!’ is actually part of the title – is one of the fun ones.
Of Super Bowl Ads and Women
February 1st, 2010 by BriannaEver since Focus on the Family announced their pro-life Super Bowl ad, there’s been arguments and discussions all over. Should it be allowed by the network? Are feminists taking the wrong approach to criticizing it? (thanks, Sarah Palin!) And so on. One of the more interesting pieces was in the Washington Post – it basically suggests that feminists be, well, warmer and fuzzier and more appealing.
Echildne wrote a good (if very angry) bit about treating the pro-choice movement as if it was some sort of for-profit corporation, and loosing sight of well, a woman’s right to choose.
I’m going to suggest a slightly different take; the problem is all in the framing.
A few thoughts on Haiti
January 26th, 2010 by BriannaThe disaster in Haiti (as seen by those in the rest of the world, of course) is winding down. The government is giving up on searching and moving toward rebuilding. The media frenzy is nearly over – no headlines, few articles on the front pages of websites and papers. Even more – people aren’t talking much about Haiti any more, and although I don’t know, I imagine donations are on their way down, too.
I could say that in reality, the disaster is far from over, that we still need to support Haitians, etc. And it would be true – at least to a point.
But in all honesty, Haiti will be okay – as much as it can be. The damage is already done. Hundreds of thousands are dead, and the country destroyed. The humanitarian groups are finally in place, and all the rich foreign governments are involved. The disaster relief machinery is in place, it’s all downhill (or is that uphill?) from here.
And it’s too late to really do anything, because this disaster wasn’t really caused by the earthquake.
Sarah and Lori are back – and with even more rambling!
January 22nd, 2010 by BriannaEver since their old video blog (She Made Me Watch This), I’ve been a big fan of Sarah Warn and Lori Grant’s particular brand of pop culture commentary. (Sarah is of course the former editor of afterellen.com, Lori’s her girlfriend.) They’re super smart, rather funny, aren’t overly critical (except when something’s sexist or racist, etc.), and are generally pleasant to watch.
So, I had high hopes when I found that they started a podcast – and wasn’t disappointed, either.
It’s called Small Screen Stakeout, and it’s pretty much the same sort of thing as She Made Me Watch This – plus more web series talk, minus the bunny rating system. Which is to say, it’s pretty fun. And very long – which I rather like. (The first episode is 99 minutes long, the second 61).
So, digression on long podcasts:
Worst. Complainer. Ever.
January 21st, 2010 by BriannaCan be found here – read at your own risk. It’s a whole bunch of complaining about famous film directors.
I actually had hope for this lovely bit of… supposed director criticism, given that it was linked from Afterellen, where writers usually have good taste. Except Mr. Shapiro isn’t really criticizing the various director’s, well, directing (remember, people – they don’t actually write the film, they just tell the actors what to do…). Instead he’s taking random jabs at their films (writing, acting and all!), and than yelling that they suck. Wonderful, isn’t it?
And, you know, it could have been a good article. For one thing, all the directors he goes after are, y’know, famous white guys, who are after all consistently overrated. He’s not going to go that route, of course! His criticism of Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise “… is liberal tripe, although it does provide the best imagistic summary of modern feminism: two irritating “independent” women driving themselves off a cliff.”
Yeah.
Some of his targets could be considered moderately overrated for their directing abilities, of course – David Lynch only really appeals to people who like weird surreal stuff, for instance, and Tarantino, despite frequent moments of genius is so offensive as to balance his work out to only ‘decent’ (entirely my opinion, of course!) But all the same, every director he mentions both created unique works, and is quite influential. If that’s not criteria for a proper ‘rating’, I’m not entirely sure what is.
In any case, all this vitriol made me wonder what kind of directors and movies Mr. Shapiro actually likes. So I clicked over to the blog’s front page. Which is almost entirely occupied by articles praising the great and glorious wonderfulness of former President Bush.
Perhaps the whole thing is an elaborate parody?
On listening to MLK
January 18th, 2010 by BriannaI refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
I sat down and listened to the “I have a dream” speech today – and realized that I had never actually heard it before! Sure, I’ve read the speech, and others of his perhaps a dozen times, but I never actually listened to it, all the way through, as spoken by the man himself.
It was surprisingly enlightening.